What Does it Mean to be an Artist?

A conversation with pianist Jacqueline Leung

Jacqueline Leung (photo from the artist)

Today on the podcast, I’m speaking with Jacqueline Leung about what it means to be an artist. She is my first guest! Read on for some quirky stories related to the arts at the end of this post.

You can listen to our conversation on several platforms, all listed through the Podbean host site, now with a new trailer:

In the new era of super-advanced A.I., perhaps the question of artistry is even more pertinent. A recent NYT Opinion piece from Yuval Harari, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin suggested that computer-generated arts could put the entire human culture at risk. Aptly called “You Can Have the Blue Pill or the Red Pill, and We’re Out of Blue Pills,” alluding to The Matrix but perhaps also alluding to the recent soundbites from Keanu Reeves who tells he’s in all these sci-fi films not because he embraces it but because he wants us to fear it:

A.I. could rapidly eat the whole of human culture — everything we have produced over thousands of years — digest it and begin to gush out a flood of new cultural artifacts. Not just school essays but also political speeches, ideological manifestos, holy books for new cults. By 2028, the U.S. presidential race might no longer be run by humans.

Humans often don’t have direct access to reality. We are cocooned by culture, experiencing reality through a cultural prism. Our political views are shaped by the reports of journalists and the anecdotes of friends. Our sexual preferences are tweaked by art and religion. That cultural cocoon has hitherto been woven by other humans. What will it be like to experience reality through a prism produced by nonhuman intelligence?

Jacqueline Leung

Jacqueline is an award-winning pianist based in Hong Kong. She has performed and taught on four continents and as a passionate chamber musician, she is a founding member of the Phoenix Quartet. Jacqueline has a particular interest in unearthing and presenting lesser-known works, in particular, compositions by women composers. She has written articles on these topics and to date, she has recorded three solo albums with themes ranging from 1920s New York to Winter in Buenos Aires. 

Artist website: http://www.jacquelineleung.com/

Spotify page:

We have known each other since starting our MA in Literary and Cultural Studies together in 2009 at the University of Hong Kong. Jacqui and I had planned to do a show together without a particular subject in mind. She came up with the topic when she saw my IG post about the book - Tell Me I'm an Artist, by Chelsea Martin:

the_matterhorn_magazine

A post shared by Kathleen Clare Waller, PhD (@the_matterhorn_magazine)

Keyword preview of the conversation:

• Ideas & music

• Snow (album)

• Creativity

• Cat interruption

• Solitude & collaboration

• Reactions to artists

• Art for art’s sake

I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as we did! You can listen to it on any of the spaces linked through Podbean or on the Podbean app / website itself.

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Quirky stories about the arts

Photo by Johnny Briggs on Unsplash

• Art in unexpected places — “Cleaners’ art collection transforms Hong Kong refuse point into gallery”

• The Matterhorn icon has been forcibly removed from Toblerone: “The Swiss government is forcing Toblerone to change its logo after the company outsourced production”; don’t worry! This publication is really written in Switzerland! (And any paid subscriptions are taxed in this country!) The part in this article about Italy remaining mum on the fact that half of the mountain is in Italian jurisdiction is interesting. Who owns this image? However, the chocolate is now being made primarily in Slovakia, so it is less poignant in argument.

• Hope for funding the arts? “New international laboratory aims to study and promote health benefits of arts activities for individuals and communities”:

  • “This is the WHO’s first-ever major initiative linking arts and public health, and it comes following the organisation’s 2019 report linking access to the arts with improved health. Based between NYU Steinhardt in New York City and the WHO's Regional Office for Europe in Copenhagen, the lab’s ultimate goal is that the findings of its research will ultimately inform public policy across all 194 of the United Nations’ member states.”

• Some solutions for that funding already in LA — “Can LA’s Arts Sector Become More Equitable?”

  • “[Arts for LA] is also working on a set of recommendations for creating 10,000 living wage jobs in LA’s arts and culture sector by 2030, dubbed the Creative Jobs Collective Impact Initiative, which they will present to the LA County Board of Supervisors later this year. ‘We’ve been doing this at the local and state level,’ Herrera says. ‘We want the county partnering with state and private philanthropy to ensure that we don’t remain #259.’”

• In case you missed it, people are talking about the death of the English major (& humanities in general): “The End of the English Major.” I’ll be speaking about this topic with a few people on the podcast

• How can film houses survive if the very thing people pay a ton for - quality screening - is going downhill? “Bad Projection Is Ruining the Movie Theater Experience”

• Who’s coming to Art Basel 2023? Let me know if you’ll be in town this June!