Category: LookingOutwards-11

Looking Outwards 11: Societal Impacts of Digital Art

The societal issue is in regards to copyright and how NFTs impact it. One example is how NFTs occasionally steal work from commissioned artists without their consent or permission, such as in the case of Jason Rohrer using the work of artists without their consent to sell NFTs. The article begins by detailing what NFTs are; unique tokens, most commonly a URL of some digital media which are given to individuals for ownership. However—and this is the conflict that the article highlights—that very ownership has a lot more to take into account than what the original developers may have intended. Those who have NFTs don’t actually have copyright of their NFTs, and their so-called products are still accessible and distributable to the public. To make matters worse, thousands can release unoriginal NFTs based off of digital URLs in a market that doesn’t restrict or legislate the selling and distribution of NFTs.

Link to article here

Looking Outwards – 11

I looked into copyrights and the sale of the graphic artist Beeple’s artwork called “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” for $69.3 million in 2011. This kind of digital artwork is considered a non-fungible token. This means the ownership of a digital artwork can change, but the copyright still remains with the artist. Its record sales figure comes from the push for the NFTs to gain traction and become more commodifiable. It signifies a change in the art market and shows that more NFT can be bought and sold. The concept of NFTs evolved from the buying and selling of central art, digital artwork and video works, in the art world. Digital artists now can sell their artwork with more certainty that it will not cause legal issues.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/beeple-digital-artwork-sale-perspective/2021/03/15/6afc1540-8369-11eb-81db-b02f0398f49a_story.html

Graphic designer Beeple’s artwork “Everydays: The First 5000 Days”

2. Looking Outwards 11: Societal Impacts of Digital Art

While reading the article ‘NFTs and Copyright’ I released the unethical use of art and artworks in the new digital world. In my opinion, obviously it isn’t right for an artwork to be sold off at an online auction without the consent of the artist, but that won’t cloud the reality that it happens, more so now than before the boom of the internet. Reading about the impact NFTs have had on this was awakening and it made me wonder as an artist if it is even right to put out your work on digital platforms where anyone can access it and potentially illegally sell it and make money. Although NFTs are a great source for artists to earn money as it has opened up an entirely new avenue of revenue generation for artists. I was amazed to learn about how NFTs operate and how the token is for copyright and ownership, however, it is kind of terrifying to hear and learn how unethically it can be used. I honestly do not know if this problem could be curbed, but I sincerely hope that they introduce more rigorous checks to ensure that the artwork’s token is the right copyright holder of that piece, as it sounds like an interesting avenue for new generation artists.

Link

LO11:Societal Impacts of Digital Art

In this week’s looking outward, I read the article about NFT and copyright.

NFTs and Copyright

In this reading, the author mainly talks about the newly appeared NFT(Non Fungible Token), as well as its unique features. NFT, as a special token, gives a person more connection to the artwork he buys, and an “ownership” of the artwork. Yet the ownership is tricky because it doesn’t mean that the buyer has full control of the artwork, as the copyright and the right to print on other places without creator’s permission. In the condition that NFT is so expensive, this copyright problem is something that people need to think about.

Also, the definition of NFT determines that there are some sort of copyright problems coming up. As the original artist that create the NFT is allowed to create derivative works from the NFT already sold, there might be NFTs that are similar, or maybe the buyer will not be happy. Yet the original artist has the right to do so, therefore, the buyer could not sue the artist, which makes the situation hard to explain.

Looking Outwards 11

For this Week’s Looking Outwards, I read AI & Creativity: Addressing Racial Bias in ComputerGraphics. I chose this article because it aligns with a recent discussion we had in Design Cultures about design and race. In the article they talk about racial bias in computer graphic tracing back to when the technology was first developed. One example given is the glow that is added to create inclusion of lighting. When these techniques were developed they did not count for the effects it would have on darker skin. The result is that darker skin looks less realistic. Another example is in hair generation software that often ignores type 4, afro hair types. These issues with software limit creators and representation in video games, and other computer aided works. One interesting solution the article gave was to use deep machine learning to generate better images, as an example of this they shared artwork Netteice Gaskins created by such algorithms.

https://nettricegaskins.medium.com/ai-creativity-addressing-racial-bias-in-computer-graphics-f5fc0c255e7

Nettrice Gaskins. “Dandy Dream,” 2021. Created using a deep learning algorithm

Looking Outwards 11: Societal Impacts of Digital Art

Theodore Kim addresses racial bias in computer graphics and poses solutions to prevent systemic bias. Kim claims that early film technology and procedures from the analog period have biases ingrained in them. For example, “subsurface light transport” is a component of digital design that allows for a skin glow effect, but this doesn’t apply to darker skin tones. This same algorithm can look unrealistic on people with darker skin tones. In addition, there are no algorithms for kinky hair. The use of deep machine learning can offset historical racial bias in computer graphics. He further proposes that this process enables artists to discard outdated rules and produce a futuristic aesthetic for digital media.

Alexia Forsyth

https://www.tkim.graphics/

Blog 11

The article “Women in Media Arts: Does AI think like a (white) man?” addresses the biases in Ai, specifically regarding gender and race. “Gender Shades,” just one of the many artists’ works mentioned in the story, explores the differences in how AI facial recognition works for different races and genders. Through the research Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru, the creators of the investigation, have done has led them to the conclusion that women, especially women of color, when using facial recognition, have a higher error rate than when recognizing other genders and races. They found that the developers used incorrect or incomplete data sets to train the programs, and, in turn, created the first data set that includes all skin color types and can test face-based gender recognition.

Another set of artists mentioned in the article, Birgitte Aga and Coral Manton, focus on gender-specific AI through their project, “Women Reclaiming AI.” The pair learned that AI language assistants are usually developed by teams that lack diversity and, through AI, reinforce stereotypes that reinforce traditional gender roles. In their project, they attack these biases and created a “feminist data set” for future AI systems. The artists mentioned are taking the steps to address the downfalls of AI and bring up questions around and problems to be solved with equality and AI.

Women in Media Arts: Does AI think like a (white) man?

Looking Outwards 11

This week I read about NFT and Copyright, discussing what is NFT, why they are valuable and the issue of its copyright. NFT(Non-fungible Token) means digital and unique token. NFT can give artists a potential revenue stream when they are selling their own art. Everyone can easily access other creators’ NFT, while this raises another question that spammers can also steal it for money. Thus, copyright issues seem to be more critical: NFT auction sites created DMCA processes to prevent the spread of unauthorized NFT, but it’s not effective enough. In this article, the author also mentions that block-chain might be the perfect tool for solving copyright problems, but it still brings new privacy concerns. In a nutshell, NFT itself needs to be scarce if it wants to create artificial scarcity. There is still a long way to go.

https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2021/03/16/nfts-and-copyright/

Looking Outwards 11

In the fields of CG and AI, unintentional bias exists in virtual human portraits. The author believes that computer programmers and artists must think thoroughly about every detail in their design process to diminish any potential harm to a specific group of people. An example the author provided in the article is the glowing effect that was virtually generated on portraits by Johannes Vermeer and other contemporary artworks. Though the glow effect works effectively on white skin, it is not a dominant quality of black skin, which automatically creates a difference in presentations. The solution to this issue is based upon the artists’ realization of creating a diverse range of options for these qualities and refining those options to match reality accurately.

Gaskins, Nettrice. “Ai & Creativity: Addressing Racial Bias in Computer Graphics.” Medium, Medium, 11 Aug. 2021, https://nettricegaskins.medium.com/ai-creativity-addressing-racial-bias-in-computer-graphics-f5fc0c255e7.

Johannes Vermeer. “Girl With a Pearl Earring (detail),” dated c. 1665
Google search results for “skin shaders”

anabelle’s blog 11

The article Beeple’s digital ‘artwork’ sold for more than any painting by Titian or Raphael,” discusses what the impacts the capitalization of art may have on the industry through the lens of NFTs. It highlights the auctioning of Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days for $69.3 million, one of the highest bids for art in history. The author criticizes how nonphysical, nontechnical, and nonbeautiful art has gripped the capitalist market by rebranding them as special NFTs, or digital property. He seems most turned off by how the two highest bidders were both founders of blockchain companies — blockchains are exactly how NFTs receive their value, so the entire event feels orchestrated in his opinion. I think NFTs can be respected as a type of commerce, but I hesitate to call each individual work art. Either way, new technology and new ways of creating goods for the market will always appear and resisting them can be pretty futile.

Citation:
Washington Post. “Perspective | Beeple’s Digital ‘Artwork’ Sold for More than Any Painting by Titian or Raphael. But as Art, It’s a Great Big Zero.” Accessed November 19, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/beeple-digital-artwork-sale-perspective/2021/03/15/6afc1540-8369-11eb-81db-b02f0398f49a_story.html.