I feel like retreating into art
A greyness has fallen. The line between what passed for normality and what now passes for global insanity blurred sometime in the last few years. It's hard to remember. But the crises have been building for at least a few decades - the expansion of the security state post-911, the global financial crisis, Covid 19, the rise of authoritarian movements and grievance politicians cashing in hard on people who are listless and confused, ai grifting, manosphere grifting, and the climate crisis and the continued inability of corporate owned governments to do anything meaningful to address it.
Maybe I'm depressed? Maybe we all are? I know I'm not the only one feeling heavy. There's a palpable level of anxiety around the place. Art feels more like an escape and a retreat from our times. Painting and making music and writing while the world burns - as though art is no longer a genuine expression of the self, but rather a woozy nostalgia-laden pursuit that closes out the grey world briefly.
The dumb online scroll is filled everyday with pro and anti-ai memes. I save them for something to do. I'm not sure why. It's all so vitriolic. But for the record, generative ai is about the least interesting thing there is. I told my line manager that if we're forced to use ai, even a little bit, I'll be asking for my three day weekends, please, at full pay. I'm serious about that. I was told that advances in technology would make the hard work easier so I could have more leisure time. So, I want to cash in. I know the real answer of course: more productivity in the same amount of time will be expected. That's the way the system works. So, fuck that. I make fun of it every-time it gets mentioned.
It seems to me that a bunch of heartless billionaires, scraping the shit out of the web, and then selling it all back to us like a fucking utility, is pretty damn stupid. If ai is about doing the drudge work so I can do the cool stuff, why are so many morons trying so hard to sell their ai artwork? Isn't the art the stuff that we should be free to do because we have stupid ai to do the drudge work everywhere else in life that isn't creative?
I don't know how many times I've read: better learn to use ai or be left behind. Left behind where? Give up the paint brush because some talentless idiot in Silicon Valley is trying to grift out some coin from the data centres that drain the water table? I'm not sure how this adds to our lives in any meaningful way. I understand that non-generative ai has some great applications in science and medicine. I'm all for that, as long as it doesn't kill the planet any further. But don't try and convince me that replacing my pen, or my brush, or my brain is an advancement of the species.
Email me about this post. Subscribe to my blog via RSS feed.
Previous /