[Linganth] Eitan Wilf visits CaMP anthropology reading group - January 26th

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues,
The CaMP reading group turns to Eitan Wilf's new book, The Inspiration
Machine: Computational Creativity in Jazz and Poetry.  Those of you
interested in AI might want to attend -- this is one of the first
ethnographies on machine learning and creativity.   We will chat with him
on January 26th from 12-1 pm EST.

He has asked us to read chapter 3, and offers us the intro as well.
Please read as much as you can, but do feel free to join us even if you
haven't managed to read everything.


You can find chapter 3 here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hmyiy8YJTmMduKXz1S80l4V5LyXbd2PR/view?usp=drive_link


You can find the introduction here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m3O2fEQ151Q81jLNETIQ-sT7zxvbrIgS/view?usp=sharing

The meeting will be 12-1 pm  EST January 26th, and can be reached by
clicking on this Zoom link:
https://iu.zoom.us/j/949202698

Looking forward to seeing you all virtually,

Ilana

Press blurb: In *The Inspiration Machine*, Eitan Y. Wilf explores the
transformative potentials that digital technology opens up for creative
practice through three ethnographic cases, two with jazz musicians and one
with a group of poets. At times dissatisfied with the limitations of human
creativity, these artists do not turn to computerized algorithms merely to
execute their preconceived ideas. Rather, they approach them as creative
partners, delegating to them different degrees of agentive control and
artistic decision-making in the hopes of finding inspiration in their
output and thereby expanding their own creative horizons.

The algorithms these artists develop and use, however, remain rooted in and
haunted by the specific social predicaments and human shortfalls that they
were intended to overcome. Experiments in the digital thus hold an
important lesson: although Wilf’s interlocutors returned from their
adventures with computational creativity with modified, novel, and enriched
capacities and predilections, they also gained a renewed appreciation for,
and at times a desire to re-inhabit, non-digital creativity. In examining
the potentials and pitfalls of seemingly autonomous digital technologies in
the realm of art, Wilf shows that computational solutions to the real or
imagined insufficiencies of human practice are best developed in relation
to, rather than away from, the social and cultural contexts that gave rise
to those insufficiencies, in the first place.
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