If we do not attend to the work of projecting delight upon the world, what are we actually doing? If we do not look for joy, search for it, reach deep for it, what are we saying about the world? —Nick Cave,
Nick Cave Vs. ChatGPT
This past week a musician friend of mine posted a link to a Guardian article in which Nick Cave takes on song lyrics written “in the style of Nick Cave” by ChatGPT. She quoted at length from it, as will I:
Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend. ChatGPT’s melancholy role is that it is destined to imitate and can never have an authentic human experience, no matter how devalued and inconsequential the human experience may in time become.
What makes a great song great is not its close resemblance to a recognizable work. Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what he or she recognizes as their known self. This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value; it is the breathless confrontation with one’s vulnerability, one’s perilousness, one’s smallness, pitted against a sense of sudden shocking discovery; it is the redemptive artistic act that stirs the heart of the listener, where the listener recognizes in the inner workings of the song their own blood, their own struggle, their own suffering. This is what we humble humans can offer, that AI can only mimic, the transcendent journey of the artist that forever grapples with his or her own shortcomings. This is where human genius resides, deeply embedded within, yet reaching beyond, those limitations.
Much as I admire Nick Cave and my musician friend for being the valiant and vibrant creators that they are, I think the argument that ChatGPT doesn’t feel and hasn’t experienced is beside the point. It doesn’t need to feel, it only needs to make human beings feel in this particular game. It only needs to predict what will bring tears to our eyes and laughter to our faces, what will draw us deeply in and help us transcend ourselves. I suspect that ChatGPT and other AI like it can and will get very good at that.
If you reject the idea that algorithms can learn to make us feel, then consider what has been said about Facebook (and other social media) algorithms that can suss out what is most likely to draw our attention and hold it. Consider how that played out in recent elections and how it plays out fueling white supremacy and hatred of the other. It turns out anger is a powerful motivation for people to coalesce around and AI has gotten pretty good at feeding us on a banquet of hatred of the other.
AI generated everything is inevitable and it will get better and better. The thing is, AI is a product of mass organization economic systems, capitalism in particular. It is doubtful it could have happened without capitalism or other equally disconnecting ways of operating an economy and, by extension, society. The key point to remember is that we don’t have to participate in that economy, at least, not all the time. I don’t know if we can completely eliminate capitalism or other mass organizational systems. I don’t know if we would even want to. There are some breathtaking benefits. But it does seem possible to organize parallel economies that are more local in scale, which is the scale at which the alternatives can thrive and be satisfying; the scale at which it matters that the song channeling our personal human experience and making us feel was created by another human being; the scale at which it matters that we go to hear that song performed by the creator and participate in the communal activity that live performance creates.
I have been reading about alternative economics. Two books are very influential to my thinking. Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein and The Gift, by Lewis Hyde. I have finished the first and am halfway through the second.
Sacred Economics helped me understand why growth is essential to capitalism—there is always more debt than value being created through production—and how capitalism fills the void between debt and product by converting the commons—that which should belong to everyone—to privately held resources to be exploited for profit. ChatGPT is another attempt to lay claim to the commons, in this case, the creative commons that all art product aspires to be part of. In Sacred Economics, Eisenstein argues that eliminating usury (the ability to make money on money), creating currency that devalues with time (not through inflation, but through planned devaluation over a specific time frame), and practicing a gift economy as tribal and other types of small communities have often done.
In Part I of The Gift, Lewis Hyde explains the history and functioning of the gift economy in great detail, as well as the history of usury and modern economies which have supplanted the gift economy. In Part II, which I have just now started to make my way through, he explains the relevance of a gift economy to the arts.
AI is a product of mass economic systems, capitalism in particular. AI couldn’t happen without these systems and will function best within these contexts. Human rendered art can and sometimes does function well within that mass economic context, but, when you get beyond the few giants and near giants in any creative industry human creative output struggles to function in that context and starts to require an economy built on community. This is the gift economy that Hyde and Eisenstein, drawing heavily from Hyde, describe.
My guess is that we need to relearn the gift economy if we are to have a satisfying way of being human creatives and connecting our creations with other human beings. I don’t presently believe that one excludes the other but we must actively and intentionally reclaim the gift economy if we are to benefit from it. There is much work to do in this direction.
This is all I can say about economic alternatives at present because I am still reading and thinking. The important point I am making is that it’s not AI vs human artists but an economic system that by its design breaks down community as against one that builds it. The choice is ours as to which one we want to labor and participate in.
2022-10-13
“Free speech” networks and anti-semitism… Ben Werdmuller spends some time on alternative social networks which have “free speech” policies, i.e., they don’t moderate content…
Mainstream social networks, particularly Facebook, are not off the hook here: banning anti-semitism does not absolve you of complicity in genocide elsewhere. Twitter also has its fair share of discoverable posts that espouse anti-semitic tropes. But these other networks are remarkable for their concentration: whereas these ideas are a tiny fringe on Facebook and Twitter, they’re how these other networks support themselves. You go to an alt network because you’ve been banned - or you’re worried you will be banned - from a traditional one. This concentration of extremists is why much of the insurrection was able to be openly organized on networks like Gab.
A Simple Guide to the Radical Art of Cecilia Vicuna
La Vicuña, 1977, oil on cotton canvas, by Cecilia Vicuña. Courtesy Cecilia Vicuña; Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London
… i like the mythological quality of this painting…
Born in 1948, the Chilean artist has been a pioneering voice on climate change, decolonisation and ecofeminism for decades. A poet, author, artist and activist, her work exists at the meeting point between art forms and means of communication. “My work dwells in the not yet, the future potential of the unformed, where sound, weaving, and language interact to create new meanings,” she says.
… more and more stories about Nazi Germany and how misinformation and propaganda fueled its rise…
How Hate-Fueled Misinformationa nd Propaganda Grew in Nazi Germany
… much of what is described below can be seen in nascent form in the United States Today… see my link to Ben Werdmueler’s post above…
Early in her reporting trip Thompson mailed a letter to Lewis, eager to share with her husband what she’d been witnessing in Germany. “It is really as bad as the most sensational papers report. . . . It’s an outbreak of sadistic and almost pathological hatred,” she wrote. “Most discouraging of all is not only the defenselessness of the liberals but their incredible (to me) docility. There are no martyrs for the cause of democracy.”
She said that Hitler’s Brownshirts were “perfectly mad” in their hounding of Jews and other quarry. “They beat them with steel rods, knock their teeth out with revolver butts, break their arms . . . urinate on them, make them kneel and kiss the _Hakenkreuz_ [the Nazi swastika]. . . . I feel myself starting to hate Germany. And already the world is rotten with hate.”
In May, books were burned. All thirty of Germany’s universities held pep rally-like events. In Berlin some forty thousand Nazis gathered in the public square near the opera house, where a bonfire worthy of a Viking funeral lit up the night sky. A band played martial music. A student wearing a Nazi uniform told the crowd “un‑German” works needed to be incinerated before they corrupted any more pristine minds.
… and this sounds familiar…
Through the Nazi rallies, boycotts, and book burnings, the world watched and waited. Did Hitler mean all the provocative things he’d said before taking office? Would he act upon them now, or would the responsibility of governing tame his tongue and temper his politics?
Two days after the April boycott of Jewish businesses, George Messersmith, the American consul general in Berlin, wrote to Hull about the accelerating climate of repression. “The point has been reached where it is really dangerous for the average individual to express an opinion which would not be favorable to the present regime. Even with his best friend the average German is unable to have free expression of opinion.”
… hmmm… i had not expected this… Nick Cave answering the question of what his favorite film of all time was, replies, Blonde
… my wife and i watched this movie on Netflix… H didn’t like it very much… i was so-so about it… noting that it had an NC17 rating, i had hoped there would be some juicy sex in it, yes, i like to watch, in a manner of speaking… i was disappointed on that score… not because there wasn’t any sex, but because when there was it was mostly a brutal sort that i didn’t find at all appealing… my wife thought the film one more exploitation of the woman and the myth that she didn’t deserve… but it’s based on the novel by Joyce Carole Oats and wasn’t intended to be a real representation of her life (a number of critical scenes in the book and movie never happened to the real MM as far as anyone knows)… it’s more an indictment of the patriarchy and it does a good job of portraying the absurd nature of male lust and misogyny… i set out to read a number of reviews of the movie and they were mostly unfavorable… this one in particular was a thorough critique of both the movie and the novel it is based on… to sum… both failed to paint the picture of a rather intelligent and successful young woman who was also a very good actress… both indulged in fictions that were not flattering (a dumb blonde who got what dumb blondes get) and therefore harmful to her and women in general… both failed to give the woman the credit she was due and traded on her mythology and dumb blonde myth for their own purposes… so, circling back to Nick Cave, i have huge admiration for him and especially for Red Hand Files, in which he is so often a comforting, sage and empathic responder to questions from his fans… he could almost be my spiritual leader… and then this… so… do i stop loving Nick Cave?… do i reassess my thinking about the movie because Nick Cave loves it?… do i take it as evidence that no human being is right all the time and resolve to be questioning of his answers when appropriate?… i think the last response would be the right one… still, i would love to know why he loves the movie… and so… i just posed the question to the man himself… why?… i am sure i won’t be the only one… let’s see if he answers one of us…
Jack Davidson’s Alchemical Photographic Etchings
“I’ve never been a darkroom kid,” says British photographer Jack Davison. “I tried, [but] it just didn’t appeal to me.” With a new solo exhibition, Photographic Etchings, opening in north London’s Cob Gallery, Davison is instead reflecting on the tactile wonders and alchemical magic of photogravure, a labour-intensive, high-cost alternative to the darkroom that lies at the heart of this exhibition.
Jack Davison, Untitled (JD-08), 2022© the artist, courtesy of Cob Gallery
… what is it about snarling or perhaps just snapping or perhaps just skulking in a menacing way?… and depicted in a shadowy, high contrast way… see Daido Moriyama’s stray dog…
Somaya Critchlow, the Artist Reconfiguring the Black Female Nude
12 of Critchlow’s new paintings and drawings are now on display at Maximillian William gallery in London, in an exhibition called Afternoon’s Darkness. A sense of the macabre lingers across these new works, in which Black women are depicted revelling in their solitude – nude, semi-nude or in costume – backdropped by dimly-lit, domestic interiors.
Count Me Out, 2022© Somaya Critchlow. Image courtesy the artist and Maximillian William, London. Photography: Prudence Cuming Associates.
… increasingly, women artists are portraying women in ways that do invite the male gaze… the male gaze is such a convoluted gaze… is it appropriate or not in this “hashtag me too” era?… at the end of the day, we feel what we feel when we look at images of beautiful women partially or fully undressed… it’s what we do with those feelings that matters… do we treat such images as gateway invitations to the abuse of womanhood or do we simply appreciate the beauty of the female body?… have we matured as a culture?… patriarchy is alive and well… there are risks to trying to break through to a new attitude…
Henry Miller on Friendship and the Relationship Between Creativity and Community
This vital relationship between creativity and connection has been tensed and twisted in the era of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, where self-marketing so readily masquerades as “friend”-ship.
… i have all but abandoned FB and Instagram, using the former to check in with “friends” now and again and the latter to post an image here and there… i never did have much use of twitter… these days i can be found on Vero (@smbk) and Micro.blog (@mbkriegh)…
“Usually the artist has two life-long companions, neither of his own choosing… — poverty and loneliness. To have a friend who understands and appreciates your work, one who never lets you down but who becomes more devoted, more reverent, as the years go by, that is a rare experience. It takes only one friend… to work miracles.” Henry Miller
Disgruntled American Tourist Smashes Roman Busts at the Vatican
An American man visiting the Vatican threw two Ancient Roman busts to the ground in a fit of rage after being informed that he could not see the Pope, Italian newspapers report.
… ok, the headline, “Disgruntled American”?… click bait really… when i first read it, it seemed unfortunately natural to think of any American as being an angry child…
The man who vandalized the sculptures, aged 65 and apparently “psychologically distressed,” seemed to have been visiting the Vatican alone and was turned over to Italian authorities the same day. He received an aggravated property damage charge and was subsequently released.
… and then i read the bit about “psychologically distressed” and wondered why not this headline… “Psychologically Distressed Tourist Smashes Roman Busts at the Vatican”?… then we would discover the tourist was American… which fact is more important?… “American” if you think or want people to think all Americans are childish rage-holics, and “psychologically distressed” if we are talking about the general propensity in humanity for there to be people not in their right mind…
Find My Friends… an app that tells you where your friends are at any given moment in time?… beyond the obvious serendipitous being in close by places at the same time… meet up!… there are the also obvious ways this might not be a good idea…
I feel so unispired. Inspiration. Can I have some of yours?
… my wife is a huge fan of David Bowie, me, not so much, but i love Nick Cave!… and i love his Red Hand Files in which he answers questions sent to him by his fans… that he seems to have his head on really straight helps too…
In my experience, inspiration is not something that finds you, or offers itself to you, nor for that matter is faith. Inspiration and faith are similar in so far as they both ask something of us. They each require real and constant practical application. For me, inspiration comes only when I practice certain things regularly and rigorously. I must commit fully to the task in hand, sit down each day, pick up my pencil (actually it is a medium black or blue Bic Biro) and get to work. It is not exactly toiling down the coal mines, but it is labour enough, and I undertake it through the good times and the bad, through the dry periods and the periods of abundance, and I keep on going regardless of my successes or failures. Inspiration comes because I put in the work.
The Toronto band’s third album is a triumph of power pop, a densely layered, witty, blithe, and beautiful record that sets a new benchmark for the genre.
I’m not so sure free speech is a right, but it is certainly a societal or cultural attainment, something we, as a community, can use to enliven, embolden and liberate the soul of our world, provided we are fortunate enough to live in a society that allows such a thing.
20220201-05
No question. Just can’t wait for your show in Austin.
When I watch you play live my soul is lifted but I am not sure what that even means. It feels religious! What is the soul? See you in Montreal!1
… the response…
To walk on stage and perform a series of songs is an attempt to invigorate the collective soul of an audience. Whatever is happening to the soul of the audience is also happening to the soul of the performer. This mutuality is a circular and escalating intaking and outpouring of love. It is, by its very nature, a religious experience because it is in the service of a greater transcendent goodness. It is truth.2