Author: Georgia Weston

In the 2022 BBC3 documentary about Gerry Anderson, the producer of Thunderbirds, the director inserts a deepfake reconstruction of Anderson in which he speaks in his own voice and says things that he actually said. The director, Benjamin Field, stated, “I’m looking at deepfake as a way of telling the truth.” This statement has stuck in the minds of media scholars ever since. Depending on your point of view, that sentence is either a liberating statement or a minor catastrophe for the nonfiction genre. The relationship between the filmmaker and their subject is already complicated, and documentary filmmakers were among…

A certain type of moment has begun to occur everywhere—in cafés, waiting rooms, and common areas of universities. A person looks at their phone, locks the screen, nods slightly, and watches a 60-second video with visible captions but no sound. They just finished consuming what they perceive to be the news. The source was not a broadcaster. It was not from a verified correspondent with twenty years of experience in the field. It originated from a person sitting in a well-lit bedroom with a viewpoint they were confident enough not to challenge. It’s not exactly a media crisis. It’s more…

Near the fifteenth minute of nearly every high-profile documentary produced in the past five years, the formula becomes apparent. With a prime lens blowing out the background, a historian gazes slightly off-camera in a beautifully lit scene. Cut to a yellowed photo with a slow push-in. Play the strings. The reenactment begins, with an actor’s hand—never their face—picking up a phone, a knife, or a letter. It is capable. It has been polished. It’s also beginning to resemble wallpaper. Ed Sayer, a British producer, recently expressed what many in the industry have been whispering for some time: the craft of…

A photograph that has been subtly, almost courteously, altered by a machine contains a certain kind of silence. Sometimes it goes unnoticed at first. The light appears to be correct. The composition is sound. However, something has escaped the frame, and the picture continues to advance as if nothing had happened. What worries me the most about the current generation of AI image tools is that. They don’t make a big deal out of what they take out. They are neat. Jessica Smith, an Australian Paralympic swimmer, wrote earlier this year about using an AI to create a self-portrait. She…

The majority of photographers I’ve spoken to over the years acknowledge—sometimes with a hint of sheepishness—that they mastered the ability to see a frame’s center long before they mastered its edges. Really, it’s an odd habit. Everything in the picture’s periphery is regarded as background noise, and the center draws you in like gravity. However, an image’s edges—those subdued four lines surrounding it—often determine whether it feels roomy or claustrophobic. More experienced shooters believe that this is where the true craft resides. Within the first five minutes of any camera club meeting, you will hear someone bring up the rule…

In any creative or professional life, there comes a time when the thing you’ve created begins to beg to be left alone. Even if you are unable to identify it, you can sense it. The company has its own pulse, the painting is finished, and the report is filed, but the hands that created it continue to hover, adjust, and second-guess. It turns out that one of the most difficult physical actions a person can perform is walking away. In 1974, Marina Abramović realized this as she stood motionless in a gallery in Naples while strangers cut her clothing, stabbed…

There is a belief that permeates painters’ studios; it’s the kind of thing that no one talks about, but everyone seems to be aware of. You will lose a piece of the person you love if you paint them. Not all at once. Not very loudly. The way heat escapes a room after the door has been left open for too long is slowly. Some artists dismiss it with a laugh. Some won’t even talk about it. Surprisingly, many people just won’t try. It’s odd how obstinate the notion has grown. The old superstition still holds even though painters now…

When people don’t feel like they belong in an office, a certain kind of silence descends. Meetings that end abruptly, courteous hellos that never develop into conversations, and empty chairs at the Friday lunch table are all signs of it. The majority of managers are unaware of it. Those who do typically have no idea how to handle it. Despite all the talk about culture over the past ten years, one of the most mismanaged concepts in business is still belonging. Businesses constructed whole departments around it, then dismantled them covertly when the political climate changed. The Supreme Court changed…

For me, it all began with a sign at a Burbank rally last summer. In thick black marker, someone had sketched Bender from Futurama while carrying a sign that said, “Leave Animation to the Humans.” It was a small joke that told you everything about who was going to be there that afternoon, and it was beautifully framed. In the abstract sense, these weren’t tech skeptics. They had spent twenty years learning how to draw, and now they were being told that using their hands was optional. By all accounts, the Stand With Animation rally was the biggest in the…

Observing a coworker open a document, type half a sentence, look at a phone, click into Slack, return to the document, and then forget what the sentence was about is subtly unsettling. These days, it occurs frequently. in coffee shops, open offices, and living rooms converted into temporary workstations. The work rhythm has shifted, and it doesn’t appear to be for the better. Since 2004, when researchers were still using stopwatches to follow people around, Gloria Mark, a psychologist at UC Irvine, has been tracking this change. To be honest, it’s difficult to change the numbers she arrived at. So,…