A.I: A Painter’s Review of My Latest Tools and Superpowers

A.I: A Painter’s Review of My Latest Tools and Superpowers

The much heralded age of AI has begun! Uh, 67 years ago, that is. That was the year that the phrase was coined, anyway. The more it changes, the more is it still as it ever was. Each new amazing technology thrills and enthralls for a time, then, we just incorporate it and go on. 

To be sure, this is a turning point; it is the end of an era, and the beginning of another. 

The original new disruptive technology was the use of language, so say the philosophers. This technology, speech and language, was the great exodus from the “pure” and direct state of being and knowing, so goes the story; the humans’ first step out of the primordial garden. It was the great schism, the crack in the shared mind, the erecting of the first great wall of separation from one another and nature.

But then, we never left this true inner self; we have simply been painting external stage sets for our entertainment. The primal unity is intact; we are just quite fond of our movies.

I am glad I learned to paint and draw with real physical art supplies, because the more art superpowers this cyber technology gives me, the more creative I can be with them. The painting style of those who never played with actual materials seems thin, limited and cartoony to me. The tendency, and ever present temptation, that all of these time saving shortcuts offer, is to urge the artist to become ever more impatient; sloppy, even. 

It happens to me. Long ago I realized that all art is cartooning and caricature. Simplification, in a word. Synopsify; shorten that statement. Stat! These tools only amplify the ability to simplify things, more easily and quickly than ever. After processing with a given effect, a digital painting is inevitably reduced.

More and more items, faster and faster, is better, right? Every act becomes a test, even a competition, for efficiency! The winner is whoever gets the most done, the fastest! The name becomes the initials, the initials become the name itself, only to be further simplified into the logo, which is then updated into a single swish of stroke, or better yet, how about a single dot? 

Ah, the primordial dot, the single, imaginary, conceptual point. The pixel!  We hurdle on, backwards, toward the one celled creature, or the tiny point preceding the so called Big Bang. Except the headlong dash is anything but one pointed. Attention spans collapse. Stillness is a quaint idea, there is no silence anymore, there is no darkness left. Peace, rest and sleep become sought after, highly valued, but almost extinct.

What does art have to say about this? If the medium is the message, art says one of two things: First, emergency! Urgent! Badness, ugliness, unfairness, injustice, fear, sickness, violence! Quick, look how bad it all is! That is an easy one. Say it with big bold black lines!!

The other message is about finding the beautiful and good, and nurturing and bringing it out. This one never goes out of style. It is classic. The beautiful is nested within the very nature which reflects the same harmonies and geometries that created us, that surround us, even the very body equipment with which we perceive the universe. It is that innate, know it when you see it, type of beauty.

Neither message is new, only the tools are new. There is no original art. There is only the updating of the message for each new crop of people, each new language. That is why there can be no true ownership by individuals of their creations, cyber or analog. You did not create yourself, and all you know is in the context of the matrix from which you have arisen. Some artists keep the old ways alive, preserving the methods that have been outpaced by the newer technologies; others race ahead. The art of each new edition of the message stands on the shoulders of the ones that went before. “Whoever thinks an idea can be copyrighted has already forgotten its source”-(does not matter who said that, right?)

So the A.I. takes what we all have done before, and delivers it all, instantly, to our fingertips. And in the case of painting, to look at the history and trajectory of art in our culture so far, we have pretty much spent our repertoire of images. We have reached a stopping point, a jumping off point, to the next level. 

First, we scratched on cave walls, then took that to beautiful painting, but with the limited range of color clays and charcoal available at that time. Eventually we developed a full range of colors and made elaborate paintings and covered the ceilings of lofty arching cathedrals with lavish representations of ourselves and our world. 

Then, came another great disruption: the photograph! So far, this is the best comparable disruptive technology to the new age of art A.I. Suddenly faced with a device which could instantly deliver a likeness of the world, without paint or brush, what then was an artist to do?! Become a photographer of course, said many. 

But others felt freed from the need to do representative art; so Impressionism was born. Carefully representing reality gave way to sharing an impression, to then vent one’s feelings by expression, to then, begin to dismantle the object-observer relationship itself. 

But soon, art and image fragmented even further, into blunt shape and line, and finally, as if to surrender any resemblance to real life, the solid, painted-black canvas slaps the art world in the face. The bleak desert that is the ultimate destination of the abstract art style. The generic object. The sleek, shiny, black square thing.

We had reached an impasse: All relevance gone, so-called fine art collapsed into an exclusive, status defining, game, a kind of exalted, competitive, baseball card collecting for the super rich. Whatever else was left of art, bifurcated, into advertising, in which the skills and talents of artists are purchased to prostitute themselves to manipulate the senses of consumers for corporate profit; or, alternatively, to express the feelings of people who can not realistically expect to benefit from their art, except to enjoy doing it. 

This has led to the current reality for art in which everyone is an artist now, and art is mainly just a business of providing instruction and materials, to children and increasingly, to adults, for enjoyment and self expression. The pastime of playing art is now what sells. Since everyone is now the artist, it is the eyeballs, the art appreciators, which are in short supply! You are lucky if someone pays a few seconds of attention to your art; and you are the one who must pay money, to play the art game. No one makes money doing true art anymore. A few make a living doing a performance, promotion, and glamour hustle of it.

Which brings us to this moment in art, in which the art supplies and the art lessons have become virtually free: my art apps give me infinite paper and paint, and I can find step by step instructions on YouTube, how to draw or paint any way I like.

So it is indeed time for an upgrade, an up-level, a phase shift, a quantum leap. A nice, big, fat, juicy, disruptor. The next step.

So, today I spend the day playing with the new A.I. drawing toy, and here are my impressions: the tool gives us only iterations of what we already know and do, albeit faster. Like saying the same mantra over and over, only faster, like prayer wheels of drawing. Electric, motorized, prayer wheels! The medium averages and simplifies the cultural material, always reducing, rounding off, to the closest common denominator. There is nothing new, just blending and mixing down, like smearing all of the paints in the paintbox down into that inevitable muddy purple grey. There are no new insights, no uplifting new highs. Just quick access to the dreary middle places of everything we share.

There is a usefulness here, though. The true key is still in our artist hands, hearts, and souls. As it ever was. It is the inflection point of choice. The true art of this age of A.I. is how and what and when to choose, from the infinite array, fanning out now, before our eyes. 

It is the age of the art of choosing.

This art of choosing can make use of the superpower of quick rendering of the elements of symbol and language, the essence of cartoon and caricature, the easy mustering of the parts and pieces that we uniquely and creatively bring together. 

Contrary to the often repeated claim, those monkeys with those typewriters and infinite time, can not, and will never, no never, not ever, write the works of Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson. Infinity is fractal, and self similar, but never repeats. No, A.I. will never replace the creatives.

It will only be yet another choice; a tool for us to wield.