Is Artificial Intelligence Creative? Glenn Gould, pianist and technological visionary, and "Dear Glenn," the AI inspired by him - with Dr. Akira Maezawa of Yamaha
Release Date: 01/15/2024
"Who Fights with the Sword Dies with the Sword": An Artist's Perspective on AI - part 2, with Ela Orleans, audiovisual artist and composer
Woman of Culture
In part 2 of this frank and refreshing discussion of art and AI with Ela Orleans, an audiovisual artist and composer, paradoxes abound. For Ela, AI is a creative tool that simultaneously enhances and diminishes her creative potential, a practical means of both fulfilling and subverting professional expectations, and a useful yet ironic weapon that she has added to her aresenal to help her fight against poverty, discrimination, and the continuing impact of a (post)colonial value system that affects artists and our world. Ultimately, Ela argues that a willingness to take responsibility for...
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"Who Fights with the Sword Dies with the Sword": An Artist's Perspective on AI - part 1, with Ela Orleans, audiovisual artist and composer
Woman of Culture
With the rise of AI, artists have found themselves in a profoundly altered landscape. Is AI destined to be an amazing new instrument of creativity or a new source of unfair exploitation - notably, at the hands of AI companies who have already used the work of artists widely, with neither credit nor compensation, for training AI systems? In this episode, I interview artist and academic Ela Orleans, a Polish composer and audiovisual artist who grew up in Communist Poland and currently lives in Paris. Ela is well known as an artist who works with digital technology. Less well known is the fact...
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Colors of India: India's Textile Heritage - with S. Ahalya, founder of Kanakavalli
Woman of Culture
Meet Ahalya, founder of design emporium Kanakavalli, and one of India's most distinguished and successful women entrepreneurs! In this interview, Ahalya takes us on a fascinating journey through the ancient towns and villages of South India, each with their temples and traditions, and many with their own, distinctive approaches to design, color, and cloth. Foremost among the notable sites of Indian textile heritage is Kanchipuram, in Tamil Nadu, home of South India's legendary silk, which is above all worn by women in a splendid traditional garment: the Kanjivaram sari. Ahalya discusses the...
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Subramania Bharati's 103rd Anniversary: Mahakavi Bharati as Musician and Composer - with Ghatam Maestro Suresh Vaidyanathan
Woman of Culture
September 11th, 2021, "Mahakavi Day," marked the death centenary of Indian national poet, C. Subramania Bharati (1882-1921). Bharati, the greatest Tamil writer of the 20th century, is a legendary figure. He was a multifaceted personality - leading to the interesting situation that, even today, the full extent of the poet's artistic and intellectual contributions is not known. Much remains to be discovered! This podcast episode deals with a lesser-known aspect of Bharati's creativity: the music that the poet composed for his own poems to be sung. While the words of Bharati's songs are...
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After Alice Munro: What Happens When Good Writers are Bad People? - Episode 2 with Canadian writer Guy Vanderhaeghe
Woman of Culture
Alice Munro, a Canadian writer who is considered a modern master of the short story form, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2013. She was 82 years old at the time, a formidable presence in Canadian letters, as described by Guy in this interview, and only one of a handful of women to have received this award. Her death in May of 2024 was a major event in world literature. In July, however, her daughter published an article in the Toronto Star revealing that she had been abused by Munro's husband - and that Munro was complicit in the abuse. Since then, the literary world has been...
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"Predestined for Failure:" The Writing Life - Episode 1 of 2 with Canadian writer Guy Vanderhaeghe
Woman of Culture
Guy Vanderhaeghe has been a distinguished presence on the Canadian writing scene since he published his debut work in 1984, the short story collection Man Descending, which won Canada's prestigious Governor-General’s Award for Fiction. His latest book is the novel, August into Winter, published in 2021. But Guy is not only a writer: he is also a teacher who works regularly with aspiring writers. In part one of this colorful and richly detailed interview, Guy tells the inspiring story of his inexplicable passion for literature, the unusual background that he comes from in small-town...
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"Predestined for Failure:" The Writing Life - Episode 1 of 2 with Canadian writer Guy Vanderhaeghe
Woman of Culture
SUMMARY KEYWORDS writer, writing, write, work, thought, creative writing, story, point, good, people, reader, canada, attempt, literary, students, craft, person, kipling, literature, describing 00:00 Welcome to Woman of Culture, I'm Mira T Sundara Rajan. Join me and my distinguished guests to discover untold stories from the world of culture. 00:47 In recent years, writers from Canada have become increasingly prominent on the international literary scene. Not only are they winning literary awards, including the Booker and the Nobel Prizes, but they also create...
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Was Shakespeare a woman – and does it matter? - with Elizabeth Winkler, journalist, book critic, and author of "Shakespeare Was A Woman and Other Heresies"
Woman of Culture
The identity of the most famous poet in the history of the English language is surprisingly uncertain. Shakespeare's works have survived to the present day, in large part thanks to the efforts of his fellow dramatists to publish a collected edition of his plays. The First Folio, as it is known, has just celebrated its 400th anniversary. In the meantime, however, details of the Bard's life have gradually faded into the past – and, today, significant uncertainty surrounds his biography. Given this situation, why are scholars so reluctant to delve into the past, and why...
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Robert Burns and Clarinda: A Poet's Passion before the Courts of Law - Part II, with Hector MacQueen, Scottish historian and law professor
Woman of Culture
In 1787, Robert Burns, Scotland's national bard, met Agnes Maclehose, the woman who may have been the great love of his life. The two adopted pen names in a series of letters to each other - Sylvander and Clarinda - and Burns finally said his poetic farewell to Clarinda in a poem that remains a popular song today, "Ae Fond Kiss." But the letters turned up in court in 1804. In part two of this interview with Scottish lawyer and historian Hector MacQueen, Hector explains the fascinating new legal doctrine which ultimately allowed the pursuers to succeed in restraining publication of the...
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Robert Burns and Clarinda: A Poet's Passion before the Courts of Law - Part I, with Hector MacQueen, Scottish historian and law professor
Woman of Culture
Robert Burns, Scotland's national bard, was perhaps as famous for his love affairs as for his extraordinary poetry. In 1787, he met the woman who may have been the great love of his life. Her name was Agnes Maclehose - and she was already married, though separated, ensuring that this liaison would be scandalous in all respects. The lovers adopted pen names to write to each other - Sylvander and Clarinda - and Burns finally said his poetic farewell to Clarinda in a poem that remains a popular song today, "Ae Fond Kiss." But the letters turned up in court in 1804. Burns had died; Clarinda was...
info_outlinePianist Glenn Gould is one of the most celebrated classical musicians of all time. A pioneering interpreter of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, he was also a brilliantly rebellious thinker, exploring philosophy and media, and contending that technology would ultimately make concerts obsolete by offering a more satisfying listening experience to audiences through recordings. He was prepared to put his revolutionary theories into practice, abandoning his own concert career at the age of 32 to focus on recording, and proving to the world that he truly was a musical artist like no other. Now, more than 40 years after his death, Glenn Gould has become an iconic figure, at least as well known for his good looks and personal eccentricities as his visionary musicianship. This episode focuses on the development of an artificial intelligence project that claims to be able to mimic Glenn Gould's piano playing, applying his pianistic "style" even to music that the pianist never performed or recorded during his lifetime. What are the creative, artistic, and ethical implications of such an innovation? ...Can artificial intelligence truly be creative? I explore these themes with Dr. Akira Maezawa of Yamaha, who helped to design the fascinating and fearsome technology that Yamaha calls "Dear Glenn."
Special music credits:
This episode features brief excerpts from Glenn Gould's 1981 recording of the Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach, made on a Yamaha piano in the last year of the pianist's life.