If you laugh at a joke, what difference does it make if subsequently you are told that the joke was created by an algorithm?
— Marcus du Sautoy, The Creative Code (the main quote on the Github page of the "Artsy" R Package 12)
It is true when taken at face value: why does it matter whether the art, jokes and so on that surround us are made by humans or not? Isn't the product the only thing that matters? My answer is that it matters, for several reasons, none of which will be that “human artists can't make any money otherwise” which isn't really an intrinsically valuable thing, because the economy itself isn't intrinsically important, it is what it leads to and promotes that matters. 13
Long story short, a society where no one makes art, jokes, dances, sings, writes poems and plays music is filled with soulless people. Of course for many, there is not even such a thing as a soul, and if you're one of them then feel free to stop reading and do something else. For others though, even if they call themselves atheists, they don't really have a problem with calling our world soulless, even if they can't quite point what it lacks, because something just feels ... wrong, empty, haunted by something we cannot see.
The fact that we look at art isolated from any context is a big part of the problem we're in. Which is to say, people only look at art as a final product, isolated from the environments it produces—to be surrounded by beauty or ugliness has a massive factor on how people live their life for instance 14—the people it shapes and ultimately, the community it forms, and this blindness to what has been lost makes sense because there is no such thing as community, or broadly speaking, a connected reality in the modern world. Just bits and pieces linked together with tunnels.
Museums are the epitome of this fragmentation of life, since art is now confined to an elitist container, utterly separate from regular life and people, which inevitably makes it cold and even alien in some way. As Darren Allen puts it in his discussion on Boredom: "Paintings in a museum are as sad as strippers". Art becomes an isolated thing, rather than being infused into our entire lives, the same way that “nature”, “comedy” and “spirituality” become their own separate realities.
This fragmentation further manifests itself into the separation between the artist and the “average person”. In modern times, it is essentially the norm to find people who are pure technicians, and do not engage in any shape or form with literature, poetry, music, dancing, singing, sculpting, visual arts, and so on. The reason given then is that people do not have the time to pursue such interests, and that is true to some extent, 15 but again, this highlights the same fragmentation of reality, here caused by hyperspecialization. Because art is now a specialized discipline that only “serious artists” can pursue, most people stop engaging with it altogether once they grow out of childhood.
And what type of people does a system obsessed with fitting humans to the quest of “the right answer” create? Automatons who cannot stand up for themselves, who merely do as they're told to survive in an increasingly complex world, and who express very little unique quality in their life, what they do, and even their face. 16
It would appear on the surface that technologies for AI generated art would empower the average person, because it means that anyone can be an artist. But what happens in practice? There is the obvious but still important aspect that such technologies make people utterly dependent on them, which sooner or later will become paid considering how expensive it is to train and expand the models. I won't expand more on this because this point applies to all complex technology, and I won't repeat the usual critique about our dependence on machines. 17
But the aspect I want to examine is the following: someone might try to generate a few things on Midjourney, but does that mean they suddenly have the creative spirit of someone like Van Gogh, who was able to push through incredibly tough financial hardships for most of his life in order to produce his art? Of course not, but then again, comparing oneself to some of the greatest is a rather unfair thing to do, and the pursuit of art shouldn’t be reserved to only the people who are willing to devote their entire life to it, but my point is that it does not fundamentally change people.
If someone is a boring, apathetic consumer who can only process reality as a series of isolated bits, rather than a coherent, mysterious flow of qualities, then that's what they will get, no matter what fancy tools—those really are machines, again see the previous footnote—is put into their hands. Which is to say, I expect anyone who plays around with AI generated art to either be bored with it within a few months, or use it in a purely technical way, as in generating a bunch of thumbnails quickly in order to get the ones that will generate the most clicks for whatever they want to promote.
There were time periods where art was valued for its ability to transform people, both the artists but also the audience. Not in a quantitative way of being “better”, which is what the machine-world constantly pushes—increasing efficiency and the performance of its parts, including human beings as part of the system—but rather as a way to open individuals to a greater Reality. Artists for instance were thought of as channels to the inspiration of God or the Universe, and for instance, thinking of art as “self-expression” was a rather weird idea in those times. 18
Such a broader Reality however is not acceptable within a system which must control every aspect of life, and such transformations would seriously disrupt the process of turning human beings into the automatons needed to maintain the system—as can be seen by the fact that children enter Life full of aliveness and curiosity, and slowly get apathetic, traumatized, and internally dead, as they go through school.
And so this is why human artists matter, not because art itself as a form matters—the fact that it exists is a sign that our lives themselves are not art, and I would say the latter is ultimately what is valuable—but because human beings matter, and artists point to us what life can hold for us when we connect with something Larger than just the shell of our selves.
Such a Reality is not just unacceptable to the system, as mentioned above, it is also utterly useless to it. Why does it matter if we live in an ugly world if things run smoothly? Why does it matter if people are alienated and lack any community, as long as we can coordinate entire countries together and make the GDP go up? Why does it matter if people are going insane if the machines we build can solve all of our problems anyway?
Indeed why? Within the machine, art isn't needed, and neither are human beings really, at least not most of them, only those who can fit themselves into suitable shapes for the system. So why worry about all this? Let's just drop the petty human concerns and accept the future. Why fight the rise of machines, when we could welcome them? The reason why is that one day, the machine will stop. 19 And at that point, there won't be any escape from Reality, there will only be Reality.
7 This one is interesting because women tend to be far more agreeable than men so in a way they are “better” at fitting in institutions. But problems inevitably manifest in their inner lives if they decide to compromise on themselves, which is why modern women are often considered moody or drama queens, have severe eating disorders, have life-crippling depression which they cope with using social media, the internet, food or drugs, feel constantly anxious, and overall harbor a deep sense of shame. They have a visceral feel that something is wrong but instead of seeing the system and its games for what they are, women try to fit themselves inside that unreal world regardless, which can only end poorly. Of course all these symptoms occur in modern men too, but men have more options to escape from this reality by 1) putting all their attention in their career 2) engaging in surrogate activities like sports, video games, and whatever new thing the modern world can manufacture. Men are simply better at distracting themselves, and better at being alone too, so they handle the unreal nature of the modern world “better” in a way. But of course men and women are ultimately wild beings, and nothing wild can survive within the fences of the modern zoo, which must castrate and domesticate all humans in order for them to stay compliant.
8 Unless this wasn’t clear, sensitivity is absolutely a strength, but not within the modern world. Sensitive people are more empathic, more receptive to art and love and thus better at expressing those in their creativity. But within the modern world, it becomes a curse which makes people highly sensitive to the dysfunctions and suffering in our society, far more prone to people-pleasing, and so it creates the all too familiar archetype of the woman who keeps giving to everyone around her but who receives nothing in exchange, and who might eventually swing all the way to the other end: the incredibly cold and cruel woman who has decided that all men are trash and the only way forward in society is to give all power to women rulers. A tragic tale really.
9 For more on that subject, see also these essays: The Pastiche of paradise by Darren Allen and The Age of average.
10 See his essay on how Video games are not an artform
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2024-10-27