00:30:54 · Sofia Puccini, Ruby Justice Thelot
[00:30:54] S1: Interesting. Okay. So what, like, what what was the job description for, like, the Disney role versus the Google role? [00:31:02] S0: Well, famously, of course, like, Disney was literally in the base of creative technology. Like, they had to come up with novel ways of animating. So it was really like a a technical role at the intersection of how do you help the animators, illustrators bring their things into the digital realm, specifically as they were transitioning from hand drawn to more digital animation? And so that was really the term creative technology. And Bran Ferren, right, he was an Imagineer. That's what the people who come up [00:31:32] S1: with it. Imagineers. Yeah. Yeah. [00:31:34] S0: Yeah. Which is one of the coolest titles I've [00:31:36] S1: ever heard. [00:31:36] S0: I know. Yeah. And so he became the president of creative technology in 1998, which is very interesting. And another thing I talked about is how, well, people like to... You know, they see the people do a lot of reels on... About cryptology or a lot of different sort of hacks or projects, but the history of the collaboration between engineers and artists is well trodden. It's been there for a long time. Yeah. Specifically the sixties. Right? Bell Labs, Xerox PARC [00:32:04] S1: Yes. The
00:32:04 · Sofia Puccini, Ruby Justice Thelot
[00:32:04] S1: Yes. The [00:32:04] S0: EAT, were all examples of times where companies oftentimes were like, hey. We got a couple of extra computers, couple of extra printers, couple of extra this and that. Plotters come and work in our office. Mhmm. We'll pay you or you'll get a grant or whatever. Yeah. You can come in every day. And so whether it's like, you know, Franker,, a lot of these artists worked at telecom companies, at Xerox, at Bell Labs. Another... An artist that I really like called Tom Lloyd, he worked with an engineer from RCA, right, like the tape company to make his light sculptures. So... And that was in the sixties as well. And so there's a lot of... There's a big history of that collaboration. So I think we're... We... We'd be remiss if we didn't mention this just because people are doing cool visualizations, whatever things on on TikTok and videos.
00:32:56 · Sofia Puccini
[00:32:56] S1: Totally. Well, I'm curious your perspective because I think that right now, there's just kind of, like, a sentiment of selling out that I think that, like, if you're an artist who's really dedicated to, like, their values as an artist, then you kind of naturally self select out of technology spaces because they tend to be more correlated with, like, profit incentive or what have you. So I think that there's, like... I'm curious your thoughts on that, because that feels like why there's a bigger bifurcation now, and there seems to be a lack of, like, actually good art in tech, and then a lack of, like, actually more, like, tech pilled artists. Like, say for, like, you know, Grimes or... Like, there's there's a bunch of experimental people doing stuff. But...
00:33:39 · Ruby Justice Thelot
[00:33:39] S0: I think what's interesting, right, is that this this idea of the selling out, I don't think makes sense historically because Mhmm. Bell Labs was so big and so powerful at its peak that, like, it literally led to the antitrust rules that, like, like, first antitrust rules were because Bell had a monopoly. Bell, of course, invented the phone. And so, like, a lot of the infrastructure for telecommunication was owned by Bell. So this was, a big tech. Like, it was a a good analog for it. And so it was just a matter of fact that, like, if you wanted to have access to computers, to plotters, like, those are not things that an artist could acquire by themselves. Of course, sometimes you had the university space. I'm thinking of Joan Shrogan, potentially the first ever digital artist. This is a highly debated topic, but Joan in 1963 made some of the first drawings with a computer. And she was working at the university, I think, of San Diego. Was like a secretary at the time. So you wouldn't have access to these things previously, so that's why I think it's important to recognize, like, these were important collaborations. And I mean, whether it be, as I said, Mona or Frank or any of these people, I don't think they were selling up. I think they were curious as to what this new technology could do. And, I mean, people were still making paintings, and they're still making sculpture, whatever they wanted to do. Like, they... Nobody was forcing people to use technology. Just there's certain people who were interested in seeing what these things could do, and that's really what they were able to do with the support of Xerox, Bell. Or EAT was a bit more grassroots. It was less company based, but I think there's quite a bit of of history behind that practice. Have you seen, like, the public reaction towards these collaborations?
00:35:27 · Sofia Puccini, Ruby Justice Thelot
[00:35:27] S1: I think... Okay. So it depends on the kind of collaboration. But I think, like, a reason that I mention Grime so often is because she's sort of, like, taking it to its limit. Like, she is, like, very publicly, like, you know, talking to people in the AI space and then doing... Like, she's starring in an AI movie. I don't know if you saw that today. So she's, like, kind of on the frontier of, like, being an artist and then also being, like, willing to engage with, like, whatever comes up. And then she gets, like, attacked all the time. Like, in her latest music video, I think, that was called Accelerando, which is very much about, like, the feeling of, like, interacting with Silicon Valley, like, leaders about... It's about AI. Some of the comments were still like, why did you use AI in this? Like, you you know what I mean? Like, there's still a lot of people who just feel like it's a, like, hard moral stance. And I think there's been, like, a lot of... At least in the music space, there's been, like, a lot of... There's a weird thing where, like, older musicians who are kind of aged out, who are more, like, unk, who are a bit more, like, their career has already, like, passed, are more pro AI. And then a lot of the younger musicians are, like, super anti AI. And so I feel like the older musicians find it's a way to stay relevant in a way. [00:36:39] S0: Mhmm. [00:36:39] S1: Like, they're like, oh, you know, we're hopping on the, like, the next boat or the next trend or whatever.
00:36:39 · Sofia Puccini, Ruby Justice Thelot
[00:36:39] S1: Like, they're like, oh, you know, we're hopping on the, like, the next boat or the next trend or whatever. [00:36:43] S0: I think there are... At any point in time, right, in the sixties, there were artists who were doing abstract expressionism, and they wanted to stay doing that and stay in the studio making paintings. Some artists were working with printing techniques. So I'm talking about talking about the work of, say, like, an Andy Warhol or whatnot. Yeah. But then there are some artists who saw the rise of these new technologies and are like, that's what I wanna work with. Yeah. And I think it's just... We just accept that sometimes the role of the artist is to see what is at the margin of society, technology, or culture. Like, that's what they do. Yeah. And so I'm often reminded in the space of music of, well, people really disliked auto tune. Right? [00:37:23] S1: Yes. Sampling.