Crying Wolf

Tech Talk: AI Content Creation - 2023 Report

Chat GPT is all the rage… but is it all rage? Find out in this month’s deep dive into today’s trek du la tech with BMA’s Chris Marlton. Time To Teach

I’m mostly known for being a comedian, writer, painter, film-maker, and philanthropist. And while the majority of my time is spent sitting in dark rooms, staring into the abyss, I also teach.

I run a night course in Norwegian Hedge-trimming. The course is held in the carpark of the Cooleman Court shopping centre, near the old Blockbuster store.

Every Monday and Thursday night from 5:45pm until 11pm, I meet my 67 students. They learn all about Norwegian Hedge Management. It’s a seven year course. 45 students are in 3rd, 4th or 5th years, 12 are in 2nd year, seven in final year, and we have three first-years. The class is capped at 67 students.

When a student graduates I can take on another the following year.

Report Cards

The hardest part of teaching is finding time to complete the report cards. Feedback on learning and growing should be constant. I provide each student with an end-of-week report card that is as detailed as most end-of-term or semester report cards usually are.

Each report card takes me approximately 35 minutes to complete, which is, frankly, untenable.

Working Smarter

Chat GPT is the most well-known, publicly available content generation artificial intelligence software. Released in November 2022, it has made machine-generated text into a mainstream concept. What people do not realise is that Chat GPT is only one of thousands of similar prose-bots. For the past five months I have been using a new AI soft-bot built by Sanitarium named Bot-INX-88 (BIX_88) to write all of my weekly report cards.

For your academic pleasure and personal intellectual pursuits, I have included three of my favourite / most interesting reports below. Names of the students have not been de-identified: full-disclosurerights are a condition of joining the course.

REPORT ONE - BIX_88 AI-generated report card

Name: Diana Clatter

Date: 18-24 February 2023

Year: 7th year student

Cooperation: Ms Clatter refuses to help anyone else in the class with Norwegian Hedge literacy, which is in line with current teachings. Many 7th year students take pity on the less-experienced students and breach the co-op code. Clatter does not, and has not, as yet.

Emotional Availability: Diana will provide 2-3 sentence answers regarding personal matters to fellow students, but after this point , she abruptly stop replying. She pretends like she does not hear, yet she does hear. She hears.

Fitness: Diana runs an average 4:25/km pace for her 10km Tuesday night Hedge-run. This puts her in the top 32nd percentile.

Politics: A Neo-Mutualist. Her anarchic economic theory leads to challenging classmates’ ownership rights. Seen at break time in the Lotus position reciting the Mutualist Creed in 16th Century French.

Additional: Diana Clutter is an aggressive and soulful member of the class. Her foot-speed is an asset over short-distances, but her longdistance running can still improve. Her presence will not be missed.

Grade: B-

REPORT TWO - BIX_88 AI-generated report card

Name: Archibald Slipforth

Date: 25-31 March 2023

Year: 1st year student

Cooperation: Archibald brings eight large roosters to each class, ritualistically sacrificing one every 37 minutes. The meat is divided amongst the class during a free-style improv he calls “Archie’s Co-op.”

Emotional Availability: Some people have no internal monologue. Archibald has no internal life. His central nervous system (CNS) performs 90% of his high-functioning brain activity. Actual greymatter is dedicated solely to disproving the Riemann Hypothesis. His mother, Judy Slipforth-Jones, hypnotised him into this state of being on his fifth birthday. The situation has not been remedied since.

Fitness: Archibald has a body-fat percentage of 72.

Politics: A Byzantist, which he uses primarily to justify his rooster sacrifices, and the 18-22 large Greek Lamb platters he eats before class. He arrives an hour before class, and eats more than 15kg of halfcooked lamb with a judge from the Guinness Book of World Records weighing the meat and timing the chews.

Additional: Master Slipforth is the most popular member of the class, despite being a first-year. He is constantly threatening other class members with grievous bodily harm, but has yet to fulfil any of these threats. He says he is waiting for the next blood moon.

Grade: C+

REPORT THREE - BIX_88 AI-generated report card

Name: Ingrid Offgrid

Date: 28 Jan - 3 Feb 2023

Year: 3rd year student

Cooperation: Ingrid refuses to cooperate.

Emotional Availability: Ingrid has married and divorced 14 class members in two years. The marriages are fraught with infidelity. She refuses to share a spousal bed; only sleeping with them when divorced.

Fitness: Ingrid is the fastest swimmer in the class. Her 1500m freestyle time of 15:24 would place in the 2020 Olympic final.

Politics: A Protofeminist. Her ideas stem from Medieval Christianity, declaring herself property of her spouse, then rejecting the notion on the grounds of self-affirmation, leading to her habitual infidelities.

Additional: The most talented hedge-trimmer in the class, Ingrid would do well to consider a career in professional hedge-trimming.

Grade: A+

Chris Marlton is a comedian, writer, painter, and film-maker. His latest comedy special, Mephisto Waltz, is available to watch for free on YouTube. All upcoming comedy shows are available at www. linktree/ChrisMarlton. Follow @chris.marlton & @laserfirecomedy on Instagram and @ChrisMarltonComedy on Facebook.

What got you into comedy?

I watched Eddie Murphy’s Raw with my dad and uncle at 11 years old (way too young, do not recommend) and watching how this guy was able to break them into tears with just his words, his thoughts, his attitude, stuck with me forever. Stand-up comedy is like an adult magic trick.

I think subconsciously I always knew I wanted to do it, but the path to acceptance was not linear. My parents are both first generation Australians; my dad Italian and my mum Greek. They worked extremely hard to send me to a private selective school in Sydney. You can’t really repay that by pursuing a career in the arts, at least off the bat.

So I studied Law at university, I worked in the Insolvency industry for four odd years, and as my soul spent the time slowly leaking out of my eyeballs at a cubicle, I finally ran out of excuses for not following my dream. I worked in Insolvency by day while doing comedy at night for two years, before packing it all in and chasing this full time in 2018. How would you describe your comedy to the layman?

Storytelling, extremely personal, very cheeky, occasionally edgy, with a sprinkling of ethnic flavouring.

And how would you describe your style of comedy to a TV Exec looking to sign you to your own series?

SO diverse! Greek and Italian! Two ethnicities for the price of one. The next generational voice of an Australian subculture crying out for a new comedic hero and role model…or honestly, whatever you guys need me to be.

Who are some of your favourite comedians?

Eddie Murphy kicked it all off. As a teenager I watched the ‘Wog’ guys religiously, especially Joe Avati, and had an affinity to Carl Barron. As I got older ,the more cerebral American comics would grip me: Chappelle, Burr, Louis CK.

I think it was getting really into George Carlin that pushed me over the edge though, in terms of wanting to do it myself. The way he was able to infuse social and political commentary into his jokes, or vice versa depending on your perspective, was simply revolutionary.

These days I listen to EVERYONE (Spotify has a ridiculous library of comedy albums, the best way to consume stand-up). At the moment I’m smashing through some Kyle Kinane, Marc Maron, Sam Morril, Natasha Leggero, and Mark Normand.

What’s one of the funniest/weirdest things that’s happened in your career?

Well I was punched in the face on stage in 2019. A drunk English woman was heckling me pretty relentlessly, I retorted with an admittedly quite tame put down, at which point her boyfriend shot up and took a swing. Thankfully he only grazed my cheek before being removed from the room.

I then finished my set like a god-damned professional, had a month long existential crisis, before turning the story into the closer for my 2019 hour show (video is on my Youtube.

What’s one of the proudest moments of your career?

I don’t know. This is hard. The self-hating comic cliché is just that for a reason; I tend to diminish accomplishments because if I can do them, they can’t be that hard or meaningful.

I try to not be like that as much as possible. Selling out the Sydney Comedy Store two years in a row in 2019/2020 was amazing, as is absolutely any time I get to travel to do shows. Also, I scored directly from a corner in football when I was 15, obviously completely deliberate.

Here’s a section where you can write anything you’d like (why wait for the right question?)

Prawns aren’t worth it. Such a high maintenance food, so much effort for the eater. Then you end up with sticky hands.

Many prawn defenders will cite how well prawns go with condiments, lemon, garlic, aioli. I don’t respect foods that need to dress up to be presentable. A prawn is just a glorified cracker. This is very un-Australian, and I’m sorry.

Comedians hate being asked “tell us a joke” when people find out they’re comedians. So... What’s one of your favourite jokes?

Yes. Yes, we do hate being asked that. To work for free?? I don’t meet carpenters and immediately ask them to make me a table.

Having said that…I saw so many shows at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this year, given my show was early at 6pm. The joke which sticks out to me the most is from Brodi Snook – “The more tattoos a man has of his kids, the less likely he is to be allowed to see them” a) A Fish Called Wanda b) One Hundred Years of Solitude c) The Sopranos historically but Succession currently d) This is very hard so I’ll give three; The Great Depresh (Gary Gulman), Equanimity (Dave Chappelle), and Back In Town (George Carlin).

What exactly is the meaning of life?

As best as I can tell, embracing the cyclical duality of it. Eat good food, fart. Make money, spend it on the people you love. Hear or see something funny, laugh loud. Fall in love, cry a lot. Live…die.

Hecklers… A help or a hindrance? Do you have any particular favourite “come backs/put downs” for the lippy segment of the great unwashed?

Hindrance, without a shadow of a doubt. You don’t see people going to Cirque De Soleil with pool cues, running on stage and swinging at the dancers. Yet for whatever reason, there’s this mythical agreement that comedy is the only artform that can be disrupted and it’s all cool…this is a sore point clearly haha.

Bottom line is; intelligent people don’t heckle.

The Danish word ‘hygge’ encapsulates a general feeling of warmth, happiness and glow. What creates this sensation for you?

I guess the obvious answer would be doing stand-up; really connecting with an audience and getting a bit of that sweet, sweet validation.

But I’m just as happy spending entire days on the couch with my partner and our two cats, watching movies and eating pizza. Balance.

What is your favourite a) film, b) book, c) TV show, d) stand up set?

Anything you’d like to add?

I should probably plug the show!

I’m very excited to bring Heart Of Darkness to Canberra specifically. I’m expecting a higher proportion of the audience to understand my literary references than most cities I’ve done this show in.

The show explores the relationship between love and guilt via stories of some very naughty things I did as a teenager, juxtaposed with how in love I am right now. There’s also a dream sequence!

Heart Of Darkness will be at Smith’s Alternative on Friday, 9 June having played this year at Adelaide Fringe, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Sydney, Perth, Newcastle and Wollongong Comedy Festivals)

Kandinsky got it right when he said, “Colour is a power which directly influences the soul”. Alastair Swayn knew it; the designers featured in the Ian Wong Collection knew it. Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG) knows it.

The recently opened gallery facing London Circuit affords us a teaser view of the Swayn exhibition - a white, light space with a ghostly box artfully filled with familiar objects. It’s a coo-wee; a come on in.

Colour, Light, Humanity tells the story and legacy of Scottish born Canberran Alastair Swayn’s vision for architecture as a “genuine way of approaching humanity”, his love of light and of creating welcoming spaces. Embracing the Ian Wong Collection of iconic and influential objects by Australian designers, it is a compact but impactful narrative on the potency of excellence in design.

Inside the gallery sits the remainder of the family of intriguing cubes. Like oversized lollies they entice you, with streaks of colour and hints of stories. Viewing portholes considerately arranged at various human heights gifts us intimacy in these fascinating spaces. Each cube with a signature colour, a bonus James Turrell moment as you poke your nose inside, each jam-packed with familiar shapes and connections.

There’s the appreciation of clever and enduring design coupled with pure nostalgia here. Camping trips and wedding gifts, and whole childhoods in these clusters. There’s the kettle from your family kitchen, your first skateboard, the stackable plastic mugs from school camps, the Eski in your parents’ garage.

And, there’s the little prick of Australian pride that arrives unexpectedly when we realise how many of these we did not know were Australian designs. Like the power-board.

“Makes sense,” my son says, as we appreciate the humble object that’s transformed so many spaces. “Australians love plugging stuff in.”

By Tamsin Kemp

I guess we do.

Don’t neglect to spend some time with the rendering of the spicy green Torana on the wall. Car person or not, one can’t help but love this gutsy little two door, and this era of Australian automobile design.

It’s a perfect manifestation of ‘form follows function’ really, because the shape, the colour, the lump in the bonnet all tell us that she does, as they say, go.

But what, you ask, do all these lovely snapshots of product design such as the Keepcup and the Caroma Utility Bathroom Stool (which, by the way, also has a home in the Powerhouse collection) have in common with Professor Alastair Swayn?

In short - intersections with person-centred design, and the beauty of our relationship with colour.

Swayn was noted for the counterpoints of colour in his buildings, making use of bold walls, panels, and geometrics to punctuate lines and light in the architecture.

Swayn was influenced by Mexican architect, Luis Barragan, and Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill, both of whom are known for balancing oblongs this way and that, along with uncompromising perpendicular lines that give a sense of cathedral-like strength and wonder. And what else do Mexico and Spain have in common with us though? Both bright and hot places, where light and shade are in constant dance with and within buildings.

The exhibition notes describe light as Swayn’s way of “making buildings feel human”, and Swayn himself is quoted as saying: “I just enjoy the way you can use colour.”

Light and colour madeth this man.

Being an architects behind a swathe of Canberra buildings, you will likely have walked through, or worked in, one of his spaces. I worked in one, and always appreciated that there is no room on any of the floors that does not have a view and natural light.

From the front of the building you can view to the rear, and across the atrium, above the wide stairs that are also a meeting place. You can see multiple snippets of trees, garden, and sky.

The CSIRO Discovery Centre is another example of the reflective segues he put at the heart of his work.

The photos of Swayn’s work that panel the cubes in the exhibit provide vignettes of his buildings, giving us the essence of his palette and how he leveraged simplicity of line and shape to create harmonic passages between the natural and built environment.

Swayn’s meticulously curated forms fit agreeably with Canberra as a curated city. His appointment as the inaugural ACT Government Architect in 2010 secured his position as a guiding light in local planning and design, and he was involved in developing major projects including the ACT Law Courts and the City Plan.

His commitment to community is seen in his thoughtful responses to Place. His work does not seek to dominate; it seeks to live in partnership.

“He regarded architecture as a servant of people and their communities rather than as an end in itself,” remark Design Canberra. Whether or not you regard yourself as a person interested in architecture and design, this small but powerful exhibition will have something for you. There are so many elements, conjunctions of experience and place, memory and object; reminders about the importance of careful, sustainable design.

Plus the portholes – the portholes are a nod to Swayn’s interest in ships, and are a feature present in many of his interior designs. Here, at CMAG, in this cosy space, they are plain fun. So get along, and get some fun.

By Anthony Plevey

QL2 Dance's 2023 Quantum Leap project Communicate will present three new works by Australian and international choreographers, which pivot on this active statement to engage with the human imperative to interact and convey meaning. Communicate invites audiences, as young QL2 dancer/performer Akira Byrne puts it: "...to witness our way of communicating, which may resonate and speak to you in new ways."

This level of ownership is essential to the development process that QL2 Artistic Director Ruth Osborne, her team of national and international choreographers, and the youth dance artists have committed to in developing this new work.

“Our young dance artists own it as much as the choreographers, as much as the directors, the designer; everyone’s got a piece of it,” Osbourne says. “How do we communicate? What levels of communication do we have? What are we missing?

“We generalise about how young people communicate,” Osbourne continues. “It’s all through phones, messaging apps, and so on. But what I'm finding from the young people we work with is they don’t see it that way. Really, there's a lot of young people out there who really want human contact.

“The three pieces in Communicate focus on what there is, other than digital communication. What else is important in how we communicate with each other?”

The works for Communicate are choreographed by Alice Lee (Dance North Townsville), Kyall Shanks (Melbourne), and Lordfai Navinda Pachimsawat (Bangkok Dance Academy, Thailand). Together they bring to QL2, and Canberra as a whole, a diversity of cultural influences, youth dance experience and, importantly, new ways of thinking about the dance development process.

“QL2 has a long connection with Bangkok Dance Academy,” Osbourne explains. “And Lordfai, who also studied in Australia, is a product of that long-term exchange. She will be bringing nine dancers with her to perform with ours.”

And on the topic of communication…

“Whilst Zoom has been a key development tool for the choreographers working across such distances, we’ve actually delved into the difference between how we communicate today and that of earlier times.

“We started with the Australian and Thai dancers writing to each other like pen pals; sending their messages off, and then developing solos about what they've written. We encouraged them to consider the deeper communication that happens when you take that time.”

Dance is a language that is felt in the body and soul, communicating emotions and connections differently; raw and unspoken. The three works of Communicate utilise the primal and sophisticated elements through which dance speaks; gesture and contact, movement within—through the body and between bodies—creating positive and negative space. The work is in solos, duos, and groups to open up the importance of listening, and the impact of not listening.

Communicate unfolds the complexity of messaging between 'speaker' and 'listener'. The pitfalls of information overload, miscommunication, and misunderstanding through cultural differences, socio-economic backgrounds, and gender.

How easy it is to read things, or hear things, or take things the wrong way. How, whether intentional or not, when we communicate, embedded in the what, why, and how of things ‘said’, we say more than what we want, what we feel, and who we are.

Dance development processes have a longer arc than the direct communication of performance, which means dance speaks in different ways for the audience and performer.

These works come about through discussion and collaboration between the choreographers and the artistic directors, the choreographers, and the composer. Then, of course, with the choreographers and the dancers.

“I've worked with our dancers to fully explore communication in the broadest terms, because in dance it’s everything,” Osbourne reveals. “Not necessarily to put those things into the work, but to bring in the skills and awareness of what's actually happening to them during.

“It’s all so these young artists understand the intention of the work, what they and the choreographers are wanting to communicate, as well as what it looks like from an audience perspective.”

Beyond these conversations between dancer, director, choreographer, and audience, Osbourne intimates the internal conversation within the artist.

“Being fit, building skills so your body can be the tool that you need to explore intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically is important for our young dancers,” Osbourne states.

“However, the work that goes into it is much deeper than that. It is more than hearing. There is a physical listening; a listening that happens with your body.

“Collaboration underpins these young dancers' commitment to the work, making them feel totally engaged. This is crucial to creatively finding ways of connecting, beyond words, and articulating the essence of Communicate in the language of dance.”

With these three powerful and compelling works, QL2 Dance is making the call to Communicate; and inviting you to respond.

Which you can do when they perform at The Playhouse at Canberra Theatre on 18 - 20 May. Tickets are $38 + bf via the venue.