Personal Reflections on Technologies and the Study of African Art

A few of us remember Hal, the fictional AI character that takes control of the spaceship Discovery One in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hal1 was not friendly when the protagonist of the film interacted with him. He took over, refusing to cooperate with human “passengers.” The character was capable of performing tasks we recognize as AI (artificial intelligence) today: speech recognition, simulated speech, peforming visual input processing such as facial recognition, processing natural language (among other aptitudes), and even lip-reading. (He also was “naturally” ascribed a gender identity.) He assumed control against the will of humans who created him. Hal was said to have been created in 1992. Interestingly, many digital tools we use today were introduced about the same time: the World Wide Web, H-NET, PowerPoint, smartboards, learning management systems like Blackboard, JSTOR, and others.Although my university is agog about AI and plans to hire some 100 new faculty with AI experience,2 I have not paid much attention to it until now. However, recent communication from MIT Press Journals, distributor of African Arts, advised the African Arts editorial consortium:I had never heard of ChatGPT, but that plea (and recent uses of digital technology linking me to individuals and groups in Nigeria) made me process in my own mind the effects technology has had on our disciplines since I began studying African art fifty-seven years ago. In 1993, the World Wide Web was made public, greatly altering ways life is lived and making a profound impact on disciplines investigating African creative arts.4 And with the introduction of AI and the fear of higher education being turned “upside down” as the MIT email suggests, should we fear an academic version of Hal?5Allow me to muse over ways technology has had a bearing on my own studies and think in terms of where digital communication may lead. I look at the trickle of new technologies half a century ago, the ensuing flood of media and means of communication during ensuing several decades, and dire predictions presently being made.I first introduce an image I took in 1973 (Fig. 1). I stood on a street in Ọ̀wọ̀, Nigeria. A seemingly endless procession of middle-aged men dressed in handwoven drapes passed. Using my Canon camera, I snapped many images, not knowing who individuals were, what roles they played within their age grade, who they would become, or how they would be remembered. Fifty years later, because of digital communication, I can identify four of the men and can piece together arcs of their lives.I did not even know if the image would come out. A half century ago in Nigeria, colored film had to be mailed back to the United States for processing. It would not be until I returned that I would know if that shot was successful or not. Today digital photography, even on cell phones, reveals the quality of the photograph immediately, and it is shareable instantly by email, social media, or “the cloud.”I begin with the photograph for another reason. After hearing my paper on Ọ̀wọ̀ textiles, Joanne Eicher asked to use the image for a book. I mailed the 35mm slide; her publisher processed the image; the slide was returned by mail.6 Today, a jpg could be sent directly to Joanne or her publisher by various means.Numerous technological changes have taken place over several decades, changing ways we plan research, manage projects, take notes, store images, analyze observations and images, interact with communities and friends in Africa, communicate with colleagues, share information in publications and exhibitions, and teach.7 When I began graduate study, Roy Sieber admonished, “Think outside the box.” We challenged old “art-versus-craft” assumptions, investigated body art, discussed languages and culture and corresponding style regions.8 One discussion was pertinent to questions addressed here. Although the internet did not exist, computers were a fact, one we were aware of, but which seemed distant from everyday uses.9 As computer technology began to be acknowledged, Sieber challenged us to think of ways we might use it for our own purposes.In response, Judy Perani studied Fortran and spent a summer at the British Museum, using calipers to record every possible measurement of hundreds of ibeji figures. Her hypothesis: within a regional style area, figures share similar proportions. Analysis of measurements of an unknown figure might correlate with data for proportional dimensions of hundreds of known objects, allowing for approximate placement of the figure in geography.The myriad ways digitization and computer technology have enhanced our jobs and possible ways we have harnessed it were beyond our imagination then. Keeping up with technology is challenging. Preparing for field research, we bought the latest Canon cameras, learned to shoot colored Kodachrome for 35mm slides,10 bought the latest cassette recorders to record interviews, and negotiated tapes from Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University. Yet our applications for funding, requests for references, negotiations for African affiliations, visa applications, letters of introduction to host communities—all were handwritten or typed and delivered by mail or airmail.Once in the host community, letters back home took two weeks via airmail. Assuming the receiving party had other duties and took a week or so to respond, and with two more weeks passing back over the Atlantic, at least a month and a half passed before communication was complete.11An abundance of bibliographical material on uses of new media exists addressing issues of employing developing technology to research, analyze, write, publish, and communicate (Edmond 2020: 1). Until recently, most publications addressing digital technology and humanities research addressed modes of publication and “open access,” questioning the applicability of such publications to tenure and promotion decisions and peer review. Now concerns have changed dramatically. A plethora of information appears day to day about AI, which offers functional advances but also grave concerns, not only for academics but for everyone. ChatGPT is of exceptional concern in the context of academic teaching and publications.12While I was living in Nigeria, there was no possibility of using digital technology. After all, Xerox Alto had made its debut only the year before, playing a major role in developing technological advances.13 In 1973, cyber technology useable by individuals was in its infancy. That was the year of the first cell phone call and the invention of fiber optic technology. But none was available to individuals, especially if one were somewhere in Nigeria.14It was not until my return to the United States that digital technology was even mentioned in terms of my work. An engineer friend asked if I would use computer analysis for my data. I smirked. How could someone in humanities possibly use computer technology? In 1975, I could barely imagine how that would be possible. Every page from twenty hand-scrawled notebooks required notation on 3x5 cards, taking a year just to index.15When I finally decided on a topic and began drafting the dissertation, “cut and paste” was a literal procedure, not a computer process. After noting ideas, I analyzed paragraphs. If an idea seemed better placed elsewhere, I snipped it and Scotch-taped it into a new place. In the process of typing, my wife and I used the very latest technology—a rented electric typewriter with no “erase” feature. Footnote space calculations were determined by counting words and lines.16A computer and word processing software would have helped! Word processing systems date to the 1960s, but personal computers were introduced only in 1977. It would be another decade before they were somewhat common. When they were, we suffered an abundance of software/hardware systems. My first attempt at using a computer to develop ideas was in 1983, when Ellen Elsas and I worked on the first exhibition of African art for the Birmingham Museum of Art.17 Some work we conducted via telephone. Most communication was through written, mailed letters. On occasion, I traveled to Birmingham. As Ellen took control of her new personal computer, I dictated. She entered ideas into an early word processing system, likely WordStar. Because of possibilities of crashes and losing our work, we saved documents after every sentence.My art history colleague John Ward had an early personal computer—Kapro—for calculating grades on a spreadsheet. When he and my colleagues requested a computer to share, our chair laughed. How can art historians use computers? When he was introduced to a system at an administrative conference, he purchased one for himself, along with another for all art historians to share. Digital DECmate was not compatible with any other system. Its WPS-8 word processing program required a five-inch floppy disc inserted in one slot, document disc into another. We rolled its awkwardly large cart among offices. As I received Janet Stanley's printed bibliographies from the Warren Robbins Library, work-study students entered each issue's titles onto discs according to country and people.18After I learned Digital DECmate's word processing system, my son needed an Apple IIe for fourth grade, which used another program—AppleWrite. Then our dean decided to provide the historians space on his IBM Office/36 system, using a completely different word processing system—Display-Write 36. Eventually we had PCs requiring WordPerfect, and finally Word. Each technological advance left carefully worked material behind on five-inch floppy discs or three-inch discs, no longer accessible on new hardware and software.By then, the internet had come into being, making email possible. While Sieber visited as Harn Eminent Scholar for a year in 1995-96, he chided me for constantly checking email. But to be able to communicate with colleagues across the country and receive answers in an hour seemed superior to week-long “snail mail” waits.With the internet, listservs allowed exchange of information and “hive mind” interaction. In 1992, Michigan State introduced H-Net. This interdisciplinary forum for scholars in humanities opened some 180 channels, among them “H-Africa” and “H-AfrArts” dedicated to cultures of Africa. Announcements of books, reviews, exhibitions, job announcements, address-tracking for colleagues, or mere questions for the “hive mind” seemed a tremendous step forward in technology!19In 1988 I had proposed a Roundtable, “Text Possibilities for African Art,” for Chicago ASA meetings. I developed a questionnaire about current readings and whether these were successful. I requested copies of syllabi from every person teaching courses on African art in the United States and England—in art history, anthropology, and history. I asked how ideal textbooks might be organized. After these were mailed, “snail mail” responses trickled in. The result was the appointment of an ACASA textbook committee that met at CAA meetings, ACASA Triennials, and ASA until Monica Visonà and I took on the task of writing. We persuaded Suzanne Blier and Skip Cole to join us and eventually recruited Michael Harris to provide a chapter on the Diaspora. Rowland Abiodun agreed to write a preface.When we started organizing sections and chapters and writing drafts, the postal service was necessary, then emails. As we progressed, we could eventually attach short Word documents. Near the end, we attached entire chapters as well as images, transported instantly to editors in London.20Toward the end of our work on the textbook, Jehanne Teilhet-Fisk, my colleague at Florida State, underwent surgery. So that I could teach her class, technicians at both universities worked out a system whereby I could sit at my desk and speak to students in Tallahassee. They rolled a huge monitor into my office and jerry-rigged a camera and mic atop it. A similar monitor was rolled to the front of a classroom in Tallahassee where students saw me as I spoke. A mic was planted in the center of the classroom. The TA, Kara Morrow, projected slides I sent to FSU Media Specialist Jean Hudson. It was a primitive form of distance teaching, preceding Zoom by more than a decade.By the time A History of Art in Africa was published in 2000, I was aware of other technologies that further influenced interactions with students and colleagues. For decades, lectures and talks were supported by 35mm slides.21 But PowerPoint appeared. It had been introduced in 1990, but art historians balked at using it because slide images were superior to pixelated digitized images. But when pixels became minimized, PowerPoint presentations became commonplace. Presentations were burned onto CDs or DVDs— convenient ways to transport information to class or to conferences. Not only did I take lectures to class on CD, but I required Chris Roy and Linda McIntyre's CD-ROM Art & Life in Africa as supplemental reading.22 Soon presentations could be carried on USB drives.23Eventually, digital systems allowed one to invite guest speakers to give classroom talks. Through another technological development, Skype, Allen and Polly Roberts interacted with my graduate seminar on the evolution of exhibitions. Osi Audu visited my undergraduate classroom virtually when I addressed inner and outer head concepts in Yoruba art, talking about the impact of that idea on his own art.The ways digital media function in teaching contexts are many. Some made their appearance just before I retired, and a number I never experienced. Our School of Art and Art History could not afford some— like interactive whiteboards.24 Others were optional, and given my approaching retirement, I chose not to participate.Interactive whiteboards or smartboards were introduced in the early 1990s. An LCD screen connected to a computer allowed material on the internet to be shared with the class. Previously such material would have been projected by overhead projector, copied for distribution, or put on reserve. By the late 1990s another technical innovation was introduced—learning management systems such as Canvas and Blackboard. These were required as colleges tried to provide what they considered better learning environments.25 Such web-based platforms allowed instructors not only to plan courses but also to evaluate student performance and to monitor student participation. Learners collaborated with fellow class members. Such programs integrated technological devices such as smartphones and personal laptops.26My next book project after the 2008 second edition of A History of Art in Africa was Africa in Florida, which Amanda Carlson and I worked on.27 An internet call for participating scholars brought replies from Europe, Mexico, and Japan, as well as the United States. While we used a number of digital procedures we had learned in other projects such as those for A History of Art in Africa, search engines were now available. Finding obscure references to topics that interested us was simplified by rapid searches.28Toward the end of work on Africa in Florida, we ran into a wall when we were denied rights for images by a theme park discussed in one chapter. Although Amanda had taken the photographs, they refused to grant permission. We met with the publisher and university counsel. Both advised playing safe with the litigious corporation. Amanda suggested using QR codes.29 By using the new technology, readers could scan the code, be taken to specific images on the corporation's site, relayed from a site Amanda maintained. Since one theme park required QR codes, all others in the chapter were provided codes.30Africa in Florida led to Kongo across the Waters. I proposed to Susan Cooksey and Rebecca Nagy an exhibition at the Harn Museum acknowledging five hundred years of people of African descent in Florida. We focused on one Central African group, Kongo, its cultural impact in Africa, and its influence in North America. When Royal Museum for Central Africa Director General Guido Gryseels visited, Rebecca, Susan, and I invited him to lunch. He endorsed our plans and offered to collaborate, making the entire Kongo collection in Tervuren available. On our second visit to Belgium, Gryseels named Hein Vanhee to work as co-curator. Hein came to Gainesville for a month of collaboration. When he returned home, Skype allowed Hein, Susan, and me, along with our graduate assistant Carlee Forbes, to meet weekly to discuss progress.In addition to using Skype, we made use of another advance. In past projects, sharing files meant copying files to a disc that was mailed or sending emails with attachments. Of course, there were size limits on email attachments. Dropbox was a convenient way to transfer files. File-sharing services have played a major role in academic partnerships.31My 1970s submissions to African Arts were mailed, a print copy accompanied by colored slides and black-and-white prints. Editorial comments were mailed back. When Leslie Jones first started as editor in 2004, authors could still submit papers in hard copy-plus-disc by mail or by emailing Word documents. A decade later, in July 2014, UCLA began using Box. The journal stores and shares submissions immediately with editors and reviewers. In 2019 the submission system changed to include a form through UCLA that uploads to Dropbox so images can be submitted as individual files.Other changes for the journal came when MIT Press Journals began distributing African Arts in late 2003, when the journal was print-only. Because of financial problems, UCLA urged going electronic, and electronic-only. Considering options (and in consultation with MIT), African Arts determined that electronic publication couldn't handle the required high-resolution, image-heavy content. When Leslie took on art direction in 2007, she used InDesign for layout, solving some of the high-resolution issues. MIT recommends that a market for the print edition still exists, but as of vol. 40, both print and electronic editions were offered. Today, there are few print subscribers. Most read the journal through electronic aggregators (Project Muse, JSTOR, EBSCO).32Although COVID was a gut-wrenching disaster, it led to further uses of digital technology when quarantines began in spring 2020. Museums closed. For example, the Harn Museum cancelled the opening of Susan Cooksey's exhibition Peace, Power, and Prestige along with a lecture by Babatunde Lawal.32 Meanwhile, classes and meetings had to be canceled until alternate means of meeting were discovered. The final product for Zoom had become available by 2013, and Zoom became the preferred means of teaching classes, presenting guest speakers, and offering “webinars” during the pandemic. By the time COVID was somewhat tamed, hybrid meetings allowed the choice of attending in person or through Zoom.33 I joined Facebook only to track down a Caribbean artist with whom I had lost contact. My foray into social media was thus for academic purposes. After finding online articles I had published on Ọ̀wọ̀, descendants of my Ọ̀wọ̀ teachers tracked me down and brought me into the “Ọ̀wọ̀ Kingdom” FB group of some 24,000 members, all Ọ̀wọ̀ or Ọ̀wọ̀-diaspora except for me.34 I posted digitized color images from Kodachrome photographs I had taken in 1973. Individuals documented in images were identified and their histories traced. In sharing information I had collected back then, we collectively unraveled changes or disappearances of art types over the past half century. I communicate with numbers of individuals and interact almost daily with Tunde Onibode, an Ọ̀wọ̀ man who has a deep love of Ọ̀wọ̀ history and culture. He can poll the elders on any given subject. He and I have now coauthored two articles about change over that fifty-year period.35The Ọ̀wọ̀ Kingdom group, over a thousand Ọ̀wọ̀ FB friends, and two FB groups called “The Nigerian Nostalgia Project” give me glimpses of Nigeria. In addition, Nigerian artists have “friended” me, and Africanist acquaintances in Europe, Africa, and the United States post occasionally on shared interests in African visual culture.Other types of digital media enhance staying current on matters of African art. Collections of images and maps are easily accessible. JSTOR, conceived in 1994 for university and college libraries to provide space for ever-increasing amounts of published scholarship, makes some 2,800 academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences available. In the late 1990s, as PowerPoint superseded slide projection, university visual resource centers and libraries began converting slides into digital images, and instructors scanned images for themselves. The online database Artstor addressed the ever-growing need for shared online images, making more than 2.5 million images available.Most of these advances served us well as they were introduced. More recent changes present questions. Are they really useful, or will they eventually be harmful? AI is rapidly developing, and most universities are examining its uses. But what does this new technology mean to us?On the positive side, algorithms are being developed to detect what are referred to as deepfakes—whether images, text, videos, or audio. AI can detect if hardware has been changed, ascertain if something is missing that should be there, and discern modifications in hardware or software.Avi Staiman, founder and CEO of Academic Language Experts, states that “EAL (English as an Additional Language) authors face a particularly uphill climb trying to convey their novel findings in English, their second (and sometimes third or fourth) language.” Programs like ChatGPT would help ensure their study is written clearly in a compelling manner. He reminds us that we accept such tools as Grammarly, Writeful, and even Microsoft grammar checker and do not declare them as coauthors (Staiman 2023). He then asks, if ChatGPT is used only for language purposes, why would that need to be declared? Given that African Arts wants to encourage submissions from other countries, such use of AI might work to our advantage. Although Staiman was addressing the uses of ChatGPT for science research, his suggestions could be applied to the humanities, “to help write systematic reviews, complete literature searches, summarize articles, and discuss experimental findings.”On the negative side, especially in undergraduate teaching, such AI systems have become another “papermill,” providing students a way around the learning experiences of researching, developing hypotheses, organizing ideas, and using words to develop compelling arguments.36But fears go beyond student cheating. In March 2023, hundreds of prominent artificial intelligence experts, tech entrepreneurs, and scientists signed an open letter calling for a pause on the development and testing of AI technologies so risks can be properly studied (Knight and Dave 2023). Matt O'Brien noted that what started out as a panic among educators about the chatbot's use in student cheating has expanded to broader concerns about the ability of the latest crop of “generative AI” tools to mislead people, spread lies, violate copyright protections and upend some jobs (O'Brien 2023b). Geoffrey Hinton, referred to as the “Godfather of AI,” left Google in order to warn of the “dangers” of the technology powering popular chat bots (Metz 2023; Chatelain 2023).37 Hinton is not alone. Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, says it needs regulation because of its potential to spread misinformation (De Vynck 2023).On May 11, 2023, European Parliament lawmakers took a first step towards EU-wide regulation of artificial intelligence systems when committees on civil liberties and consumer protection called for curbs on how AI can be used in Europe, while still encouraging innovation (Burleigh 2023). The Biden Administration advocates an “AI Bill of Rights” to protect the American people from misuse of the technology (White House 2023). Throughout May 2023, information changed daily as governments met with AI specialists such as Altman and Hinton to come to grips with needs for regulation.38 The G7, composed of the world's seven most advanced economies, recognized the urgency of the situation at the May 19-21 summit in Japan, where they agreed to take a “risk-based” approach in navigating AI's uncertainty. Key areas they identified include: “acknowledging the importance of AI, balancing its risks and benefits, educating about AI and calling for ‘guardrails’ when it comes to AI” (Minevich 2023).Advances in technology have made our research, writing, and teaching easier, while it has also made us rethink how we research and how we teach. How will we respond to the most recent developments? Will we resist them, run from them, tame them, use them, or strictly forbid them? Perhaps more importantly, what new technologies lie ahead? How will governments regulate those that pose harm?This article was written in May 2023. Who knows where we will stand by the time it is published? Will “Hal” work cooperatively with us, or become a maniacal monster that seals our doom as he did in 2001: A Space Odyssey?