Roger Catlin

Museums Correspondent

A new exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) can not only be viewed by the public—it can also be heard, and felt, and danced along to.

The first major show of time-based media art at the museum in eight years, “Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies” features recent work from ten leading contemporary artists in the field, which includes film, video, audio and digital technologies that unfold over time.

Saisha Grayson, SAAM’s curator of time-based media who put together the exhibition, says that the pieces the museum has been collecting since she began her job in 2018 all seemed to have such strong musical components—from jazz to hip-hop—that it seemed natural to create an exhibition of works that each in their way used the strategies of music creation. While music is a thread that ties together the recently acquired work, extraordinary effort is being made to make sounds translate to the widest possible audience, including the deaf and hearing impaired. That means there not only are captions to films, and QR codes pointing to visual descriptions and ASL interpretations, but the museum is also using haptic technology in a new way, such that musical vibrations can be felt so strongly on the benches where the groundbreaking technology has been installed that they are called “butt kickers.”

Things begin gently, however, with a room dedicated to “When the Spirits Moved Them, They Moved,” a three-channel video installation from the “Performed Places” series by filmmaker Mariam Ghani and choreographer Erin Ellen Kelly, reproducing imagined dances that emerged in the 19th-century Shaker Village in rural Pleasant Hill, Kentucky.

Surprisingly, it’s one of three references to bygone Shaker communities in the exhibition. The other two come in the video artwork of Cauleen Smith, in which the readings of a Black Shaker elder, Rebecca Cox Jackson, are recited and shots of a Shaker cemetery in upstate New York are seen amid scenes of the sculptural Watts Towers of Los Angeles and a rural ashram in California. Smith’s two videos, one accompanied by a slowly moving disco ball, also celebrate the music of jazz pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane and her Hindu spiritual journey.

Another artist duo, Simone Leigh and Liz Magic Laser, present the nine-minute video “Breakdown,” which features mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran powerfully emoting inane lines from TV and movies depicting “female hysteria.” Leigh is also represented by one of her large sculptures, Cupboard VIII, of a female figure with outstretched arms and an open jug mouth.

Grayson says that one aim in planning “Musical Thinking” was “to create an experience that highlighted a lot of media works but wasn’t one black box after another; where the physical experience was particular to each of the intentions of the work.”

So while many of the works have their own screening rooms, others stand in galleries ready for individual inspection. In the case of the listening bench for Christine Sun Kim’s One Week of Lullabies for Roux, visitors use headphones to take in seven soothing tracks composed for her newborn. Then Martine Gutierrez’s three-minute video Clubbing begs for full-on participation. In the video, the artist presents herself dancing to pulsing club music in a number of guises. Visitors are invited to get on a light-up dance floor to dance along.

And many have, Grayson says. “I’ve seen some really wonderful interactions—everything from whole families, to what I think might have been a bachelorette party, where all the girls were trying to learn the choreography,” she says. “The first day we opened, there was a wheelchair user up there spinning around, so it just felt very affirmative.”

Those drawn to “Musical Thinking” to catch the kind of music videos that once reigned on MTV might find their closest connection in Arthur Jafa’s striking 2016 Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death, which features rapid fire images of the Black experience in America alongside the music of Kanye West’s gospel-tinged track “Ultralight Beam.” A collage of hundreds of postcard-sized images spread across a wall in Jafa’s APEX GRID accomplishes much the same impact minus the music.

Visitors may have to bend over to see the smallest work: West Side Story Upside Down, Backwards, Sideways and Out of Focus by the late artist ADÁL, in which a video embedded in a suitcase conflates scenes from the popular 1961 musical with actual documentary footage of Puerto Rican struggles to a percussive soundtrack by Tito Puente. 

Some music is presented visually, through original scores done with unusual musical notation. Inspired by Sioux composer Zitkála-Šá, Diné composer Raven Chacon presents scores saluting contemporary Native women musicians using arrows instead of notes. A 2015 video shows a “performance” of Chacon’s 2001 work Report, which choreographs gunshots by shooters lined up behind a series of music stands.

Christine Sun Kim, who performed the ASL interpretation of the national anthem at the 2020 Super Bowl, presents the same kind of large notation charts she made in preparation of the game, featuring the anthem’s more contentious but rarely heard third verse that mentions slavery. Another Kim piece, a 25-minute video called Close Readings, shows what happens when friends are invited to provide captions to partially blurred movies, like The Addams Family to The Little Mermaid. Viewers can see the suggested captions next to the actual captions of each scene.

It was Kim’s connection to the Motion Light Lab at Gallaudet University, which develops new technologies tied to Deaf culture, that got the team there working with SAAM to develop four benches equipped with a unique haptics system. Marked by blue lights, the benches bring motion and vibrations to what others hear so that deaf visitors can sit and feel the music.

“The inclusion of haptics for audio interpretation is something … that I don’t know has been done in an art context before,” Grayson says.

Melissa Malzkuhn is the creative director of the Motion Light Lab, which previously created the first bilingual ASL-to-English storybook app to support literacy development, among other innovations. “It was a natural foray for us, our curiosity, and our motivation in exploring new ways to create inclusive experiences,” she says.

“When you consider that this is totally unchartered, there are always challenges,” says Malzkuhn, who is third-generation Deaf, of the low-frequency transducers known as “butt-kickers.” “What we now know that we did not really expect was how people would react to the haptics. Accessibility actually made the experience better for everyone.”

“Musical Thinking” is the first exhibition to open in SAAM’s third-floor home for modern and contemporary art after it was closed for construction for three years. When it fully reopens on September 22, along with rethought sight lines and higher walls to accommodate bigger works, the floor will have a permanent area for the museum’s collection of time-based media, which now numbers about 160 works.

The term covers film and video art, but it also includes video games, what Grayson calls “an algorithmically driven cinema piece” and the museum’s most famous piece of time-based media, Nam June Paik’s Electronic Superhighway, with music and videos flashing, representing 50 states, outlined in neon.

“Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies” is on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. through January 29, 2024. An accessibility guide and a free digital catalog are available online.

Details

By Darren Thompson

August 31, 2023

For years, Rodrigo was selling Philippine-produced products as authentic Alaska Native-produced artwork at a store in Ketchikan, Alaska. 

The supplier of the products was Rodrigo Creative Crafts, a company owned by Rodrigo and his wife and located in the Philippines. The business was created for the sole purpose of producing carvings featuring Alaska Native designs and motifs using Philippine labor, according to court documents. The carvings were shipped to the U.S. and then to Ketchikan, where they were later sold as authentic Alaska Native art.

In 2019 and for part of 2021, the family and their Alaska-based company employees sold over $1 million worth of Philippine-made carvings presented as Alaska Native artwork.

“The Rodrigos sold imported products as Alaska Native made in their Ketchikan, Alaska store,” said Edward Grace, Assistant Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement, in a press release on August 30. “This deceptive business practice cheated customers and undermined the economic livelihood of Alaska Native artists. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a dedicated team of special agents who work on violations of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act. This sentence was the result of the strong collaboration between our special agents, the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

Rodrigo was also sentenced to make a $60,000 donation to the Tlingit and Haida Central Counsel Vocational Program, write a letter of apology to be published in the Ketchikan Daily Newspaper, and serve three years of supervised release or parole. His two-year initial confinement is the longest sentence a defendant has received for any Indian Arts and Crafts violation since the truth-in-marketing law became public law in 1990.

There are other defendants in a similar case, with ongoing cases: Glenda Tiglao Rodrigo, 46, and Christian Ryan Tiglao Rodrigo, 24. Rodrigo also hired Alaska Natives at both Ketchikan stores to represent and sell the Philippine-produced artwork as their own authentic Alaska Native artwork. According to the Department of Justice, the Alaska Native workers told customers they were all related family working in the store, and the art was all authentically produced from locally sourced materials and made by Alaska Natives.

“The actions the defendant took to purposefully deceive customers and forge artwork is a cultural affront to Alaska Native artisans who pride themselves on producing these historical works of art, and negatively affects those who make a living practicing the craft,” said U.S. Attorney S. Lane Tucker for the District of Alaska. “Mr. Rodrigo’s monumental sentence is a testament to the federal government’s dedication to prosecuting Indian Arts and Crafts Act violations, and the U.S. Attorney’s office will continue to work with law enforcement partners to protect Alaska Native cultural heritage and unwitting customers and hold perpetrators accountable who carry out this type of fraud.”

The Indian Arts and Crafts Act was signed into law in 1990 and is a truth-in-marketing law aimed to protect authentic American Indian and Alaskan Native artisans and products unique to their culture and traditions. It was passed to deter misrepresentation in the marketing of Indian art and craft products within the United States. Many have advocated for additional measures to prevent fraud or misrepresentation of authentic American Indian and Alaskan Native and American Indian and Alaskan Native-style traditional and contemporary arts and crafts produced after 1934.

Some traditional items frequently copied by non-Indians include jewelry, pottery, baskets, carved stone fetishes, woven rugs, kachina dolls, and clothing.

“The Indian Arts and Crafts Board administers and enforces the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, a truth-in-marketing law,” said Indian Arts and Crafts Board Director Meridith Stanton in a press release. “The Act is intended to rid the Alaska Native and Indian arts and crafts marketplace of fakes and counterfeits in order to protect the economic livelihoods and cultural heritage of Alaska Native and Indian artists and craftspeople and their Tribes and villages, as well as the buying public.” 

“Mr. Rodrigo’s sentencing should send a strong message to those who prey upon authentic Alaska Native artists and vulnerable consumers that this destructive conduct will not be tolerated, and Act violators will be held accountable,” Stanton said of Rodrigo’s sentence. 

The case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Office of Law Enforcement with assistance from the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, U.S. Customs and Border Protections, and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.

Currently, the Dept. of Interior is considering adding protected mediums under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act. It recently conducted a meeting with comments from artists and tribal representatives during the Santa Fe Indian Market at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. 

The DOI is accepting public comments on the adjustments until 11:50 pm Eastern Time on Friday, Sept. 1. 2023, at [email protected].

If you suspect potential Indian Arts and Crafts Act violations are being committed, a complaint may be submitted through the Indian Arts and Crafts Board’s online complaint form, www.doi.gov/iacb/should-i-report-potential-violation, by emailing [email protected], or by calling 888-278-3253. 

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By JOCELYN NOVECK AND MATT O’BRIEN (Associated Press)

NEW YORK — Kelly McKernan’s acrylic and watercolor paintings are bold and vibrant, often featuring feminine figures rendered in bright greens, blues, pinks and purples. The style, in the artist’s words, is “surreal, ethereal … dealing with discomfort in the human journey.”

The word “human” has a special resonance for McKernan these days. Although it’s always been a challenge to eke out a living as a visual artist — and the pandemic made it worse — McKernan now sees an existential threat from a medium that’s decidedly not human: artificial intelligence.

It’s been about a year since McKernan, who uses the pronoun they, began noticing online images eerily similar to their own distinctive style that were apparently generated by entering their name into an AI engine.

The Nashville-based McKernan, 37, who creates both fine art and digital illustrations, soon learned that companies were feeding artwork into AI systems used to “train” image generators — something that once sounded like a weird sci-fi movie but now threatens the livelihood of artists worldwide.

“People were tagging me on Twitter, and I would respond, ’Hey, this makes me uncomfortable. I didn’t give my consent for my name or work to be used this way,’” the artist said in a recent interview, their bright blue-green hair mirroring their artwork. “I even reached out to some of these companies to say ‘Hey, little artist here, I know you’re not thinking of me at all, but it would be really cool if you didn’t use my work like this.’ And, crickets, absolutely nothing.”

McKernan is now one of three artists who are seeking to protect their copyrights and careers by suing makers of AI tools that can generate new imagery on command.

The case awaits a decision from a San Francisco federal judge, who has voiced some doubt about whether AI companies are infringing on copyrights when they analyze billions of images and spit out something different.

“We’re David against Goliath here,” McKernan says. “At the end of the day, someone’s profiting from my work. I had rent due yesterday, and I’m $200 short. That’s how desperate things are right now. And it just doesn’t feel right.”

The lawsuit may serve as an early bellwether of how hard it will be for all kinds of creators — Hollywood actors, novelists, musicians and computer programmers — to stop AI developers from profiting off what humans have made.

The case was filed in January by McKernan and fellow artists Karla Ortiz and Norwalk native Sarah Andersen, on behalf of others like them, against Stability AI, the London-based maker of text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion. The complaint also named another popular image generator, Midjourney, and the online gallery DeviantArt.

The suit alleges that the AI image-generators violate the rights of millions of artists by ingesting huge troves of digital images and then producing derivative works that compete against the originals.

The artists say they are not inherently opposed to AI, but they don’t want to be exploited by it. They are seeking class-action damages and a court order to stop companies from exploiting artistic works without consent.

Stability AI declined to comment. In a court filing, the company said it creates “entirely new and unique images” using simple word prompts, and that its images don’t or rarely resemble the images in the training data.

“Stability AI enables creation; it is not a copyright infringer,” it said.

Midjourney and DeviantArt didn’t return emailed requests for comment.

Much of the sudden proliferation of image-generators can be traced to a single, enormous research database, known as the Large-scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network, or LAION, run by a schoolteacher in Hamburg, Germany.

The teacher, Christoph Schuhmann, said he has no regrets about the nonprofit project, which is not a defendant in the lawsuit and has largely escaped copyright challenges by creating an index of links to publicly accessible images without storing them. But the educator said he understands why artists are concerned.

“In a few years, everyone can generate anything — video, images, text. Anything that you can describe, you can generate it in such a way that no human can tell the difference between AI-generated content and professional human-generated content,” Schuhmann said in an interview.

The idea that such a development is inevitable — that it is, essentially, the future — was at the heart of a U.S. Senate hearing in July in which Ben Brooks, head of public policy for Stability AI, acknowledged that artists are not paid for their images.

“There is no arrangement in place,” Brooks said, at which point Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono asked Ortiz whether she had ever been compensated by AI makers.

“I have never been asked. I have never been credited. I have never been compensated one penny, and that’s for the use of almost the entirety of my work, both personal and commercial, senator,” she replied.

You could hear the fury in the voice of Ortiz, also 37, of San Francisco, a concept artist and illustrator in the entertainment industry. Her work has been used in movies including “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” “Loki,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Jurassic World” and “Doctor Strange” She was responsible for the design of Doctor Strange’s costume.

“We’re kind of the blue-collar workers within the art world,” Ortiz said in an interview. “We provide visuals for movies or games. We’re the first people to take a stab at, what does a visual look like? And that provides a blueprint for the rest of the production.”

But it’s easy to see how AI-generated images can compete, Ortiz says. And it’s not merely a hypothetical possibility. She said she has personally been part of several productions that have used AI imagery.

“It’s overnight an almost billion-dollar industry. They just took our work, and suddenly we’re seeing our names being used thousands of times, even hundreds of thousands of times.”

In at least a temporary win for human artists, another federal judge in August upheld a decision by the U.S. Copyright Office to deny someone’s attempt to copyright an AI-generated artwork.

Ortiz fears that artists will soon be deemed too expensive. Why, she asks, would employers pay artists’ salaries if they can buy “a subscription for a month for $30″ and generate anything?

And if the technology is this good now, what will it be like in a few years?

“My fear is that our industry will be diminished to such a point that very few of us can make a living,” Ortiz says, anticipating that artists will be tasked with simply editing AI-generated images, rather than creating. “The fun parts of my job, the things that make artists live and breathe — all of that is outsourced to a machine.”

McKernan, too, fears what is yet to come: “Will I even have work a year from now?”

For now, both artists are throwing themselves into the legal fight — a fight that centers on preserving what makes people human, says McKernan, whose Instagram profile reads: “Advocating for human artists.”

“I mean, that’s what makes me want to be alive,” says the artist, referring to the process of artistic creation. The battle is worth fighting “because that’s what being human is to me.”

O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.