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Cape Breton project brings Mi'kmaq culture to life with art, science and technology – Cape Breton Post

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MEMBERTOU, N.S. —

Two hundred students came together Friday to work on a project that will see a five-book series on Mi’kmaq traditional animals come to life on film.
The students from First Nations communities across Cape Breton gathered at the Membertou Trade and Convention Centre for the project, which is based on stop-motion animation through an immersive educational experience.
Andrea Durfee, a spokeswoman with Digital Mi’kmaq, said the students were animating illustrations by artist Dozay Christmas from a five-book series on animal stories based on Mi’kmaq traditions, written by authors with Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources. Durfee said there are a variety of stories such as with the moose, the oyster, the eel, and the martin, each with a traditional Mi’kmaq name.
Stations were set up in the centre where students worked in groups. Each group of students had a box — cut out in areas — with a tablet on top and the photo inside the box. Using a small stick, the pictures would continue to be barely moved by a student while another student would take photos of each move.
The end result will see the images of the students combined to create the five films.
Durfee said the project is a blend of art, science and technology with a unique tie to Mi’kmaq culture. The next step will be adding audio, she said.
“A total of five films will be made and the animators’ names will be at the end of each one,” she said.
“When you see it all come together and come alive, you can really see it in all their faces, it’s such an amazing moment.”
Callie Stevens, a Grade 7 student at Eskasoni Elementary School, was demonstrating how they contributed to the project by integrating the moose into the films.
“You’d take a picture, move it a little bit and take a picture. When you put it all together it will be this cool video,” she said. “We took, say, 120 pictures, which is about only eight to 14 seconds.”
At another table David Durham, a facilitator for Concordia University working on the project, said the preliminary part of the project was understanding how to make inanimated objects move. At first there was a lack of interest from the students as it was a daunting task just moving the picture and taking photos.
“As they got involved in the process, over time it became evident that the movements that they were creating allowed them to take on bigger challenges during the process,” he said.
Zophia Nicholas, a Grade 8 student at East Richmond Education Centre, said she enjoyed the the teamwork it took and especially the end results.
“Someone has to move the pictures, someone has to take pictures and you have to stay organized,” she said. “I really like seeing how it all came together and I’m really excited at seeing the big picture that will show up when it’s finished.”
Grade 7 East Richmond Education Centre student Max Johnson said the project wasn’t much fun at first but once they started putting the images together, it was.
“We got to see how it was all coming together. It was fun then.”
The project was also described as a fun way to help First Nations students to develop their digital skills to help bridge the digital divide many communities face. 
sharon.montgomery@cbpost.com

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Hannah Gadsby's Picasso exhibit roasted by art critics – The A.V. Club

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Hannah Gadsby's Picasso exhibit gets roasted by art critics
Hannah Gadsby
Photo: Maree Williams (Getty Images)

“It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby” has been Pablo-matic from the start. The comedian was criticized for launching an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, where Elizabeth A. Sackler (of Purdue Pharma infamy) apparently sits on the board of trustees. “Doesn’t matter what cultural institution you work with in America, you’re going to be working with billionaires and there’s not a billionaire on this planet that is not fucked up. It is just morally reprehensible,” Gadsby lamented to Variety, nevertheless moving forward with the exhibit.

After having criticized Picasso in their lauded Netflix special Nanette, Gadsby was tapped to co-curate an exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of the artist’s death. The show examines Picasso’s “complicated legacy through a critical, contemporary, and feminist lens, even as it acknowledges his work’s transformative power and lasting influence.” The exhibit consists of Picasso’s work with the work of female artists, with the addition of Gadsby’s commentary.

Reviews of the show (which opens on Friday) are, shall we say, not kind. Gadsby’s quips tacked to Picasso’s art “function a bit like bathroom graffiti, or maybe Instagram captions,” writes New York Times reviewer Jason Farago, who dismisses Gadsby’s commentary as “juvenile.” ARTnews’ Alex Greenberger observes that Gadsby’s quotes are “larded with the language of Twitter,” highlighting the label above a minotaur print: “Don’t you hate it when you look like you belong in a Dickens novel but end up in a mosh pit at Burning Man? #MeToo.”

There is no debate about Picasso’s misogyny or any of the more unsavory (and well-documented) aspects of his character. Instead, it’s the apparently facile way Gadsby (with co-curators Catherine Morris and Lisa Small) has chosen to frame the show. The female artists featured do not include female Cubists, women inspired by Picasso, or the female artists Picasso was actually involved with in his life. Instead, their work “[seems] to have been selected more or less at random” writes Farago, while Greenberger notes that many of these pieces from female artists “have almost nothing in common, beside the fact that they are all owned by the Brooklyn Museum.”

The scathing criticism of the exhibit has been met with some schadenfreude online, particularly with the subset of folks for whom Nanette didn’t land. “Still thinking about that perfect @jsf piece on Hannah Gadsby’s Picasso show. Such a sharp evisceration of the corrosive effect a certain strain of meme-y social justice has had on culture and criticism. If people’s receptiveness means we can finally move past that, I’m thrilled,” The New Republic’s Natalie Shure wrote on Twitter. And of course, some people just like a good, well-written take down: “So so so happy that Hannah Gadsby made the Pablo-matic (lmfao) exhibit because the reviews of it have been the best most fun culture writing in a while imo!!!!!,” tweeted writer Sophia Benoit.

Agree or disagree (and perhaps you’ll have to visit the Brooklyn Museum to decide), the criticism of Gadsby’s criticism is lethally sharp. “Not long ago, it would have been embarrassing for adults to admit that they found avant-garde painting too difficult and preferred the comforts of story time. What Gadsby did was give the audience permission—moral permission—to turn their backs on what challenged them, and to ennoble a preference for comfort and kitsch,” Farago writes of Nanette, later adding, “The function of a public museum (or at least it should be) is to present to all of us these women’s full aesthetic achievements; there is also room for story hour, in the children’s wing.” You can read the full piece here.

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Crochet Heart Bomb Project comes together June 3

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Handmade hearts will line the chain link fences between the Autumn Grove Seniors Lodge and the hospital in Innisfail, Alta., on Saturday.

It’s called the Crochet Heart Bomb Project.

Local entrepreneur and artist Karen Scarlett started working on the initiative this past January, in partnership with the Innisfail Welcoming and Inclusive Community Committee as well as the Innisfail Art Club.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if a few people joined in on sharing some love and joy with the seniors at the Autumn Grove Lodge and hospital?” Scarlett said was her line of thinking at the time.

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The community is welcome to swing by and lend a hand. Also, to help care for the hearts after they’re up.

Turns out she wasn’t alone — others thought it would indeed be nice.

“Our free pattern has been downloaded hundreds of times from locations around the globe and now thousands of hearts are arriving in time for our install party,” said Wilma Watson, Innisfail Art Club president.

A release to media explains the hearts “consist of handcrafted crochet, knit, quilted, macramé and all manner of hand-stitched items,” and “will be installed on June 3 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.”

The community is welcome to swing by and lend a hand.

Also, to help care for the hearts after they’re up.

Local entrepreneur and artist Karen Scarlett started working on the initiative this past January.

“I will be leaning on the community to help,” Scarlett said.

“If the community keeps an eye out for damaged hearts and continues to care for the fence and ask for new hearts to be made, we may have a love-filled fence for years — maybe decades — to come.”

She says she’s doing this for Grandma.

Ethel Scarlett was a founding member of the original art club and toward the end of her life, a resident at the original seniors lodge where she was still known for a creative endeavour or two.

“I feel like she would be pretty thrilled with this project,” Karen Scarlett said.

More information is available at innisfailartclub.org/crochet.

A release to media explains the hearts ‘consist of handcrafted crochet, knit, quilted, macramé and all manner of hand-stitched items,’ and ‘will be installed on June 3 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.’

 

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A new AI trend is 'expanding' classic art and the internet is not happy – Mashable

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An AI capability has taken the internet by storm but assuredly not in the manner the creators had hoped. Basically, everyone is laughing at AI’s ability — or lack thereof — to “expand” the background of classic art.

It all started with a few different AI-focused accounts on Twitter posting expanded versions of classic art where, you guessed it, AI filled in the background of famous artwork. What if the Mona Lisa zoomed out a bit and had a much wider field of depth that included a Middle Earth looking castle-ish thing?

This idea hints at the thing that AI Bros — and they are often bros — don’t understand about art. The artists of these classic paintings chose the framing for a reason. It’s called having a point of view. What is included in the piece is important but so is what is not. A work of fine art is more that just oh, pretty, and writing something compelling requires more than regurgitation(opens in a new tab) of plot points.

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The internet quickly jumped on the so-called expanded art, turning it into a meme in record time. The basic point of the memes suggested that the whole idea of expanding art in that way is utterly pointless and silly.

It is interesting to see what AI can do. But the folks taking something neat and turning it into an artistic or societal revolution are a bit annoying. I don’t know if AI will one day create truly moving art — if it does, it’ll owe that feat to the art humans already made — but I do know that day is certainly not today.

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