Fact or Fiction? Real or Fake?

Creating generated imagery is challenging—but the challenge is ethical. Some fear being replaced by boorish hacks who appropriate others’ work; while this is possible, that concern ultimately exposes itself for what it is.

More pressing is how serious artists use tools—any tools—with ethical practice. Once, coloring images digitally seemed unthinkable compared to traditional methods. Yet digital work demands the same depth of knowledge and sensitivity. Without that understanding, the result is predictable and uninspired.

I gave a brief talk the other day on FTS at the college where I teach. I showed the 3-minute video with the spoken-word narration in my previous post. The room gasped when I told the audience that the man's voice was sampled from generated AI. A professor asked me about my ethical use of AI in this case, and I said I had no problems with it, since the voice was generated by a computer. I mentioned my pursuit of the comedian and spoken-word raconteur Reinaldo Ruiz and how a sample of his voice could more accurately express the color of the language in Cordoba. That statement generated even more gasps.

I counter that with:

• Music is routinely sampled. How is sampling a voice by AI any different?

• Is tweening in animation legitimate image processing?

• Decades ago, engineers programmed musical instruments in songs in all genres of music. 

• And CGI is responsible for...finish this sentence for me, please.

Is it the degree? The Origin? The Attribution? 

For my project, studying the language of someone like Reinaldo is essential. Achieving authenticity in the spoken work is where the artistry lies when using a new tool.

 

The Long Story Continues

 While many scorn AI, I think it's awesome. What most of my creative colleagues believe will happen to them, I think, won't. Technology serves us, and fearing it will just get in the way of using it creatively. In reality, AI can make work better....if you're already doing good work. Bad work will always weave its way in. People who made shitty images on film went on to make shitty images digitally. 

It's argued that the digital camera has ruined photography. But the same could be said for the hand-held camera; in actuality, it democratized the medium and allowed us to photograph everything. You can't shoot the Vietnam War with a view camera...you can't report on the flattening of the Middle East with platinum prints.

When I went to Colombia last summer, I didn't photograph much. As reported a few posts ago, I spent much of the time in the Library researching. I interviewed elder scholars from the area who shared meaningful insights--and shaped four narratives. I passed one of these to a friend from the area for an opinion, and he said he couldn't read it...since what I'd written hit too close to home. I'd had a similar feeling when I read Marquéz's Love in the Time of Cholera (which takes place in Mompox, a town near where my project is set), since the characters' lives closely mirror my relatives'. One of the characters in the book even has the same surname. 

I want to return to Colombia this summer, but the current political climate makes that unlikely. A colleague recently planned to visit Mompox, but was strongly advised against it. Recent instability in the area has made travel there unsafe, underscoring the distance between intention and reality. The impending presidential election there forces me to find ways to add to my project.

https://youtu.be/d45sda7WBs0

Enter AI. From the narratives I wrote, I translated them into Spanish. Ugh. Very stuffy and slow. I put them through a filter of Cordobés Spanish: the dialect of the area, so fast and so modified with colloquialisms that many Colombians themselves can't understand what's being said. I took out my digital recorder and mic and taped it. After I slapped together some footage, I ran my voice through an AI filter approximating a "northern Colombian accent". Not bad, but nowhere near as colorful as the speaker Martina La Peligrosa, right. 

But then, I replayed a segment from a spoken word artist (comedian, I guess...but more on him another time) and realized there's still a lot of work to be done.

Difference of Opinion

There is often a struggle to get people to backtrack and observe what got them to the present point in time...meaning their heritage and history. We're going through this crisis in the US, and it's going on here in northern Colombia, for different yet parallel reasons.

I was invited to a conversation among six intellectuals in the area, held in an exquisite house with a tropical garden. Each was a professor at one of the local universities in either architecture, history, or the social sciences, and most had the complaint of the resistance met with their investigative projects by citizens of the area, as well as the lack of accurate documents kept for proper reference. 

Already a consideration is that the humid climate and mold consume everything, and climate-controlled storage for antique documents is a recent development, in this area at least. Therefore, much has been scanned to official websites and the original materials were sent to the capital, where resources exist for the safe storage of photographs, documents and historical artifacts.

What was interesting about the 2-hour conversation is that each gentleman had their own foundational knowledge of the various aspects of the area. However, I quickly picked up that most of the developments of the area occurred in the 1970s--not the 1700s when the city was formed; not even the 1950s when the area was awarded autonomous statehood. Only after the 1970s were more roads paved and zoning laws put into use, even if the old ways were already established and not apt to change--ever. This development is disappointing...since this project is all about memories. 

Forgot how hot it can be...

Purposefully, I came outside of rodeo season. There's a lot going on in those wild three weeks; it's distracting. I'm working with the assets I have, refining the message and researching the delivery.

Researching content like this is difficult no matter where it finds itself. You really need to travel far distances to get the first-hand information to give a project depth. Through contacts I made long ago, I was able to meet with a historian at the cultural center in town, and she informed me that much of what I'm looking for can be found in one of two places: a digital archive within the center, since the original materials are in Bogotá and, quite illusive but infinitely more exciting, by knocking on doors and requesting to see family photo albums. There's another six months of my life, or, with some help and luck, maybe not.

She also directed me to an architecture professor who teaches in the area and who possess the high-res files of everything available online. That saves me a lot. He's gonna WeTransfer vintage scans from which I'll recreate backgrounds for my story,
.

OK, I'm going again.

Moments ago, I posted about the illness that flattened me for a year after my last visit to Tierralta—highlands of Córdoba near the Antioquia border. Those days, and the angry, xenophobic U.S. administration, don't matter to me now. I'm leaving in June for yet another journey to finish this installation. Something tells me it won’t be the last.

It only took a phone call with a historian. I held my breath before dialing—his work parallels mine, both of us chasing something fleeting and elegiac. His project is about preserving the architectural landmarks of the region, a fight against not just time and climate, but also a local skepticism rooted in survival. For many who live there, preservation feels like a luxury they can’t afford.

A bulldog's snout is a bottle cap opener.

As I described my work again, our visions aligned. He asked me to send more information, and—generously—offered his time. He’s opening a window into a history I would struggle to access alone. I’ll be meeting friends and colleagues of his from the region to help fill in the missing pieces—essential fragments of a story about how tradition is being left behind.

Even without the Venezuelan crisis spilling across the border, Colombia has its hands full: fighting corruption, confronting the legacy of cocaine, and striving to be seen as a serious center of American culture. Tourism helps. Planes to Cartagena are packed with gringos flying in for the weekend, partying to the rhythms of Palenque music. The old city, which I’ve written about before, is a 500-year-old sleeping beauty, stirred awake by a rapid and tasteful renovation. It’s charming and expensive. I don't know if the same can be said for the interior. I'm focused on the Coast.

I’ve been thinking about this project for years—through the pandemic, through politics, through my absorbing work of printmaking. I'm packing. My heart aches to tell this beautiful story.

Learning the Lingo

 The collar bone of South America spans three "Departments" (the equivalent of the US "States") of Colombia, going from west to east: El Choco, Antioquia and Cordoba. I've attached a screenshot map I swiped from Google maps, and it shows why this tiny neck of horribly inhospitable land is so valuable. 

It rains several times a day in these parts, so a quick plane will get you from town to town, landing on an asphalt strip in the jungle. 

At the moment, with the South American migration halted by the unforgiving US Administration in favor of South Afrikaners (they're white, of course), the Darién Gap is further overrun with strife as people are mired in the extreme instability, crime and violence of Venezuela and neighboring countries to the north in Central America. And, the continued market for illicit drugs and other products we Americans covet ensures that the strife will continue for some time, perhaps indefinitely. 

Even when times were a little calmer, it was not an area to be fooled with. It's one of the most challenging ones to navigate with downpours so extreme that people have drowned in their sleep during a rainstorm. The flora and fauna are relentless as well, with plant growth overtaking the Pan American highway within days and sleeping under mosquito net still a necessity. Window screens mean nothing to many of the bugs in the area--some are so small that they fit easily--and others leave bites with poison lasting in the skin for six weeks. I was there shortly before writing the last post in September 2023 and returned with an unexplained infection that kept me hospitalized for over a week and ten months on antibiotics. Fun.

But, now that I'm fine, I'm going back. 

From Chaos Comes Opportunity

The correct quote is 

In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.

It's attributed to Sun-Tzu, a military strategist from the Han Dynasty. He wrote The Art of War, a book filled with thoughts about warfare and battle. The amended version applies better to our current state of affairs; the expression Social Distancing is a perfect example. 

During the three or so years since we've taken uncertain paths in and around the COVID crisis, what's emerged is a panicked approach to communication. Before the pandemic, being taken seriously would mean jumping on a plane for a show of face. Now, turning on your computer mic and camera is sufficient.

Likewise, going to see art in a museum or gallery changed. Art became a fully personal experience since the pandemic closed the venues down. Once the doors reopened, we'd taken steps to make art accessible from devices and, with that, on-demand. 

Enter Augmented Reality. 

AR artists and technicians "built" backgrounds and conditional scenes in paintings to give viewers an interactive insight into artworks. Further, artists combine all kinds of still, motion and archived images to create scenes that can jump back and forth between past and present. This is of great interest: my work deals with reassessing the present by examining overlooked nuances. How convenient to have both instances at the same time...

A FB page called Mi Vieja Monteria proudly opens its page with an old image of one of the main drags showing a muddy avenue. Asking around about why it took so long for the town to pave its roads, the answer was simple: Monteria was--and continues to be--a cow town. Of course, now livestock gets around by truck; but then, the heavy animals couldn't possibly walk around on anything other than mud. 

Just wondering what it would be like to add footage to some of the old roads....