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The Arts' Love of All Things Winter

Disney's Frozen burst into our theaters and onto our small screens in 2013, and no one has "let it go" since. The film became a franchise, with rumors of a third installment coming in 2023 or later. But Frozen is not the only wintry tale media consumers love. "Winter tales" can be found across mediums, from TV series like Game of Thrones whose tagline is "Winter is Coming," to a plethora of books with titles like The Snow Child, WinterFrost, and Girls Made of Snow and Glass. Many of today's super-powered or "chosen one" protagonists also have winter-related powers; Queen Elsa might be the most obvious, but there is also Jack Frost from Rise of the Guardians, as well as Freya from Snow White and the Huntsman.

Winter permeates the arts, no matter the season. Yet what is it about this season, out of four, that captures the imagination of writers, filmmakers, and other artists? Analyze a few prevalent winter tales across mediums, looking for commonalities among characters, character arcs, plot threads, powers, and more. Could the other three seasons garner this kind of attention, and if yes, what would it take to make that happen? Are artists, authors, and others who craft "winter tales" trying to make a statement about their art, themselves, or humanity through winter? If yes, what is it? Discuss.

  • Maybe write more about your thoughts? Answer some of the questions you ask? – Thorn 2 years ago
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  • The writings on winter here may include analysis of well-known as well as lesser known poems and songs on winter. Winter is an interesting topic for writing, even to those living in hotter places like mine. – Anvar Sadhath 2 years ago
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The Rise of Virtual Influencers: What it Means for the Future of Advertising

With the rise of virtual influencers like Lil Miquela and Bermuda, brands are increasingly turning to computer-generated characters to promote their products on social media. These virtual avatars are popular with younger generations who are more likely to trust and engage with them than traditional human influencers. However, there are ethical concerns surrounding the use of virtual influencers, such as transparency and authenticity. This article will explore the pros and cons of virtual influencers, and examine what their increasing popularity means for the future of advertising and influencer marketing.

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    "I Don't Like ****, I Don't Go Outside" An Exploration of Depression

    "I Don't Like ****, I Don't Go Outside" is the sophomore album by Odd Future Alum, Earl Sweatshirt. Despite maintain a level of darkness in his tone and instrumentation, Earl is distinctly alien from his former self. Gone are the edgy shock-lyrics of cannibalism and murder, replaced instead by a vulnerable young man drowning in depression reliant on drugs and alcohol to keep himself going.

    What is it to be a celebrity? A chosen one at that, to be the idol of millions of people you've never met while isolated from your friends and family. The album speaks to the thin veneer of happiness success can really be.

    Earl was often a center piece of the fandom from the "FREE EARL" days and yet it doesn't seem as though the freedom was very liberatory. The lack of hope and overwhelming sense of abject bleakness from Earl speaks to the hollow nature of what was gained by his fame and his regrets seem innumerable as each song on the album falls further in further into an inky blackness of despair.

    That then begs the question, what does this album serve? Is it just a self-exploration or can there be some universal message garnered from the album? What can be said of Earl and his developments as an artist? What of the raised awareness about depression and how it can shape and distort a person's view not just of themself but of the world around them.

    • Agree with first person. You do a good job summarizing what the album is about, but what specific question are you trying to ask? – Montayj79 2 years ago
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    NFT: Nothing More Than Digits Without a Soul?

    Art in its classical sense and form has a soul. A human puts a part of their soul into something that later can be highly appreciated by society. Digital art, where all images generated by neural networks can be attributed without direct human participation, is soulless. It will acquire a soul only when it is created by artificial intelligence. One can be sure that the first picture painted by AI will be costly.

    • I completely agree. The reason we attach ourselves to artist's is because we want to know the story behind a piece, for example, Van Gogh. With NFT's there is no story, no cultural significance for the style of choice of colour. – FrankiRue 2 years ago
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    The Prediction of the Future Through Art

    In the 19th century, Oscar Wilde wrote in 'The Decay of Lying' that, "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life… results not merely from life's imitative instinct, but from the fact that the self-conscious aim of life is to find expression, and that art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may realize that energy." According to Wilde, what people find in life and nature is actually not there, but what people find is what artists have taught them to find through art. So, does life imitate art or does art imitate life? In light of these questions, is it possible for art to predict the future? Which artwork by which artist do you think predicted the future?

    • The writer can choose any artwork from any artist, from any era to analyze. For example, Amalia Ulman masterpiece, “Excellences & Perfections”, which was dubbed by art critics as the “first Instagram masterpiece” could be an artwork worth the analysis. – Laurika Nxumalo 2 years ago
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    • People tend to idealise life, paint a picture based on their consumption of art, even in mediums like film (especially romantic films). So many people build mannerisms, plan events, do activities, based on what they see in films, what they read in books... I don't think that art predicts the future, but rather it manifests conditions for people to build experiences very similar to what they see in art, because that's what they idealise and strive towards. Does NASA continue to fund space research because of science fiction films like '2001: A Space Odyssey'? Maybe, maybe not (and if they did we'd never know). Will the events in those films actually occur? Who knows—but if they do, you might bet the people reacting to them will have seen those circumstances in art they have consumed, and respond accordingly. – Patrick 2 years ago
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    • Recursive. Wilde also talked about dreaming of things that never were. If your starting point is that the inner and outer life is a continuum then time/timing is of less relevance than occurrence. Everything will happen. At least once. – sodapop 2 years ago
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    Artificial Intelligence: The Future of Music?

    Ever since Schubert abandoned his 8th Symphony in 1822, six years before his death, after writing the first two movements, composers, musicologists, and general lovers of classical music, have wondered why the symphony was left unfinished – was Schubert ill? Was he distracted with other compositions? But mostly we have wondered about what the final two movements would have sounded like.

    In 2019, Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, answered this conundrum by completing the famous "Unfinished" Symphony by feeding thousands of Schubert’s works into the software that would hopefully produce material in the style of Schubert – as he would have thought it himself. This process was guided by the film composer Lucas Cantor, but still the result was heavily criticised.

    AI has since been used in music to generate pop songs, many of which are indistinguishable from human-made hits we hear on the radio. Is the use of AI in musical composition just like any other technological innovation in that it aids the composer in their process, automating tedious tasks, and so on? Or are we facing a real fear of being stuck in a ‘loop’ of the same musical tastes, without the extra push of human creativity and invention, since AI runs on analysing pre-existing examples?

    The author could further discuss the differences and similarities between AI software recognising patterns, and how humans often compose from well-studied patterns also.

    • It is critical to consider: Even if you ultimately develop fresh, surprising things, everytime you strive to create something new, you always generate it from what you already know. Everything you perceive, comprehend, hold dear, or do always springs from information your brain has already gathered or processed. Your brain is continuously collecting the past for use in a variety of ways, such as putting the sounds you've stored in new settings. Therefore, it shouldn't be any different from the human situation when we state that "since AI runs on analyzing pre-existing examples". – Samer Darwich 2 years ago
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    • I don't know enough about this topic to really comment in depth, but I just want to say I would find this extremely interesting to read about! – Caylee 2 years ago
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    The Merits and Flaws of A.I. Art

    The art world is current having a bit of a controversy about the nature of the soul in Art with the rise of programs like DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion and Craiyon that allow for the submission of prompts to generate visual media. While many laud this as another innovation of the digital age others such as traditionally defined artists view it as not only "soulless" that is to say made without the efforts and passions of a creator but also a form of stealing as the A.I. typically process art and art styles without credit and attribution only to then to produce something that is given credit as though it was wholly unique. This brings up the ethical questions of the generators and that immortal question, "What IS Art?"

    • A.I. Art reminds us that art is a learnable skill. If we can teach a computer to follow style guidelines and create images, humans can certainly learn the same skills. – noahspud 2 years ago
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    • I am reminded of Walter Benjamin's piece on art in the age of mechanical reproduction. The uptick in A.I. art is a great opportunity to review some of Benjamin's original propositions. The question of artistic merit is worth digging into—what matters in a judgment of merit might be context-dependent rather than intrinsic. – JackWalton 2 years ago
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    • I think this would be a good topic to explore if it was focused on something more specific about the relationship between AI and its creator/participant. While it does bring up the same old questions of what is art, it would perhaps be more interesting to put a spin on those old questions by looking at what function AI art serves in the area of identify for those with the tools and the agency to create a kind of sentient intelligence and personality in cooperation with their own skills, but at the same time, outside of their own control. You know what springs to mind, is the conversation between Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton, especially when he starts talking about this: “He is all my art to me now,” said the painter gravely. “I sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the world’s history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also." – taleialani 2 years ago
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    Page to stage: adapting works for live performance

    Consider examples of literature or film that have had theatre adaptations (e.g. Dorian Gray, Sydney Theatre Company; Cyrano, Melbourne Theatre Company, and analyse how these works have been shifted and/or restructured for a live performance context.

    • I think it would be interesting to explore how the constraints of the new medium affect the adaptation, as well as the choices that are made (what is taken out, what is kept in and why) by the person who adapts it. Maybe you could narrow your topic down to a specific adaptation to make it a little more detailed, since it currently seems like you are taking on a huge deal if you're studying multiple texts. – Sangnat 2 years ago
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    • For the record, Cyrano de Bergerac was a stage play FIRST, before any of its many film adaptations. – ProtoCanon 2 years ago
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