Arts & entertainment – Oriol Salvador

From MySpace to AI: Who gets to generate art?

If everyone can generate something that looks like art, will we continue to value the people who spent years learning how to make it?

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, technologies to produce art digitally became increasingly affordable, while new platforms made it possible for creative work to be distributed and discovered online without relying on the traditional gatekeepers of the arts and entertainment industry.

It was the era of bedroom musicians getting discovered after posting songs on MySpace, independent filmmakers building audiences by publishing their work on YouTube and Vimeo, and photographers, illustrators and designers developing their craft while sharing it through Instagram.

Having more democratic access to creative tools did not replace creativity. It expanded who could participate in it. The barriers to creating became dramatically lower, but creating still required skill and knowledge. The tools still had to be mastered. Behind every artist were countless hours spent learning a craft before anyone was paying attention.

Fast forward to 2026, and anyone with a subscription to ChatGPT or another generative AI platform can generate something that resembles a song, an illustration, a screenplay or even a video in a few minutes.

Notice that I said generate, not create.

Where is the Christmas music in Spotify Wrapped?

Here’s what Spotify doesn’t count and why, plus a holiday playlist.

Since December 2016, the Swedish music streaming platform Spotify has been ending every year with an annual campaign-turned cultural moment known as Spotify Wrapped, a development from the Year in Music campaign in 2015.

The product is simple, and extremely effective: a personalized playlist of your most listened music, that comes with creative insights on your most played artists, genres, or what your music listening habits say about you.

And every year users fill social media feeds with the results.

You can even get roasted for your music taste.

‘Add Yours’ sticker template to share events on Instagram

How to generate a virtual shared experience on Instagram Stories using this feature to enhance user engagement during an event.

Instagram’s “Add Yours” sticker template enables users to pin elements of an Instagram Story before publishing, allowing other users to share their own versions of it, including text, emojis, videos, or photos.

This sticker has become very popular on Stories feeds, with users sharing their favourite movies, personal traits and causes they support.

When working managing social media for a music event earlier this year, I started ruminating the idea of using this sticker, both for us and for active social media users (artists, delegates and regular festival-goers) that were going to use Instagram Stories to share their experience at the event.

The result was a success and the feedback was extremely positive.

Gord Downie y el oscuro pasado de Canadá

La música de The Tragically Hip y principalmente de su líder y letrista, Gord Downie, es clave para entender el rock alternativo de Canadá y, más importante todavía, ha ayudado a reconciliar a la sociedad canadiense con uno de los episodios más tristes de su historia reciente: el abuso sistemático a su población aborigen.

Arcade Fire fueron uno de los nombres más destacados en los pasados premios Juno 2018, que anualmente reconocen los mayores logros musicales en Canadá. La banda de Montreal se llevó el premio al Álbum del Año por su Everything Now y el International Achievement Award, que reconocía la carrera de la que, hoy en día, es una de las bandas canadienses más conocidas en el mundo. La gala también reconocía a Gord Downie, desconocido internacionalmente, como Artista del Año.

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Andy Shauf, la magia del folk

Entrevista al artista canadiense Andy Shauf el dia después de su concierto en el Primavera Sound 2016, en Barcelona.

Tras su actuación ayer en el Auditori, Andy Shauf ha charlado un rato con nosotros horas antes de su segundo concierto en el Primavera Sound 2016, esta tarde en la Sala Teatre del Primavera a la Ciutat, en el Raval. El multiinstrumentista ha participado por partida doble en esta edición del festival presentando su primer disco “The Party”, publicado por Anti Records y cerrando así la gira europea que lo ha tenido ocupado las últimas semanas.

En la entrevista nos explica que prefiere el acogimiento de actuar en una sala como el Auditori a los grandes escenarios. Continue reading “Andy Shauf, la magia del folk”

Fanfarlo – “Let’s Go Extinct”

Fanfarlo busca el sentido a la humanidad.

En ‘Reservoir’ (2009), la banda londinense Fanfarlo presentó algunos temas épicos – como The Walls Are Coming Down, Ghosts o Fire Escape – con unos violines y trompetas beirutizadas que todavía resuenan en nuestra cabeza.

En ‘Rooms Filled With Light’ (2012), reemplazaron esos violines por sintetizadores y un imaginario inspirado en los clásicos de ciencia ficción.

Dos años después, en el recién salido ‘Let’s Go Extinct’ – del que ya escuchamos un prometedor anticipo hace unos meses con el EP ‘The Sea’ – parecen haber encontrado el equilibrio entre contenido y forma.

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“Ernest & Célestine”

Movie review of the French animated comedy-drama film Ernest et Célestine (2012), based on children’s books by the Belgian author and illustrator Gabrielle Vincent.

This is not the first time that anthropomorphized animals are used to show the glories and miseries of our society. The technique is as old as humanity and is tied close to a little mouse that became the icon for a major animation film company (and for the 20th century in general) or even further, with the earliest fairy tales.

In the traditionally crafted animated film Ernest & Célestine, it is shown through two main characters, a little mouse and a big bear, outsiders of their respective societies, living in parallel worlds on the surface and in the underground.

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‘A Little History’ of the Kamloops Film Festival

The Kamloops Film Society (KFS) originally started in 1972, when film fans gathered to watch and discuss classic and current cinema. First known as Cariboo College Film Club, they neramed as Kamloops Film Society in 1994, under the Societies Act, and focused on three significant types of cinema – independent, classic and foreign – shown in weekly series that eventually became seasonal.

In the early years, the Society independently booked films with distributors and booking agents directly but in 1994 they entered the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) film circuit. Before the Kamloops Film Festival became a reality, in the early 1990’s, a PR officer, from the local ski resort Sun Peaks, approached the KFS with the idea of bringing the best of the Vancouver Film Festival to Kamloops.

Meanwhile, a Vancouver organization called ‘Moving Pictures’ headed by John Duppong, began a travelling film festival throughout the BC interior. In 1992, Duppong approached the KFS for support on Shadows on The Wall: The Meeting of the Waters Film Festival, an event held over three days in two separate venues on opposite sides of the city.

The partnership continued and, in 1996, the third edition of ‘Moving Pictures’ The Travelling Canadian Film Festival stopped in Kamloops for the first time, March 29-31, and included Canadian and French dramatic film released from 1990 to 1995 plus documentaries and short films. Three film and short film directors featured in the festival – Michael Gibson (Defy Gravity), Gary Burns (The Suburbanators) and James Genn (Direct Lines) – were invited to the special event Short Cuts & Long Shots, a workshop about getting started in filmmaking.

A year after, the Kamloops Film Society took up the role of ‘Moving Pictures’ and organized their own first KFS Film Festival. From 1997 to 2000, the first editions of the festival brought to Kamloops movies from Canada, United States, Belgium, Italy, United Kingdom and Spain. Directors such as Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), Bruce Sweeney (Dirty) and Ryan Bonder (DayDrifit): producers like Rosamon Norbury (Better Than Chocolate) and actress Gabrielle Rose (The Five Senses) visited Kamloops, attended the showings and accepted Q&A periods.

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TRU Actors Workshop is ‘starving’

Review of the play Curse of the Starving Class, written by the American playwright and actor Sam Shepard in 1978 and performed by students of the Theatre program at Thompson Rivers University (TRU).

Playwright and actor Sam Shepard wrote the play Curse of the Starving Class in 1978 but in the words of Wesley Eccleston, a professor with the TRU theatre arts program, it is still relevant because “families still struggle with the (same) challenges.” Eccleston directs the production, which starts Feb. 28 at the Actors Workshop Theatre in Old Main.

The characters are part of the Tate family, a dysfunctional American family where the dad, Weston (Michael Hogg), spends long periods away from home and comes back drunk and aggressive while son, Wesley (Justin Hall), pees on the floor of the kitchen, daughter Emma (Allison Clow) plans her escape and mother Ella (Alley Barton) wonders how to work it out and go to Europe.

“These characters are starving for the things they think will make them happy,” Eccleston said.

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Vincent Moon c’est Creative Commons!

Profile of the independent filmmaker from Paris, the original creator of La Blogothèque’s Concert à Emporter (Take Away Shows).

Mathieu Saura, better known as Vincent Moon, is one of the greatest and more respected filmmakers you can find, nowadays, licensing his work under Creative Commons, allowing its use and remix for derivate works. His work is available for free on Internet, he is a nomade artist building an audience on social media and keeping his projects alive by donations (crowdfunding).

Early on his career – not using Creative Commons, yet – he became known adapting filmmaking style ‘cinema verité’ to document bands playing one or few songs off the stage, on acoustic, in streets, parks, flats… anywhere. This music video subgenre, that was known as ‘Concert à Emporter’, or Take Away Shows, started in La Blogothèque. The list of bands Moon’s lenses captured includes: Arcade Fire, Phoenix, REM, Sufjan Stevens, Andrew Bird, St. Vincent or Bon Iver.

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