In the latest episode of the Team Futurism podcast, Jokes Review editors Peter and Mark discuss DALL·E 2, the AI system that creates digital art from natural language prompts.
Check out the conversation below or listen to the audio on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
by Lane Chasek
Poet Kenneth Goldsmith once called archiving the folk art of the digital age. Whether it’s in the form of a Spotify playlist or a portable hard drive filled with Rule34, archiving is a creative act which allows regular people (i.e., people who don’t attach words like “artist” or “auteur” to their name) to express their tastes and sensibilities using the raw materials of cyberspace. As Goldsmith writes, “Like quilting, archiving employs the obsessive stitching together of many small found pieces into a larger vision, a personal attempt at ordering a chaotic world.”
And while Goldsmith makes no mention of Wikis, I think the plethora of fan Wikis that populate the Internet today count as a form of folk art. Movies, cartoons, video games, book series, soft drinks—almost every intellectual property has a fandom, and almost every fandom has a Wiki. These Wikis are more than amateur encyclopedias—they’re a testament to the obsessiveness of 21st-century culture.
I’m a bit ashamed to admit how much time I’ve spent poring over Wikis for Mountain Dew, Star Trek, Digimon, The Wizard of Oz, etc. Reading Wikis for hours on end may sound pointless and downright torturous (even the best Wikis are plagued with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and tediously written diatribes about minutiae only the most die-hard of fans would care about) but every fan Wiki showcases the dedication and eccentricity of their respective fandoms, and for that I salute them.
Take, for example, this article for the character Blu from the animated film series Rio. Rio is a fun family flick, but it’s not what I’d call complex. The plot, characters, morals—they’re all simple, since it’s a movie made for children. But the article’s author writes about Blu in such exhaustive detail that you’d think they were writing about King Lear or the history of Constantinople. The article’s trivia section (word count: approx. 1600) tells you anything you’d ever want to know about this feathered fella, from his dislike of Brazil nuts to his interactions with every character in the film, no matter how brief or inconsequential.
But my favorite part is the Quotes section. Usually, a Quotes section will contain a character’s most notable pieces of dialogue, but this article includes every word Blu has ever uttered in every piece of Rio media ever made, from the films to the junior novels. This Quotes section clocks in at an intimidating 4,600 words. The author probably spent hours consuming and re-consuming every piece of Rio media, meticulously transcribing each scene. Reading this article is both unnerving and heartening—unnerving because of the author’s mania for a blue CGI parrot, and heartening because of the author’s obvious love for the franchise, no matter how unhealthy that love may be.
A lot of people wouldn’t call an article like this art, but I disagree. If Marcel Duchamp could scribble his name on a urinal and call it art, and if Kenneth Goldsmith can turn a database of traffic reports into a poetry collection, then why can’t this article be art? We live in a fragmented, obsessive, information-saturated world. Wikis (especially the weird ones) capture this ethos better than any other form of media I know of. The amount of time and dedication it takes to create an article like this (or any Wiki article, really) demonstrates a level of sincerity which I think is severely lacking in the realm of arts and letters today. Whenever “fine” or “serious” art finds itself stagnating or wallowing in its own cynicism (people who call themselves “artists” or “auteurs” have a nasty habit of doing this), it’s usually the role of folk art and outsider art to freshen things up and dig us out.
Lane Chasek (@LChasek) is the author of the nonfiction book Hugo Ball and the Fate of the Universe, the poetry/prose collection A Cat is not a Dog, and two forthcoming chapbooks, Dad During Deer Season and this is why I can't have nice things. Lane's current pride and joy is an essay he published in Hobart about Lola Bunny and the latest Space Jam movie.
Literary journals, sadly, are not instant money-makers. No one gets rich off publishing niche literary content. The only failsafe way to pull in cash is to charge for submissions. But—and no one talks about this enough—this approach is essentially a scam from the perspective of writers.
Aside from changing the culture so people regularly buy literary journals in place of their Netflix subscription, isn’t there some other way to fund literary journals?
There are bake sales, I suppose. And car washes. Also, there’s this new thing: selling NFTs.
The literary world is cautiously figuring out how to participate in the NFT boom. For example, according to The Debrief, some authors are now publishing their books as NFTs. One author, for example, sold an NFT book that he hadn’t been able to get published for 5 ETH (which currently has a value of $15K). Not bad!
It remains to be seen whether NFTs will have a lasting impact on the literary space. With a quick glance at an NFT marketplaces, you can find some books out there—but they don’t exactly seem to be hot commodities. We don’t seem to have a Beeple of books yet, let alone a thriving market for NFT literature.
But still! It’s a fascinating idea: selling literature as tokens. Also, it would be beneficial to the literary ecosystem if literary journals could fund their operations by selling NFTs. Journals don’t just publish stories and poems, after all; they also create a ton of peripheral content. Jokes Review, for example, publishes around 20 works of literature in each issue, and for each work we create an original piece of art. Why not create NFTs based on that artwork?
In fact, we’re giving this a try. Our very first NFT, based on the artwork we created for an essay published in our Summer 2021 issue, is now available on Rarible:
If you happen to know someone who has some Ethereum to throw around, this little beautify is up for grabs for 0.05 ETH.
Hopefully this will be a success! If so, we could essentially fund our entire operations by selling one or two NFTs per issue. This wouldn’t only be great news for us, but would bode well for other literary ventures that seek consistent monetization beyond charging submission fees.
Peter Clarke is the editor-in-chief of Jokes Review. He’s the author of the comic novels Politicians Are Superheroes and The Singularity Survival Guide. Follow him on Twitter @HeyPeterClarke.
I’m not sure if this is a popular opinion or not, but to me it seems obvious that old-school paperbacks have the best cover art. And the best design. I could probably write a 10,000-word piece to back up this claim, but I’d rather just show pictures of some of my favorite paperback book covers. And let them make the case for me.
After you’re done ogling these beautiful old-school covers, compare them to The New York Times list: Best Book Covers of 2020. Some recent book covers admittedly are pretty fantastic. But in general, the paperback covers from decades past—preferably slightly grimy and creased on the edges—are far superior, at least in my view.
I will also note that book design is generally an underrated art form. If you haven’t seen it already, I’d recommend checking out Chip Kidd’s 2012 Ted Talk, The Hilarious Art of Book Design. If you like books and have strong feelings about their covers, it’s worth watching.
And now, please enjoy these amazing old-school book covers, taken off my bookshelf and photographed just today, presented here in no particular order.
Peter Clarke is the editor-in-chief of Jokes Review. He’s the author of the comic novels Politicians Are Superheroes and The Singularity Survival Guide. Follow him on Twitter @HeyPeterClarke.
by Mark Dwyer
Here in Sacramento, we've had an outpouring of awesomeness in the streets thanks to public art project Wide Open Walls. I've enjoyed the color & creativity more than words can say. Below are a few examples of amazing, finished professional pieces.
Also, I’ve included several amateur pieces, which I appreciate in equal measure, though for different reasons. Graffiti is sometimes almost better. (I feel like I could write an extended rant on why marker scribblings, wild spray arcs, and wheatpastes still make for excellent street art in an age of high concept, big budget, and professional street murals. But I’ll save that for another time.)
