All the years as visual artist, and witnessing the tech developed, I witness something has been slowly normalised. It is the indecisions especially in coming up with the final product.
The speed of coming up with visuals gives the ability to come up with endless choices. But unknowing to many, it is at the cost of not only manpower, electricity and money but also ultimately, time. Many have forgotten the old saying that a true artist decides before putting on his pen on the paper.
It is not a surprise to hear similar things straight out of the mouth of Majid Majidi, the Iranian master storyteller in his masterclass last month. At the very start he speaks of staying away from focusing only on adapting Hollywood film technique. A copy is nothing more of a second hand version of the original work. Unfortunately, it is what has been trending lately as the rise of AI generated image is accessible to the mass.
And like other things we see made available to the mass, there will surely be a congestion. I have recently bumped into a Facebook post by Pak Nasir Jani and Pak Hassan Muthalib on a quote by an Italian contemporary writer, Umberto Eco about social media made available to everyone to speak out including idiots.
I myself has personally noticed it and comparing it to the current democracy where everyone of them (including rempits) are eligible to vote! Compared to the original Greek version of Democracy where only the educated and scholars have the rights.
It seems unrelated but it is about the whole democratisation of almost everything - information, knowledge, technology, content creation, media, publishing and all the tools made available to all. Yet according to Allahyarham Prof Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, the biggest problem of mankind is not about the lack of knowledge, but the lack of 'adab' (ettique, good manners).
Probably the real meaning behind the symbolism in donning of head covers. Like the Malay proverb, "ikuti rasmi padi, makin tunduk makin berisi". Yet the accessibility created by the social media lead to something that they call the “disinhibition effect” where the tech made people say or do what they wont even think of saying in a real social interaction.
Doom-scrolling opens an endless plethora of 'noise' which has totally zero audible sound from keyboard warriors and internet influencers. If Jimi Hendrix were to release his album now, it would be named "Are You Influenced" instead.
That is one reason why I still read the newspapers. Apart of it being physical, reading the text from it does not strain the eyes like when you do it from the screen. But the biggest difference it those writings are curated by qualified authors of their field.
And magazines. Recently I bought and read Sonik. The publisher calls it as 'Piagam Kontraporari' which I think means it is a counter-popular-culture statement. Or to use a stronger word, proclamation. Foreword written by Mohd Jayzuan and a list of essays by Al Jafree Md Yusop bearing questions about local film scene, amongst many other persistent issues. Ranerrim on the life struggle of a real artist. Nazim Masnawi on the Nyonya Mansoor archetype from P. Ramlee's Ibu MertuaKu for being anti-artist and its relevance. The core, over 10 pages long, interview of Kamal Sabran, the local mystic and sound poet. He opens all on his philosophy which is a truly a sitter. Sonik is a sound semantically piercing the deaf of the local art scene in Malaysia.
Unlike the 'noise' coming from social media. The devil that left unchained in Ramadhan. Perhaps that symbolism of needs revisiting for its true meaning.
Back to Majid Majidi and accessibility of digital tech pampering, which allows endless number of shot made while filming. It is the same with the indecisiveness I mentioned earlier. Contrary to the days when real film roll were used and you got to really decide and accept whatever that is recorded.
He onto the traditional method of film making and does not really like the term 'do it in post'. He goes to a real location and compose his framing on site. Perhaps the way his film was done that earns him the Oscar nomintation.
In the age when almost everyone could do a clip that looks like a Hollywood multi-billion dollar blockbuster using one computer in a one man team and spending less than a hundred bucks, how much will that film worth? What value does it have? Apart from reading the names of crews involved at the end credit of a real film. Knowing for sure that the money you spend on tickets goes to their family and livelihood. Thus I do not understand the manic rush in trying to replace all of them with machines.
Perhaps it is about indexicality. André Bazin (1967), “What is Cinema?” he said “Photography and the cinema … offer the objective record of the real, the trace of existence that is indexical in nature.”
What has been normalised is the 'uncanny valley' of fakery at the cost of datacentres machine gods being served mountains of electricity, water and noise. Perhaps that is what Pink Floyd means with the song Welcome to the Machine.
Finally, still in relation to that Umberto Eco quote, something Pak Hassan Muthalib always reminds us all on a Hadis in most of his talks - 'Apabila urusan diserahkan kepada yang bukan ahlinya, maka tunggulah kehancuran.'
“If you entrust someone to do something of which he has no knowledge of, be sure that it will be a disaster.”