Latest news with #ItalianBrainrot
Business of Fashion
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business of Fashion
Is the Art Market AI-Proof?
Welcome to Arts Radar, a monthly column by Marc Spiegler breaking down key developments in contemporary art and the wider worlds of design, music, cinema and television. There's no shortage of AI-catastrophising in the arts these days — and, frankly, it's justified. Sapping our attention away from culture with a capital C, the world is awash in AI slop such as the absurdist AI-generated Ballerina Cappucina and Cappuccino Assassino characters at the heart of the viral 'Italian Brainrot' TikTok videos. Amazon's Kindle marketplace teems with AI-generated facsimiles of bestsellers, just as Spotify has to constantly cull AI cover versions of hits uploaded by royalties chasers. Last year, Hollywood actors and screenwriters went on strike, in part to protect their livelihoods from generative AI, while in March, thousands of artists signed an open letter calling on Christie's to cancel an auction focussed on art made using artificial intelligence. All of which makes particularly bold Chanel's mid-April announcement that it will fund a new centre focussed on artificial intelligence, machine learning and digital imaging at CalArts — the Los Angeles art school whose alumni include John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger, Catherine Opie, Tim Burton and Sofia Coppola. 'In the ever-changing age of AI, the Chanel Center for Artists and Technology will enable and encourage creatives across disciplines to harness that innovation — to take human imagination further than ever before,' said Chanel's head of arts and culture Yana Peel in a statement. The budget? The French fashion giant isn't saying but CalArts president Ravi S. Rajan told Artnet: 'I'd hazard a guess it could be the largest for any art school ever. It's super meaningful and transformational.' To be clear, I'm not an AI optimist. There's no doubt that artificial intelligence threatens jingle-composers, movie extras, stunt people, catalog-essay writers, translators, graphic designers and countless other creative roles. And while AI will benefit creators already operating at the highest levels — allowing them to ramp up production while lowering costs — those breaking into the sector will suffer as it eliminates many entry-level gigs. 'When I started at Christie's, they would hand me a transparency of a Picasso and send me to the library to find all the books in which it was cited,' said Dirk Boll, now the auction house's deputy chairman for 20th and 21st century art. 'AI does that in a nano-second now.' But the culture sector's beef with AI is also philosophic, tied to the notion that the artist is an auteur not a mere content producer, and that their individual experience and unique pattern of thinking, as well as their technical expertise, is what makes an artwork valuable. Yes, AI may be modern-day magic, admit critics, but it's the kind of magic that destroys cultural value. This argument is only half-logical, however. Like the Renaissance and Old Master painters, artists such as Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami produce work using scores of assistants. And ever since Marcel Duchamp's seminal work 'Fountain' — a urinal he signed with the mysterious pseudonym 'R. Mutt' and placed in the 1917 Society of Independent Artists salon — artists have created valuable works by recontextualising found objects. So, who is the Duchamp of the AI age? 'This is new technology, and artists are still discovering its capacities,' said Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of London's Serpentine Galleries, which went deep on tech a decade ago when Obrist arrived there and installed the artworld's first institutional CTO. 'TVs were around for a long time before Nam June Paik started making them into art.' That said, there are already major artists working with AI. Lynn Hershman Leeson has been using nascent AI for a quarter-century in work exploring women's identity. Ian Cheng's 2018 AI-powered piece 'BOB (Bag of Beliefs)' interacted with gallery visitors, displaying a wide range of personalities, before going further. 'One morning at 6am, the Serpentine security called me to say that the video screens had suddenly turned on,' recalled Obrist with glee. 'BOB had decided to open the show early!' Currently running in Los Angeles at Sprüth Magers gallery, Jon Rafman's solo show 'Proof of Concept' overwhelms visitors with an unending stream of AI content from the fictional Main Stream Media network (MSM),' including videos from the AI popstar Cl0udyH3art, which Rafman created. In this sense, we see visual artists doing what they always do: engage with new developments in society, birthing new artistic content. But it's hardly the paradigm shift we see in other fields, where AI has led to unicorn companies, mass layoffs and entirely new business models. In the music world, for example, the most interesting AI-engaged artist is the avant-garde musician Holly Herndon, who in 2019 created Spawn, an AI singer that she wove into her album 'PROTO.' Two years later she released Holly+, a deepfake of her own voice and allowed other musicians to use it, sharing IP rights with Herndon. In 2023, as AI became widely available, Herndon and her partner Matt Dryhurst took things a step further, launching the software startup Spawning to defend fellow creators by allowing them to identify when their art had been used in training AI, so the they could demand their work be removed from the data set — unless they were paid. The art industry, by contrast, seems unlikely to be disrupted by AI. Per Art Basel and UBS's latest annual report, art is a $57.5 billion market, too small to justify giant AI investments. And given the personality-driven (and often highly irrational) nature of selling and buying art, where the human touch remains essential to justifying high prices, it's hard to imagine AI could play a real role — at least in the upper echelons of the market, which account for the lion's share of financial value and where the few hundred collectors that matter are wooed over lunch, not via algorithmic entreaties. 'Even if Warhol didn't produce every silkscreen with his own hands, collectors believe that each piece was his idea, and that's important,' said Boll. He recalls that a decade ago when German artist Anselm Reyle was among the art world's hottest artists, and thus producing a ton of work, 'a rumour circulated that he had his studio assistants make work 'in his style,' which he then approved after the fact. While this may not have been true, it damaged his market.' 'Sinners' Winners Made for a mere $90 million and starring Michael B Jordan as identical twins who launch a Mississippi juke joint, the vampire movie 'Sinners' came out surprisingly strong during its mid-April opening weekend, scoring the biggest post-pandemic debut for an original film. But in Hollywood, the big 'Sinners' story was the deal that director Ryan Coogler had struck with Warner Brothers. Leveraging the power that came with helming the hit 'Black Panther' films, the director pushed for a 'first-dollar' deal — meaning that he immediately made money when the film hit theaters, rather than only once the studio recoups its investment. In addition, all financial rights to the film revert to Coogler after 25 years. On the movie's opening day New York Magazine's Vulture site published a widely read piece titled 'Hollywood Execs Fear Ryan Coogler's Sinners Deal 'Could End the Studio System.'' The article anonymously quoted execs who implied that a struggling Warner had broken rank and caved to Coogler, then wrapped up by reporting that 'the Coogler deal has come to be regarded as Hollywood's latest (if not nearly greatest) extinction-level threat. In response, Coogler said the deal was catalysed by the 'Sinners' plot surrounding Jordan's twin characters' fight to establish a Black-owned club in the Jim Crow South. Getting first-dollar gross plus reversion-rights is rare even among A-listers. But white directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Richard Linklater have struck similar deals in the past, leading many commentators to suggest the furore was ignited as much by the colour of Coogler's skin as by the content of his contract. The good news is that the film had already grossed over $320 million as Arts Radar went live, far more than expected, so by now everyone involved is making money. A Venetian Tragedy With less than a year to go before its May 2026 opening, the Venice Art Biennial — easily the most important event of its type on the global art stage — is facing unprecedented challenges. Shortly before she was slated to announce the theme of her biennial, Koyo Kouoh, the Cameroon-born art curator who was set to artistic direct the event suddenly died, at age 57, of breast cancer. Insiders say that she planned to exhibit roughly 65 artists, a fifth as many as her predecessor Adriano Pedrosa, and many of those had already been chosen. The biennale is expected to announce the new director this week. But given the very personal way in which Kouoh planned to work with the artists she had picked, it will be a challenge for whomever steps into her shoes. Running such an important event, in a city where everything must arrive by boat, with a tiny allocated budget is already a tall order without having to use another curator's roster. There's also a strong political dimension here: Kouoh would have been the first African woman to lead the Venice Biennale (and only the second African, after Okwui Enwezor, who also died in his fifties). And to make the 2026 biennale run-up thornier still, the closely watched American pavilion is getting sucked into the Trump vortex: The pavilion application, only recently published, says that the US State Department seeks to 'advance international understanding of American values by exposing foreign audiences to innovative and compelling works of art that reflect and promote American values.' Of course, applicants can't have DEI programs in place — easy for most artists, but perhaps much harder for the institutional curator who proposes them. Regardless of who is chosen, they will be working on a radically shorter timeline than any of their predecessors, and the Trump administration has repeatedly suggested defunding the National Endowment for the Arts, which administers the pavilion. Will there even be a 2026 US pavilion? Kathleen Ash-Milby, who co-commissioned the American presence in 2024 told Vanity Fair: 'I honestly think it might already be past the point of no return.' What Else I'm Tracking Pharrell Williams's Auction Platform Joopiter Teamed with Martha Stewart for First Contemporary Art Sale [The Art Newspaper] Larry David's 'My Dinner With Hitler' Essay Pokes Fun At Bill Maher's White House Meal With Trump [Deadline] A$AP Rocky Shades Eric Adams, Says He's Going to Run for NYC Mayor: 'I'm Dead Fucking Serious' [Variety] Reunited Couple Kanye West and Bianca Censori Sue His Dentist for Malpractice, Providing Nitrous Oxide [The Hollywood Reporter] Having led Art Basel from 2007 to 2022, Marc Spiegler now works on a portfolio of cultural-strategy projects. He is President of the Board of Directors of Superblue, works with the Luma Foundation, and serves on the boards of the ArtTech and Art Explora foundations. In addition to consulting for companies such as Prada Group, KEF Audio and Sanlorenzo, Spiegler has long been a Visiting Professor in cultural management at Università Bocconi in Milan and recently launched the Art Market Minds Academy.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How AI-Generated, Vaguely Italian Memes Are Taking Over Your Teen's Social Media Feed
If you're the parent of a t(w)een, the memes that fill your social media feeds are probably a whole lot different than your teenager's. You might be used to seeing a distracted boyfriend, a dog sitting in an office that's on fire, or Drake in 'Hotline Bling' on Facebook or Instagram. But if you were to scroll through your child's TikTok feed — or overhear them talking about new memes — you might think they were looking at sneak peeks of an off-the-rails new Pixar film or that they were taking up a new language. More from SheKnows Your Teen Is Probably 'Aura Farming' - Here's What It Means (& Why It's Basically a Joke) Because what in the Grumpy Cat is 'Italian Brainrot?!' It's a new internet craze featuring a whole host of outlandish, AI-generated characters that have Italian-sounding names said in an exaggerated male text-to-speech voice alongside nonsensical phrases. Some names are inspired by actual Italian words, while others just have a similar cadence. According to Forbes, some of the top characters are Ballerina Cappuccina, a dancer with a coffee cup head, Tralalero Tralala, a three-legged shark wearing blue Nike kicks, and Lirili Laria, a sandal-wearing elephant-cactus hybrid walking through the desert. If you're trying to wrap your head around what sounds like a Mad Lib, we understand (and we're in the same boat). But these wild mashups have gained a cult-like following of young people who love to view and create the AI-generated memes. Why? Well … why do teens latch onto anything? Experts think the surreal and absurd characters have become something for teens and their peers to enjoy and laugh about when so many other parts of their lives might be difficult. This brainrot is a means of distraction. And no, if you've been biting your nails waiting to find out what 'brainrot' or 'brain rot' is, it's not a medical condition. Your child is not sick. 'Brain rot' — which was chosen as Oxford University Press' 2024 Word of the Year — just means spending excessive amounts of time on screens watching 'trivial' or 'unchallenging' content. And sure, that could supposedly impact someone's cognitive function in the same way excessive screen time could have a negative impact on anyone's health. So there is no need to necessarily be any more concerned than usual if your teen is constantly talking about Tralalero Tralala. Or, perhaps they are now fans of Mexican, German, or French Brainrot characters. They might even be enthralled with Tung Tung Tung Sahur, a stick of wood from Indonesia who sings with Ballerina Cappuccina in a video that has more than 5.4 million likes. In many ways, this is a modern way for teens to be creative and unwind. But (… we all knew there was a 'but' coming, right?), there are problems with the trend. Parents reports that some teachers are finding that students can easily derail a lesson by mentioning one of the characters or their catchphrase. And speaking of those catchphrases, some are being called offensive. Remember that Nike-loving shark? His voiceover says both 'Allah,' the Arabic word for 'god,' and 'porco,' an Italian word for pig. According to Forbes, members of the Muslim community are upset about this combination. 'No one will claim responsibility for the perceived Islamophobia — some say it's just an inadvertent coincidence stemming from absurdity,' Freddy Tran Nager, a clinical associate professor of communications at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, told the outlet. 'But it's not unusual for memes to be appropriated by extremist groups, such as Pepe the Frog being adopted by white nationalists.' And so Italian Brainrot does have the ability to be incredibly offensive. Especially when not all social media users speak the language most closely associated with the trend. Even some of the backstories of these beloved characters can lean into NSFW territory, and then, of course, there is the negative environmental impact of creating these AI-generated photos and videos in the first place. So, what should parents be doing about Italian Brainrot? Well, like with any technological craze, going over some boundaries is a good idea. Are there certain hours when kids have to stop scrolling (no matter how much they want to learn more about Chimpanzini Bananini)? Let them know that chatting with their friends about Bombardiro Crocodilo is probably OK … as long as it's not in the middle of biology class. And it's always a good idea to remind kids that they should research what they are saying before mindlessly repeating. Capisce?Best of SheKnows 'Post-Mother's Day Letdown' Is a Real & Valid Thing Every Single Celebrity Parent Who Welcomed Twins Beyoncé, Chris Hemsworth, & More Celebs Share the Most Important Life Lessons They've Learned From Their Moms
New York Post
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Is your kid is speaking Italian gibberish? Blame this Gen Alpha ‘brainrot' meme
It's giving… espresso-induced insanity. If your 10-year-old suddenly starts yelling 'tralaero tralala!' while pirouetting like a caffeinated ballerina, you're not hallucinating. You've just been hit with a full-blown case of 'Italian Brainrot' — Gen Alpha's latest hyper-online obsession that makes 'Skibidi Toilet' look like Shakespeare. Forget pasta, art, or bona-fide Italians: This trend has nothing to do with the land of 'La Dolce Vita' and everything to do with AI-generated chaos, garbled gibberish and digital derangement. Born on TikTok in early 2025, 'Italian Brainrot' features bizarre, AI-spawned characters with fake-Italian names and storylines as warped as a Funhouse mirror. Philip Lindsay, a social media creator who calls himself a 'student translator,' described Italian Brainrot as 'blending AI-images and videos with made-up stories' in a recent video. 'If I hear ballerina cappuccino one more time…' threatened one parent in the comments of another recent video by Lindsay. Picture a ballerina with a cappuccino cup for a head (ballerina cappuccina), a crocodile-bomber-plane hybrid (bobardiro crocodilo), and a sneaker-wearing shark chanting his own name (tralaero tralala). The concept behind 'Ballerina Cappuccina' was dreamed up in March by 24-year-old Susanu Sava-Tudor in Romania. In an email to the New York Times, Sava-Tudor described the trend as a 'form of absurd humor' that's 'less about real Italy and more about the cinematic myth of Italy.' His original video introducing 'Ballerina Cappuccina' — which he spelled 'Balerinna Cappucinna' — has since garnered over 45 million views and 3.8 million likes on TikTok. 3 'Ballerina Cappuccina,' a whimsical concept created in March by 24-year-old Susanu Sava-Tudor in Romania, has racked up over 45 million views and 3.8 million likes on TikTok since he first introduced it — under the original spelling 'Balerinna Cappucinna.' Tiktok/@ The clips come with exaggerated 'Italian' voiceovers that sound like a Super Mario fever dream. Oxford even named 'brainrot' one of 2024's words of the year, which should tell you everything you need to know about the current state of humanity. And Gen Alpha can't get enough of it. 3 Oxford even designated 'brainrot' as one of its 2024 Words of the Year — a reflection, perhaps, of the cultural moment we're living in. And for Gen Alpha, the obsession shows no signs of slowing. Dmytro Hai – Content creator Summer Fox recently went viral after admitting she thought, at just 27, she was still 'down there with the kids' and 'up to speed with the slang.' But after hearing Gen Alpha tossing around phrases like 'Ballerina Cappuccina,' she realized she was out of the loop. In the clip, she shared that kids told her the phrase means someone who looks 'cute and classy' and that it's used as an adjective. Fox also noted other Gen Alpha lingo like 'Skibidi,' 'what the sigma,' and 'aura points' — proof that today's youth speak in memes, not sentences. Even educators are struggling to keep up. Teachers say kids are yelling out Brainrot catchphrases mid-lesson, disrupting class, as reported by Parents. But before you declare your household a 'Ballerina Cappuccina'-free zone, remember: to your kids, this is the new knock-knock joke. It's a way to bond, be silly, and flex their aura points. 'The sheer randomness of the meme is the point,' Yotam Ophir, a communications professor at the University at Buffalo, told the New York Times. 3 Before you ban 'Ballerina Cappuccina' from your household, keep in mind: for kids, it's the modern-day knock-knock joke — a playful way to connect, be silly, and show off their vibe. Natalia – 'What users get from it is the sense that they are in the know — that they know something their mom doesn't know.' 'Maybe at some point there will be meaning to it,' Lindsay, the middle school teacher and content creator who studies Gen Alpha slang, told the outlet. But for now, it's just another entry in the growing universe of AI-fueled 'mumbo jumbo.' Molto bene, or whatever.
