This week’s editorial musings
421 funding artists 421 Arts Campus in Abu Dhabi has named the seven artists selected for its 2024-25 capacity-building programmes – Alla Abdunabi, Ana Escobar and Juma Alhaj in the Artistic Development Program; Shama Al Hamed, Adrian Pepe, Yousif Abdulsaid and Farah Soltani as artists-in-residence. The programmes give the artists funding, resources and mentoring to work on “major projects that explore contemporary and critical issues related to the region”.
Apply here Our Opportunities page is also listing a current 421 open call for Artistic Research Grants – up to AED 75,000 for “practice-based research investigating contemporary social questions through interdisciplinary methodologies and active engagement with the researcher’s community”.
There are a couple of new listings on the page, incidentally, including the chance to pitch a business idea at the next Al Quoz Creative Entrepreneurship Forum. You should be an early-stage business with a specific idea that fits the Forum’s (extremely broad) definition of ‘creative’.
Last year’s event, the first, was really successful; and while winning the pitch won’t provide a ton of cash (first place gets you AED 50,000) it all comes in handy – and the discipline of documenting an idea for the pitch is itself useful. Deadline is 31 August. We don’t know exactly when the Forum will be, but last year it was in November …
Reach for the stars Louvre Abu Dhabi has come up with an interactive game for kids aged 6 to 12 – hunt around the galleries, answer clues and solve puzzles, identify pieces.
The game, called The Secret of the Dome Stars, is quite wordy to get started; the handholding character (a desert fox called Volpi) is a bit static; the voiceovers are a tad stiff and/or actory; and to complete the whole thing we reckon you’ll need at least 40 minutes. But overall it’s a lot of fun, genuinely engaging and with some clever tricks (point your camera at an object you’re looking for and the app will confirm whether you’ve got the right one). It’s a web app, available via this link or from QR codes in the museum, so there’s no need for a download. It’s free, of course, and comes in Arabic, English, and French.
Five stars for the idea, four for the implementation. More like this, please.
AI wants you Data scraping is one of the biggest issues in AI right now, at least from the personal point of view – tech companies are already running out of data for building AI models, so they’re claiming that anything on the internet is fair game including stuff you might have thought was (a) private or (b) yours. It’ll be years before clear, internationally enforceable rules are in place (though things are better in the EU and UK, at least, thanks to relatively strict data protection regimes). In the meantime, if you don’t want to let Meta train its AI on your Facebook, Instagram, Threads or WhatsApp posts, here’s a helpful guide to DIY opting out.
Tik boxes Market researchers Ipsos have apparently released a report about TikTok’s impact on consumer behaviour (we say “apparently” because we haven’t been able to find it, and TikTok’s PR agency didn’t respond to our enquiries). It suggests that 80% of MENAT consumers are influenced to purchase after watching TikTok content, and more than half make unplanned purchases. “[TikTok] is more than just entertainment,” said the GCC head of Ipsos. “It’s a powerful tool driving actions, shaping preferences, and boosting purchases.” This is presented as a good thing.
If you want to search for it yourself, the report is called ‘TikTok’s Made Me’.
Oddities Catwoman, deus ex machina, parishioner, pyromania, scuba. Which is the odd one out?
Walking in circles Last week we asked you if walking around a circle of radius 10,000km, would you walk roughly 62,800km (2πr)? Well, of course not. The earth’s diameter is only 40,075.017 km. You can’t walk in space, can you?
Things we didn’t know, no.94 Most Americans call gifs “jifs”, the rest of us call gifs “gifs”.
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