Dreams in glass and art and music.
Animated ambitions, Olympic excitement with Edith Piaf, a little Massive Attack.
The Glassworker: A ‘first-ever’ in Pakistan, the result of creativity persevering.
Olympic Goodness: Love, lush visuals, a collection of Olympic spots.
AI- not all say Aye: In case you needed some voices saying “Hang on a minute”.
With: Youtube Golf, climate positivity in music, really fake news and ‘Workooze’.
1. The Glassworker
A serendipitous recorded-over VHS tape in the 90s, that revealed part of an animated film.
A teenage visit to Venice, seeing the Murano glass blowers in action.
A screening in Boston circa 2013, of Studio Ghibli’s “The Wind Rises”.
For Usman Riaz, these seemingly stray happenings combined with other turns in life to form a burning dream. A dream realised as Pakistan’s first hand drawn animated feature film, which releases in the country today, July 26th.
‘The Glassworker’ (“Sheesha Gar” in Urdu) is set in a fictional land not unlike Pakistan, and sees the spectre of war cast its shadow on lives of music, art and friendship. (“The Great Ravine is disputed territory. We claim it, and so do they”).
An original story about young Vincent and his father Tomas, who run the finest glass workshop in the country and find their lives upended by an approaching war in which they want no part. The arrival in their town of an army colonel and his young talented, violinist daughter, Alliz, shakes their reality and tests the relationship between father and son. It is a time when patriotism and social standing are considered more important than free thought and artistic pursuits.
For those who understand the language, also have a look at the Urdu trailer.
“In terms of storytelling, I think in music.”
Usman studied music, and made his way through to animation again instead of pursuing a career in music.
Drawing was something I was focussed on throughout my life, and animation is a stepping stone. However had it not been for music, I wouldn’t have been able to pursue animation. Because it was through music that a lot of attention was brought to my work and now I want to keep animating and drawing.
It might be telling then, that the two protagonists in the film- Vincent and Alliz- also straddle the arts. Vincent is the apprentice glassblower, Alliz a violinist. Usman co-composed the score for the film too, with a college batchmate. Fascinatingly, he would listen to the music first, then imagine how the characters might behave.
“It’s a unique process, because traditionally the artist would attach the music to the scene. You can say that the process was flipped, I drew the scene to the score.”
A labour of love nearly a decade in the making, Usman founded a studio to make this come together. Mano Animation Studios has worked with artists in multiple countries, making its way through a Kickstarter funding round and a pilot, then other investors coming on board. The Glassworker has now been featured by some of the world’s most prestigious film festivals, including at Annecy, Guadalajara, Shanghai and the Official Selection Hiroshima Animation.
As its maker says, it represents “the power of perseverance”.
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Mano has released a series of shorts- watch ‘The making of the Glassworker’.
2. Olympic goodness
The Olympic Games kick off tonight/tomorrow, and I always look forward to the creative work around promoting the event, its broadcast or brands’ wildly varying attempts at riding the bandwagon.
I am doing a bit of an Olympics round up in this regard, but have to say am less than overwhelmed thus far. (So I am ‘whelmed’?). Do share if you see something special!
Here’s one, beautifully crafted, from the BBC. The mood and idea might feel like smatterings of cliché, but there are some refreshing moments and the look is quite lovely.
I am collecting more here.
3. AI: not all say Aye.
If all the excitement around AI (generative AI in particular) is getting to you, there is a coming together of healthy scepticism of late. A selection this week.
In The Telegraph, "It’s not yet autumn, but the technology industry has just felt the first icy blast of an AI winter.” Sequoia highlights the vast disparity between what the industry is splurging on data centre capacity and the potential returns AI can generate- what they call a “$500bn hole”. Says Jim Covello, Goldman’s head of global equity research, “To justify those costs, the technology must be able to solve complex problems, which it isn’t designed to do”.
MIT economics Professor Daron Acemoglu is more damning,
“So instead of a “fourth industrial revolution”, generative AI’s impact more closely resembles that of the Excel macro. Useful but not exactly epoch-defining.”
Analyst Benedict Evans talks about ‘The AI Summer’, where hundreds of millions of people have tried ChatGPT, but most of them haven’t been back. Every big company has done a pilot, but far fewer are in deployment.
“But if this is the amazing magical thing that will change everything, why do most people say, in effect, ‘very clever, but not for me’ and wander off, with a shrug? “
Some of this is also reflected in Singapore’s Straits Times,
“Nearly two years since ChatGPT burst on the scene, there have been AI advancements galore that validate many of the visions of such science fiction writers. But the corporate world is still struggling to deploy them for reasons that include problems around data, identifying use cases, the lack of change-management strategies and skill shortages.”
Of course, Brian Merchant’s Blood In The Machine can always be relied on for a counterpoint here.
4. Say What?
Stumbled upon the site of Adam Westbrook, writer, film maker and artist. Amidst it was this sharp little gem, which I identify all too readily with (except the ‘artist’ bit, I wish).
The opposite of workflow is workooze. This is where the work happens, but in a stop-start fashion, clumsily and erratically. There is no system in place, so the artist is constantly changing mental modes; the desk is a mess and they can never find that pencil. As a result, the work drips out stubbornly.
5. Peanut Masala
(where I share stories or tidbits I find interesting)
Youtube Golf is taking over. “Look beyond the divided professional golf landscape. There’s unlimited free content on an open platform, where creators have formed subcultures around the sport.”
The band that doesn't want you to travel for their tour. “The show production is pioneering in all aspects of decarbonisation and will create a blueprint for the way live shows can be produced”. Some very promising ideas & executions from Massive Attack.
It Looked Like a Reliable News Site. It Was an A.I. Chop Shop. ‘BNN Breaking’ had millions of readers, an international team of journalists and a publishing deal with Microsoft. But it was full of error-ridden content. During the two years that BNN was active, it had the veneer of a legitimate news service, claiming a worldwide roster of “seasoned” journalists and 10 million monthly visitors.