Blog

Looking at the NFT space ("space" is what it is called, yes?), I see an endless array of repeating images. I see reiterations in row after row- it sort of reminds me of a cigarette factory or a long belt of ammunition. I wonder about where Art is going- in the West anyway. Do we have anything other than novelty? As far as I can see, the essence of Art now is novelty. Maybe I'm wrong but it seems that way. I don't pretend to be a critic but I do feel that something is missing. I don't say this out of negativity or despair but because I desire something more and I've found that making something completely new is not necessarily satisfying.

Culturally speaking, a wrong turn was taken somewhere or at least a fateful turn. Much of value was left behind. So we won the race by throwing off everything that we inherited from the past. Was it worth it?

There is something else, but what is it? Is it continuity? an unbroken or "non-disrupted" relationship to what has come before? Do we connect only to the future and escape the past? Does the attempt to escape secretly bind (and blind) us?

I don't know. The artist simply works, creates; can never really know exactly what is being made, nor why. Even the "how" and the "when" disappear. And happily so. Is this not the working of immortality?

Does technology render technique irrelevant? I have a feeling that presents itself to me in the form of that question. I have lost almost all enthusiasm for technical refinements in the work. I used to enjoy the cultivation of technical ability, the practical study of traditional techniques and methods. Such efforts now seem to me worse than a waste of time-- like movement in the wrong direction.

The arrival of AI is the latest development in a long series of technological advances (dating back to at least to the early nineteenth century) that have disrupted the relationship between Craft and Art. The former was once essential to the latter but the two have become fully separate and nearly opposed. 

I'll leave Craft alone and say that Art must seek pure (let's not say "perfect") expression of something entirely and exclusively human. I think (I guess) that the "something" must take a form which can't be approximated, imitated or equaled by any mechanical or electronic device. Or is the form unimportant? Is the salient matter only the conveyance of psychic material from the artist to the viewer? 

How long until AI becomes a consumer of Artistic works? In some ways it already is of course but I can't help wondering if artists will begin at some point to see AI a significant member of the audience for their work...