The Challenge of Trying to Explain What "Art" Is to a World Cursed by AI and Social Media
Artists live in a liminal space between "Heaven" and "Hell," so when we're not being uncomfortably worshiped, we're trying to avoid being burned at the stake.
Conversations about Art are frequently challenging.
For a huge chunk of the industrialized world, “Art” is sometimes perceived as a useless and elitist luxury—most frequently by those caught up in living life solely on a Transactional Level. Many societal norms are defined by people largely focused on remaining so busy that they never have time to consider why they feel so fucking miserable. In most settings, Commerce and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) tend to be the focus in a majority of discussions about what it means to be “successful.” This sometimes relegates the Arts to existing as a distant Mental Aftertaste, much like the unholy sensation one experiences about 30 minutes or so following consuming an overpriced and greasy Mystery Meat Burrito and after an impulsively motivated shopping spree.
There is a coherent argument to be made that few people actually understand what “Art” is, and that the few that do are most often artists. Stand-up comics joke about “Art” as existing as centuries old paintings of bowls of fruit, engaged with faded colors. Others mock “Art” like the Cubist works of Picasso, fancying themselves clever enough to have figured out that “it’s all just bullshit,” and that Art lacks any real “meat and potatoes” value. These are often the same people who roll their eyes at the virtuosic compositions of Bach, while celebrating as “genius” violent, misogynistic, homophobic, and wealth-obsessed lyrics over breakbeats inspired by overly hyped performers engaged in “Rap Beefs.” The closest such people will ever come to Art House Cinema is the John Wick series of movies—after all, what good’s a movie without mindless violence? The Wisdom of the Masses will not be denied, even if it most often resembles collective mental illness.
The vacuous stare of intellectual laziness is so common that it’s become the present day trope of humanity itself.
There are far too many people in the world who prefer being mindlessly entertained over potentially experiencing anything Philosophically or Psychologically Powerful and/or Transcendent. In the context of our current version of Reality, the concept of Art becomes little more than a momentary diversion from being obsessed with money, food, sex, fashion, shopping, rage posting on social media, or anything else that might catch the average consumer’s fancy. Learning about Art, Art History, or the aesthetics and theories of Art is so diminished and deprecated that few educational programs around the world spend any significant amount of time or money on Art, or the Arts in general. There is little as universally appreciated as a Retail Sale, a Postable Meme, or anything labeled as “free,” even if “free” has an enumerated price openly attached to it.
The sad irony is that those who denigrate the value of Art most often have no concrete concept of what it is. They fail to recognize its value to the collective mental health of the world, or its tremendous potential to generate revenue. They don’t realize that the concept of “Art” extends far beyond paintings, sculpture, cinema, music, or other commonly recognized forms of creative expression. The food we eat, the clothing we wear, the skyscrapers that house the psychopathic CEOs who exploit the world, the cars we drive, even the packaging that covers our wasteful products—so many of the world’s products and services—exist because of the talents of artists and designers. This largely flies under the radar of the average, poorly-educated Popular Culture Slop Consumer.
It should be understood that any singular, confining definition of Art would be incomplete and thus insulting to the nature of Art.
Art is whatever it can be understood to mean at any given moment. Technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence) and social media have only served to confuse the world as to what creative expression, and ultimately Reality, represents. Differences in individual tastes and perceptions made discussions about Art challenging enough throughout the ages, but the accelerating rate of technological innovation has changed the manner in which information is processed and distributed such that that many struggle to keep pace. The ubiquitous “schizophrenic noise” created by AI and social media make it nearly impossible for most to develop any meaningful appreciation of the many nuances and possibilities of Art. There just isn’t enough intellectual space left to spend time interacting with anything genuinely creative. The Arts have become little more than another item on a prescribed “bucket list”—something to brag about having superficially experienced without ever having any understanding of why any specific creative entity is worth experiencing.
The recent investment-seeking hype that AI would put many skilled professionals out of work, including Fine Artists, follows an evolution of Consumerized Thinking that becomes increasingly popular as critical thought wanes in popularity. In reality, the AI of Large Language Models (LLMs) is little more than twice-doomed Technological Slop, much like the plague of AI Slop that’s currently infecting the internet. Claims of AI’s supreme potential to “Democratize Art” arise out of absolute fucking ignorance of what makes Art desirable, as Art is not simply accurately replicating forms or copying the style of a given famous artist. One wouldn’t expect the purveyors of AI Accelerationism to have any concept of what makes Art valuable, since they’re busy running a multi-billion dollar technological version of Three-Card Monte while simultaneously putting the entire global economy at-risk in the process.
Art is esoteric in many respects, while remaining generally accessible.
Though not a comprehensive definition, it can be reasonably asserted that Art, as one of its core functions, is a celebration of Sentience. AI can mockingly approximate the forms and patterns of biological creative professionals, but what’s produced is little more than a cold and pathetic Simulacrum. Generative AI Art has all the emotional depth of an amateur porn movie, and even less moral substance. With a few notable exceptions, it is created by the soulless for consumption by the vacuous.
AI’s potential as the core of many blending or workflow tools that assist artists in automating and shortening some of the calculations or other alterations of digital art, or art created using CNC Fabrication, is actually pretty exciting. But, creating entire images, videos, or music via a text prompt does not make one an “artist” any more than hiring someone to paint a house makes one a “painter.” Outsourcing is outsourcing, and simply putting one’s name on the uncredited work product of another, even a complex algorithm, speaks of serious ethical confusion, if not downright moral corruption.
Art is tragically undervalued and misunderstood in the current time-frame.
Creative professionals face the grave challenge of justifying their existence in the “Marketplace of Ideas” around the world. They also face a world where communicating anything to anyone has been made more complex by AI technologies that challenge the very concept of a Reliable Notion of Reality. Social media platforms encourage a form of communication so toxic and ineffective as to represent a real threat to any notion of “Civilization.” We are approaching a point where Social Entropy has become so pronounced that the very survival of humanity is threatened by the severity of the chaos. Much of the blame for this situation can be attributed to how technology is being used by powerful entities of questionable motives and sanity.
However, it’s extremely important that we creatives continue to produce the most relevant and inspired that work we can. We must resist the pressures to offer stoic obedience to Greedy Materialism and Transactional Obsession. As those who promote AI, driven by their psychopathic notions of fomenting dystopian fascist autocracy in the form of Corporate Feudalism, continue to push their horrific agenda, we must not relent. Art’s real power to rescue us from ourselves arises from the very thing which is being assailed—our ability to employ our Sentience and Intuitive Creativity to compassionately engage the world with our Imaginations.
Humanity is not doomed as long as Creativity, Compassion, and Empathy are valued and practiced.
No matter how much corporate, political, or religious psychopaths might scoff at Creativity, Compassion, and Empathy, their value to the world remains immeasurable. There are few more perfect vehicles of communicative expression than Art for promoting these virtues. No matter how loudly the aggressive and hateful forces in the world posture in favor of subservience to autocracy, we creatives must compassionately resist.
We creatives need to stay strong, connected, and be ready to build broader compassionate, creative communities. In the face of an ongoing denial of the value of the Arts, we need to remain passionate advocates for both the Arts and the power of the Creative Process. Whether or not the world knows what “Art” is, we can and must work to embody its greatest potentials.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” — Albert Einstein.
Keep creating Art and stay passionate.
Be well.