We live in a world where every segment of knowledge is available at our fingertips. Each person is intertwined with each other, creating a web of connections. However this fast-paced environment has catalysed a yearning for our childhood, for simpler times and more meaningful relationships. Where our only online worries involved feeding a Tamagotchi or beating our best friend on Wii Sport.__
In this era of Etc., we explore this feeling through the concept of 8Digital Love9. From Charli XCX9s 8brat9 to the comeback of certain fashion trends, the clash of futuristic and nostalgic influences has never been so prevalent in the pop culture world. On page 4, our models explore this idea against the landscape of the age of Y2K, characterised by eclectic trends such as low-rise jeans, bejewelled Nintendos and cargo mini skirts.
We have a plethora of talented poets and writers in this issue, who viscerally navigate what it means to live in the digital age. This is captured through a variety of poems and works which explore bittersweet memories, cravings, the digital footprints of friendship and the significance of <waves and wires= to attachment. Despite the enhanced connectivity of a digital age, we are faced with increased threat from Artificial Intelligence on creative pursuits, which is investigated on page 17.
We also sat down with Cork9s newest band, MDR, to discuss their formation, influences and future in a thriving Cork gig scene. Our Creative Director, Stephen O9Brien, got the opportunity to chat to Grammy-nominated singer Chappell Roan before her Dublin show to discuss the influence of film on her music, amongst other topics.
I would like to extend a huge thank you to
Vice-Editor
I can’t wait for people to see this incredible issue of ETC Magazine. As both Vice-Editor of the magazine and Chairperson of PopSoc, ETC. is such an amazing addition to the society, that gives a creative outlet to our members. Chloe has been a phenomenal editor to have create the magazine this year, and the production of the magazine would have been absolutely lost without Stephen and Emer.
Creative Director
I’m glad to have been a part of the process of creating this issue! Helping Chloe with creating the look of the magazine, and especially in regard to the photoshoot, was a great experience that I’m grateful to have been given! I hope that people enjoy the output, as we thoroughly enjoyed the input!
Designer + Photographer
I'm thankful to have been the designer and photographer for ETC. Magazine this year. Working on the magazine team has been an incredible experience, and I’m so excited for everyone to see the hard work that has gone into this publication. Chloe has been a phenomenal editor, and I hope that her vision has been brought to life throughout the design of the magazine and that it will keep you turning from one page to the next.
The Digital
Dark Age
The first seven years of my life are captured on video camera,
In the albums under the TV in the sitting room,
My grandad’s singing voice is preserved in tapes, Singing folk songs that have been lost to time. The videos taken now, moments common as sand, Our castles we build so easily washed away with the tide Of obsolescence,
The photos taken of our great-grandparents, so many years ago, So rare and precious, and often, still around.
Our souls in our devices, laid bare for the whole world to see
But our grandchildren, I can hear my great aunt’s voice, faded, but still clear, On my nana’s record player, Talking to her family from across the seas.
But the records have grown silent, our voices aren’t there, In our enlightenment, our messages get lost amongst the masses,
Where our digital footprint is said to last forever. If nothing we keep is of physical matter, Does it really exist at all? sical matter,
by Ava Palmer
by Lavie Olupona
i heard there was a storm brewing in your mind, so i went to have a look, i peeled it back by the skin and what i found left me shook.
tossed away the apple core and nibbled at the seeds, delved a little deeper, searching for your habits, wantsNeeds. it left an itch i couldn't sedate, regardless of the drugs i consumed, that constant fix, the addiction, it was unnatural how it bloomed. so sweetly succulent, it was easy to fall- fall for its charms, convincingly. //
But it has bitten into the cravings of my it went too far for the threads to fuse my pretty puddle. and the yarn is grotesquely mutated, i've . lap.
BYCIANMULHEARNE
AI,ANDWHYI’MSO ANGRYATONEOF THE
BESTMOVIES OFTHEYEAR
I loved 8Late Night with the Devil9. I think it could have been one of the best horror movies I9ve seen. It9s got a fantastic air of dread and suspense to it that I think many horror movies reach for and fall short of. It9s got an incredible cast, including David Dastmalchian, whose performance, I hope, will catapult him into the many leading roles he is more than deserving of. It9s fantastically well-written, with an emotionally resonant story that has many genius set-ups and payoffs that all come together to form a rather ingenious ending. It9s also got some fantastic gore and effects, with multiple scenes demonstrating some really talented practical and make-up work.
All this, however, leads to a 8but9.
As much as I loved 8Late Night with the Devil9, I left the cinema quite angry at it. As some of you who may have been following the discussion surrounding the film may know, it has quite a lot of imagery that was <created= (I use that term very, VERY loosely – more on that later) by Generative Artificial Intelligence – GenAI.
GenAI is very simple. You feed it a prompt, it scours its database of images and art and it forms a combination based on the match you want. On the surface, that seems OK, right? Well, no. As I see it, there are three big problems with GenAI, especially as it pertains to its use in this movie. Number one: it9s incredibly ugly to look at. I was aware of the use of GenAI in this movie before I went in, but even if I hadn9t, it9s very easy to spot. The one in particular that caught my eye was the skeleton themed <We9ll Be Right Back!= card.
It would have looked so much better if you9d paid an artist to do it – which brings us nicely to point number two: by using GenAI for this task, you9re eliminating a job for a talented artist who could have made these pieces and done a better job than AI. For the sake of what, a few hundred bucks? We don9t know the budget of the film, but was it so tight that you just *HAD* to use AI?
Thethirdproblem(andprobablythemostimportant): GenerativeArtificialIntelligencestealsart. It9s been widely documented at this point that the datasets used by GenAI companies, such as OpenAI, do not discriminate between works in the public domain and those under protection by copyrights, licenses and such. Much scandal has arisen over GenAI bots such as ChatGPT having intricate knowledge of copyrighted work it has no legal business having access to. Multiple art sites, such as DeviantArt, have had to begin legally challenging the use of their users9 art in datasets used to train GenAI, because those putting together the datasets simply do not care to ask for permission from artists. Thisisbydesign;thosemakingandusingGenAIfundamentally donotseevalueinartorintheartiststhatproduceit.Theydo notbelieveinartasaformofexpression,thatcomesfroma placeofpassion.
They simply see art as a competition – something they can do better. No passion. No heart. No soul. They just see pixels on a screen. That9s the biggest problem with GenAI.
So, back to 8Late Night with the Devil9. In roughly the week since this backlash began, I9ve already seen dozens of posts on Twitter where artists showcase their own, better versions of the skeleton image. Referring back to my second problem with GenAI, these artists would have been delighted to do this work and have their name on such a high-profile film. If the budget was really an issue when it came to finding something to fill these gaps, I9m sure there were artists on staff who would have been happy to do a fun little 709s-inspired skeleton drawing for the film.
In addition to this, it9s a strange betrayal of the directors9 own artistic vision. For a production that9s so clearly trying to capture the feeling of a 709s late-night talk show, it9s very odd to settle for a poor imitation of the design language of this era. It9s not a lack of time that caused this either – film critic and journalist Rendy Jones pointed out on Twitter –<[8Late Night with the Devil9] had all this time between SXSW 2023 and now to hire a graphics artist=. There is no excuse, nothing that can make this unnecessary embarrassment any better.
As a result of the directors9 decision to use GenAI in the film, there has been a call amongst those online to take a stand and boycott this film. I, myself, agree with this sentiment – had I not had a free ticket to this movie thanks to my Omnipass subscription, I would not have seen this movie in cinemas
However, many people have pointed out that this boycott also means that the work of the extremely talented cast and crew risks going unappreciated. I, however, would counter that the fault lies on the directors of the movie. Cameron and Colin Cairnes made a fantastic movie and then made the idiotic, crass decision to ruin it by including GenAI art in the movie. It9s unfortunate that the resulting backlash will invariably affect the cast and crew too, but that cannot be the fault of the consumer deciding not to see something that contains material which actively harms art and artists alike. It can only be the fault of those who decided to put said material there in the first place.
8Late Night with the Devil9 should have been fantastic. It would perhaps have been one of my favourite horror movies ever, and it certainly would have been one of the best movies so far this year. It infuriates me that a movie I enjoyed this much could have been ruined by something so easily fixable. I wish I could recommend this movie, but we cannot afford to be lenient when it comes to the use of GenAI. It9s far too slippery a slope for there to be any hesitation in our rejection of it in our art.
POP! POP!POP!PO POP! POP! POP! POP!PO POP! P PO POP! POP! P! POP! POP! POP! POP! P P P POP!
INCONVERSATIONWITH
INCONVERSATIONWITH
Tell us about the formation of the band
Kenneth, the lead guitarist of MDR, can be the one to thank for the formation of this new Indie band. He first approached Kaitlyn with the idea of forming a band as he needed a lead singer and knew from working on various college projects together, that the two of them would work well as a musical pair. The two spent their summer writing and creating an original set list of songs before heading back to college in September of 2023. While in search of a bassist Kaitlyn looked outside of the music scene in Cork and was thankful to find that a friend from back home in Clonmel wanted to join in on their new project. Joseph joined the band shortly after the beginning of the college term. While playing as a 3-piece for a few weeks, Ken and Kaitlyn found out that their classmate Amy who originally played the guitar was hiding some amazing drumming skills. With the new addition of Amy, the band was complete and have been performing together since.
How would you describe your sound to someone who has never listened to the band?
Even though we are an Indie band our sound is quite eclectic which reflects each member’s personal music taste. For the most part, you can expect songs that really appeal to the coming-of-age aspect of life, but we also have songs that you can let your hair down to and just sit and groove to.
The digital footprints of a friendship: A short story by Heather
This little story, or extracts of conversations, was inspired both by the theme of this issue Digital Love and own real-life friendships. The idea was to explore the digital traces of our everyday communication and what it can reveal about our relationships. What the nature and frequency of short little sentences can tell us about the role we have in each other's lives outside of the digital world. Seemingly ordinary communication which has frozen in time, and when added up can tell a whole story.
