"Are we there yet" at Ferens Art Gallery

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Click the image to visit the gallery

If you are lucky enough to live in Hull you really should visit the exhibition they have on a the moment. It’s made up of a bunch of enormous inflatable sculptures plus a great mural and some splendid individual pieces. The detail and the imagination is fantastic, as are the bright colours. If you’ve got kids you should take them too. Well worth the trip. And you can nip to the gallery café for a sausage sandwich (and the best chips in Hull - which is saying something).

Not so crazy AI?

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Deliberately wrong?

I was preparing for a talk to students a while back (really must develop the pictures I took) and I asked DALL-E (an AI powered image generator) to make me a notice with the message “Don’t Panic” written on it. Above you can see the closest that I got. During the session I said that I thought this proved that “proper” AI is some distance away. But I’ve thought about it since and decided that actually AI might be ahead of us on this one.

Perhaps the creators of DALL-E don’t want anyone to be able to create fake notices and signs and so they have the system do a bit of scrambling to the letters before they are rendered.

Interesting times.

Constant Companions at Scarborough

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This is a very clever poster.

We went to Scarborough today to see Constant Companions, a new play by Alan Ayckbourn. It’s a very human production about what happens when people and androids get together. For me it was a play of two halves. The first half was part farce and wry social commentary. The second part then runs the stories forward to their “logical” and somewhat heart rending conclusions, leaving me with lots to think about as we headed out of the theatre. The acting and staging were superb and the whole thing added up to the best night out that we’ve had in ages. Pro-tip: get your drinks and ice cream delivered to your seat during the interval for that “properly spoiled” experience.

The play is on for a little while longer. Seats are very keenly priced, the theatre and the staff are lovely and Scarborough is a great place to visit. Go see.

Dal-E 2 and Kids

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“Two unicorns on a roofgaRDEN having tea”

Number one granddaughter came to see us today. We were talking about stuff and playing games, as you do. And then I thought it might be fun to show her Dall-E 2. This is a lump of cloud-based AI that will take text from you and make a matching picture. We decided we wanted to see two unicorns on a rooftop garden having tea. Above you can see one of the results.

Then we tried some more phrases and we found that some worked, and some didn’t. All the time I was wondering whether showing this stuff to a five-year-old was the right thing to do. Would she now give up drawing and work on the basis that she can just ask for pictures to be drawn when she wants one? I really hope not. And actually, I don’t think she will.

The program is very clever but pretty soon we started to find that it tended to head off for the one thing it knew about, which was not always what we wanted. Tools like these are going to find their way into our lives whether we want them or not and knowing what they are and how they are limited is really important.

To the Moon!

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Today we went to see the moon in Hull Minster. Awesome. It hangs from a large steel structure that they’ve set up . I don’t really want to know how it fits together inside or how they printed it. I just want to marvel at it.

We actually saw the moon for the first time last week, when I took along my expensive cameras and fancy lenses to try and get a nice picture. Today I just had my smartphone with me and I ended up with what I consider better pictures - which is an interesting comment on the state of photography.

The Hypocrite is wonderful

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The Hypocrite is sold out. I'm not surprised. We were lucky enough to go and see it this afternoon. Probably the best thing I've ever seen in the theatre. Ever. With nods to Shakespeare, pantomime and Black Adder, it tells the story of Sir John Hotham, Governor of Hull who, at the start of the English Civil War, had the unenviable task of picking whether to side with Parliament or the King. For a variety of reasons he ends up doing both, although - as the picture above illustrates, it doesn't end that well for him.

The large cast did a fantastic job of bringing the play to life. And the play itself was peppered with local references which went down beautifully with the audience. And me. Favourite exchange:

"Have you got any spare change?"
"I'm from Yorkshire. We don't have spare change."

I'd say go and see it if you get the chance, but I you'll be chasing returned tickets if you want to go. There are some fairly adult bits, so it's not for the kiddies. But for anyone else, and particularly anyone from Hull, it's wonderful.

Strictly Ballroom the Musical

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It's a well known fact (at least to me) that I don't "do" musicals. I blame my parents. As a child I was dragged to film after film where everybody started dancing and singing just as the plot was getting interesting, which I found really annoying.

I thought all movies were like that, and that perhaps there were parts of the world where spontaneously bursting into song and dance was normal behaviour. I can vividly remember the relief of finding that there were films with no singing. 

This has left its mark on me. I don't like musicals (except for "Beauty and the Beast" of course, but that's different......)

Anyhoo, today found me, rather unexpectedly, in the audience for Strictly Ballroom - The Musical. This follows the current trend of making every mildly successful film into a musical. Although I wish them the best of luck with "The Artist".

And I rather enjoyed it. I don't remember any of the songs well enough to hum them, but I did remember all the of good bits of the film that they had reverently inserted into the production. If you like live theatre performed with style and gusto, go along. If you enjoyed the move, go twice.