Fellow Artists, I'm Begging You to Pull Your Heads Out of the Sand About AI

UnEdit #11349

When the spoon boy in Matrix says "there is no spoon", low-level telling Neo that everyone are inside a simulation and suspension of belief is required to affect changes, he is really (message from directors) saying that any system is UPHELD by belief - that the borders of the system really are where everyone say they are, and disbelief/apocryph views only MOVE borders, change the size of the playing field. Eg. that opposition to systems mostly only ease your own moral suffering.

Intents and realities of physical art and digital art differ in much the same way a live theatre performance differs from a filmed performance; uncomparable as mediums, different "systems". Thus they are only to be viewed as comparative in the sense that they have been "created" - given frameworks.

As such one medium is done upon transference of ownership (purchase of physical painting, fx, remove from studio/gallery, hang on own wall, artist cannot change), while the other is continually "open" as work, until a hash-code is done of the work and kept apart from the work, to prevent alterations of the work. Different eras, maybe, but the first functions on the terms of the physical human individual, the other on society upholding the electrical power needed to confirm artistic intent. One ground in individual senses and body, the other in communal ability/"body".

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Being a professional artist in the sense you describe may not be the best artist:

Lots and lots of artistically inclined and experienced people "turn" their art towards what can sell right now - to pay their bills. This without directly claiming/capitalising upon personal mastery of colour, texture, positioning of elements, but maybe on ability to depict present day topics, make to size or pantone colour scheme, make a customer happy etc. Is this selling out? Then most "professional" artists in your sense of the word are sell-outs. And with this position established, "non-professional" artists, so called "amateurs" (meaning "doing it for love") have no way of selling out..." and can thus do all the experimentation that real artists do...

= Money is not a result of art. Money is a result of selling. The artist, the dealer, the personal meeting. But art is not what is being purchased. What is sold is faked or real conviction, and what is bought is trust and experience and willingness to grow. Be it in understanding or money; the elements can be in balance or not. ART factors only as a frame. What you belive and trust and invest is the object of sale.

Take the prompt result of your illustration "AI, make me a 5 fingered human hand composed of fingers, mix the styles, colours, highlights and definition of Botticelli, Modigliani and Arcimboldo into a late modernist centre composition on black background" and you would get close to that. What are you then buying, apart from the knowledge that the art prompter probably didn't succeed with the first prompt? You are buying your own reactions to the piece. Your own learning. You then blow it up to 3 by 3 meters and what you may marvel in at breaktfast is that process - the cost to make it physical, the reactions of people seeing it for the first time - and over time this becomes part of your memory of this work. You see YOUR OWN EFFORT and the wow-effect of strangers following that. You could also buy a 3 x 3 meter video screen with the work perpetually displayed, and effect and memory would be the same: You see you. When you buy a real painting, possibly a limited print, you are directly corresponding with the artist, and you see the life in strokes. It mimics your own life. The digital artifact has no such traces - be it prompted or digitally drawn - and as such is only a matter of style and competence. Of aestetics.

The Danish philosopher Søren Kirkegaard said something in the vein of "most people are like children, occupied with aestetics, how idealized/stylised things are. Ethics come next, the actual importance of depicted content, and lastly the spiritual content telling viewers and creators of their place in the universe. The meaning of being. The gratefulness with being. The importance of recognising "the system we are in". Viewed as a learning process with constant new do-overs it is not an endgame - a result, where you win, when you recognise that you are smaller than a sun - but a dynamic system hinging on both recognition and loss and acquisition of recognition." That is the human artist with their physical interaction with a physical medium, where the opposition of the material plus the opposition of the "medium of flesh" are directly connected. Whereas digital creation has no weight. No body. No mass. And can therefore never ascend to Kirkegaard's spiritual regard of an actual universe on level with the body. And can therefore never be part of change except on a metaphysical level - as an illustration of thought. The heart does not come into play.

Working with LLM is that. Illustration of thought. It is what most people believe they ask for, when they think "art". Something their brain will approve of, "recognise" as essence, and therefore "more true" than less recognisable creations. If you are worried that your non-professional art will lose out to AI-creations, you and every other artistically inclined person can counter that by stop doing digital art and blow your own minds with physical creations. Detail stuff, opiniate, experiment with media, placement, intent, seek out new essence, strive for collectivity, for ethics and humility and tenderness and empathy, or coldness and dominion and cruelty and cessation, but be honest. And forget about cost and price. They are part of a optionable later stage of creation.

Honesty, KNOWING THAT YOU ARE HONEST is what makes you an artist. Intent. Whether you work with oils or with pixels. The only difference being that your digital creations can never be touched and therefore never compare to your life. Only to your thinking about it.