How AI Could “Save” Art
I’m not writing this cause I’m pro-AI, nor simply to be contrarian, but because AI is so ubiquitous that we virtually have no choice but to try and steer its positionality in Art towards the most ‘ethical’ direction. Believe me, I stand with the masses on this issue and pride myself in not using generative AI for anything. However, with a ‘medium’ – if we are willing to call AI such a thing – so fresh and pervasive, there is almost no limit to the ways in which we can stretch it and eventually destroy it from within (as Greenberg claimed that we did with painting).
many people have already pointed out how ironically, AI’s use in art and design has de facto led to a growing appreciation for ‘human error’; something AI simply cannot replicate. With this, I want us to think about humanity’s innate meaning-making functions and consider how they seep into generative AI. Again, I am not endorsing face value generative AI slop art which is held together by bastardized folk art, I am talking about art that ultimately points us towards humanity, cost what it may. there could be other epiphanies on what it means to be human somewhere in our careful exploration of this contemporary “medium,” but I don’t know or claim to know what exactly these could be. Regardless, I don’t want to undermine the real impact that AI has on our lives and our planet, but my belief in humanity is so strong that I think AI will just be a hurdle in the grand scheme of Art and Humanity (we’re already seeing how repulsed the general public is by AI “art”) . Let the irony of the medium be its pedestal so that its message can reach the masses.
I have no interest in art that tries - or at least pretends - to be more than human. I’m talking about Art that puts itself at stake for its message because its intended message is that vital - I’m thinking of Sherrie Levine’s After Walker Evans, Marcus Harvey’s Myra, Arthur Jafa’s Ex-Slave Gordon, and many of Andy Warhol’s silkscreen artworks from the early 60s as I say this. We have made for ourselves a mirror which reflects the depth of our pride, bias, greed, discrimination, shallowness, predictability, cruelty, imagination, and imperfections; and I think it would be unwise to not entertain it for the sake of constructive reflection. I hate that this conversation even has to be opened and I wish this wasn’t something I have to consider as a design student but given where we are at right now (a literal wasteland of skeuomorphic, anthropomorphic interfaces contrasted against desaturating, over-corporate human expression), I think that there is at least a few artworks worth generating as we literally eat ourselves alive.
I have a ton of letters, drawings, and little notes left by my late sister that I keep in my room and hold dearly. I also have text messages riddled with typos from loved ones that I’ll never have conversations with again. When I look at these ‘artifacts’ (both digital and analog), in a way – which you would just have to know to understand –I can feel and see their reflection. By being immersed in, and bombarded with art history over the past year, I’ve realized that you can catch a glimpse of this unexplainable ‘design detail’ in any artwork, any artifact in any museum, and if you look close enough, you can even feel this humanhood – this mysterious residue which seeps into things - as you navigate through buildings; this is left by the architects’ conscientious and often vulnerable decisions. AI doesn't have any of this. Its lack of this is actually exactly what separates it from ‘real Art’ and exactly what it threatens to strip away from art and architecture. If AI art – this bubbling, superfluous, mendacious movement – is what it takes for people to realize what we’re losing, and in so, encourages us to magnify humanness in the Art we make and the overall design of our everyday lives, then I'm very excited for what the future entails.
