Dinahmoe

27/10/2024

From Johan
“How much creativity do you want?” “Yess!!”

The most valuable things in life cannot be bought - love, happiness, nature. I just realized two other things that cannot be bought either: experience and creativity.

It started with a post on LinkedIn regarding the agency model. To get the full context read the article and my comment here: https://lnkd.in/deVmAGKK

To summarize my point: creativity cannot be billed per hour, because it could take 10 minutes or 10 days to come up with an idea. Experience cannot be billed per hour either, since it either reduces the number of hours required to implement the idea, or increases the quality of the final result.

It is obvious that experience and creativity adds an immense value to any project, but value is abstract, subjective and hard translated to a number. Tedious, boring work that everyone understands to be time-consuming is not questioned.

And that is what we can get paid for, the time consuming stuff. Experience and creativity is for free. Maybe this is the greatest sales pitch ever?

Creativity for free!
by self described "experienced visionary and problem solver"
This offer is not time limited!

I’ll make it mine! Anyone interested? It’s free!

24/10/2024

Tonecraft; the ultimate interactive music game by Dinahmoe. Build, explore, and create your own musical landscapes.

23/10/2024

From Johan
Just got a bit annoyed, but just saw a quote, maybe it was from Zuck about “how we will consume content and stay connected” in the future. Content. I know I am guilty of using that word too, but… It is just terrible, disgraceful, shameful to refer to others' art as “content”.

“Were you at the Beyonce concert yesterday?” “Yeah, and I must say, she really hit the target audience with some serious content!” Picasso also had a finger on the pulse of the art community, the content he produced was so on point, genius. And Prince, I actually have his complete content collection. When I compare it with content from other content creators his genius is so obvious. I know how hard it is to create great content, I was in a band before getting into marketing. Bach, great content, Mozart too. And don’t forget Isadora Duncan, content that survives the passage of time. Thinking of time, I was finally able to get a table at Eleven Madison Park, I believe they have three Michelin stars now? I must say, that vegan content was insane!

As I said, I know I am guilty, but seriously, let’s ban and shame that word! Ad agencies produce content, artists produce art. Let’s show some respect shall we?

20/10/2024

From Johan:
Art and beauty are said to be in the eye of the beholder. There seems to be a gap between the artist's intention and our experience of their work. While knowing who created a piece of art and why can be interesting, it's not required to truly appreciate something. GenAI is about to change that.

Right now, video generation is in the spotlight. Not a day goes by without a new model producing an even more realistic Godzilla causing a ruckus. Another recurring theme is spectacular drone footage of breathtaking landscapes, indistinguishable from reality. However, knowing it’s AI-generated alters our perception. Where real footage would evoke awe at nature’s beauty, the generated version becomes just an extremely impressive tech demo.

So what does this mean for art? GenAI can already create stunning works across writing, visual art, film, and music. Performing arts are also seeing virtual musicians, dancers, and painters emerge. Eventually, GenAI will be "better" than any human at any art form.
If art and beauty are in the eye of the beholder, does it matter? A virtual dancer performing a stunning, impossible choreography—is that comparable to a human dancer who’s spent a lifetime fine-tuning their body into the perfect instrument? If not, is beauty and art really just in the eye of the beholder then?

A seemingly unrelated story might shed some light. AlphaGo, an AI based on deep neural networks and reinforcement learning, shocked the world in 2016 by beating a world champion at Go, a game long considered too complex for computers. But AlphaGo had a limitation—it was trained on human games, using human data.

The next generation, AlphaZero, began with just basic knowledge of the game, played millions of games against itself, and gradually improved by learning from its own successes and mistakes. Within hours, AlphaZero surpassed AlphaGo's performance.

Did this lead us to watch AIs play Go or chess? No, we still prefer Magnus Carlsen being an as***le, throwing a tantrum whenever he loses. AlphaZero’s achievements have inspired human players, not replaced them.

Here's my (not so serious) prediction: GenAI will get better and better at creating art. At some point, human training data won't be enough, and ArtZero will be born—starting from scratch and mastering art purely through self-play. The human audience, unable to fully grasp it, becomes the limitation and has to be replaced by AIs trained to appreciate art on a superhuman level. Eventually, ArtZero will produce the best movies, the best music, and the best art ever—refined to a level beyond what any human can appreciate.

And we imperfect humans will be back at enjoying other imperfect humans creating imperfect masterpieces, inspired by that which is beyond human comprehension.

But that’s just my take—what do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

15/10/2024

From Johan Belin
The Internet is a lonely place. Isn’t that weird? 8 billion people in the world, 5 billion online daily, and the average time spent is 7 hours a day (according to ChatGPT, which “can make mistakes”...). At any given moment, more than one billion people are online. It should be buzzing with life—but it isn’t. You can traverse the digital wilderness forever without meeting a single soul.

You see the traces, though. Someone was here before—liked a video, posted a meme, wrote a comment. But the traces are cold, and there's no one to be seen. A YouTube video can have millions of views, but you’re still watching it alone. It’s like arriving at a party after everyone has left. Isn’t that weird?

It partly has to do with time. Reality flows naturally, but most of the Internet isn’t real-time—it's disconnected. You post something; a friend comments a bit later. It’s separated in time. Posting is a lonely activity—it’s just you and the screen, no other human. Same with the comment. It’s not like having a coffee with a friend—it’s not a conversation.

It partly has to do with space. I love museums. A bunch of strangers in a building, no one talking, but they’re there for the same reason, sharing an experience. You can’t be truly lonely if you’re sharing something. Not "like" or "view," but share.

The physical world is a shared experience by default. Most of the digital world is designed to be lonely—but it doesn’t have to be. Digital doesn’t have some intrinsic limit on human connection. I’ve never met most of my coworkers in real life, but we’ve worked together for years. Last month, I met for the first time after 7 years—it felt completely natural, just a bit less pixelated.

The first step in making the digital world a shared one is acknowledging the value it would bring. It’s a mindset. Just as an example, think about the difference between "views" and "viewing." The first is an unrelatable metric, the second is actual human beings. Apply that to every design decision, and we’re on the way to making the Internet a less lonely place.

But that’s just my take—what do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

09/10/2024

From Johan:
Almost a lifetime ago (2010?) I wrote an article titled “The future is interactive”. It made the case that interactivity would eventually become ubiquitous, that literally every thing, digital and physical, would interact with you, with natural, organic, two way interaction.

From the article, a scene from the future:
someone stands in front of an ad on a digital signage, Minority Report style, confused, waving their arms in a funny way. “why isn’t it reacting to me, is it broken?”
I predicted a future where things were not dead, static boxes of junk, they were responsive, reactive, personalized, almost alive. I wrote “maybe not in ten years, but eventually will everything be interactive”.

Generative AI is changing the game in certain areas. Search (static) is replaced with chat (interactive) which allows digging deeper into a subject. Claude allows iterative improvement of e.g. a text as an artifact, ChatGPT has introduced similar functionality. Image, video, music models will eventually allow the same iterative process with more and more fine grained control. Prompt engineering will no longer be a thing, instead the final result is created in a collaborative, conversational way. There isn’t really an end to it.

While the creative process is becoming truly interactive, its output is not, it is still static, unresponsive, generic, dead. We are still passive consumers of content in our feeds. We are still not involved.

Generative AI is showing how natural it feels when things are responsive, reactive, personalized, almost alive. The speed of innovation is mind boggling, so truly interactive experiences driven by AI are most likely closer than we think.

But what will that actually mean? How will this affect media channels, story telling, technology, and more? Please let me know what you think!

04/10/2024

Did you know... that the phrase “Play Now” is clicked over 100 billion times a year by gamers worldwide? That’s a lot of instant gaming gratification!

Ready to click “Play Now” on something new? www.dinahmoelabs.com

25/07/2024

We are thrilled to announce the launch of the new Tonecraft. Our one of a kind music application that lets you build music! Craft unique soundscapes, transform your ideas into audio masterpieces.

Tonecraft; the ultimate interactive music game by Dinahmoe. Build, explore, and create your own musical landscapes.

19/06/2024

This is probably the oldest “news” I have ever posted! After 12 years without any love and care we have finally moved Dinahmoe Labs to a new server, now with https(!).

According to its metadata Dinahmoe Labs delivers "Cool musical games and fun audio experiments!": classics like Plink (the original), Tonecraft, Rick Astley Remixer, ThEME (the generative music engine from This Exquisite Forest). It still attracts a couple of thousand users per week, some of them real hardcore fans.

And maybe, just maybe, there will be some updates in the close future…

Cool musical games and fun audio experiments!

31/10/2023

Are you in need of a spine-chilling wordmark design that'll haunt your competitors? 🦇 Don't miss this haunted opportunity! 🎃 http://thingfish.design
Thingfish

21/12/2020

Can 2021 get worse?
Dinahmoe presents: The Wheel of Misfortune
Perfect Christmas gifts to cure depression!
www.canitgetworse.com

Legends say there's a wheel up in the sky that decides our fate. Spin the wheel and see what 2021 is going to bring, you might get a pleasant surprise.And don’t forget to buy a gift for someone that needs cheering up.

31/10/2019

happy

07/07/2019

New issue of Battery: how to increase the number of ideas, not by producing ten times more ideas on the same silly problem, but by increasing the number of “problems” that screams for attention.
https://battery.dinahmoe.com/battery003/

Stating the obvious: some ideas are definitely worse than others. Like buying the Brooklyn Bridge or choosing plastic surgeon on price alone (no pics). And then there are the great ones, the wheel, the Negg, the abolition of slavery just to name a few. Also quite obvious: we want more of the good on...

04/04/2019

If you are interested in producing voice apps, here is the first in a series of articles. https://medium.com/dinahmoe/how-to-build-conversation-friendly-voice-apps-that-wont-kill-you-d39a7e8010a9

Voice is the future — here’s what to do while waiting