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People want to have it both ways.
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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Interesting article, I had no idea my own opinions were functionally art-luddite in nature. I never really made that connection. I don't think the writer of this piece fully grasps the frustration a lot of artists (myself included) have with AI art though. It isn't simply a case of "they took our jerbs!" but a case of cheapening the entire creative field to yet another treat printer. This author seems to think that artists are being condescending when they say that there's more value in random scribbles rather than AI art. It isn't. It's an improvement of a skill, there's a sense of satisfaction that cannot be obtained by simply typing in a prompt, a real genuine sense of improvement is one of the best ways to survive in our increasingly isolated and alienated world. And for a lot of artists, myself included, being an artist under capitalism sucks sure, but making it into a profit generating endeavour is the only real way to devote a significant amount of time to something like this.
CW: Suicide
Before I was a professional artist, I would work shitty jobs same as everyone else and I had daily thoughts of just dying. It was agony wanting to do more, anything more, and not having the physical or emotional energy after work to do it. If I had to go back to that, or ended up unemployed and homeless, I don't think I'd survive. Maybe that makes me weak or a labour aristocrat or whatever this author wants to call me, but acting like people's very real fear for their livehoods is just petty bourgeois reaction strikes me as very callous.Or maybe I just completely misunderstood the article because as an artist, I'm clearly incapable of having a correct opinion about this.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/kim-jong-il/works/On-Fine-Art.pdf
I felt the same way. I would liken it to the author technically living in the same city, but they were describing the other side of it and mistaking their small sphere and local description for the rest of us in that city. Their idea of the art world was similar yet very foreign. A few proverbial landmarks could be seen from both our relative places, but they lost me with their inaccuracies so their critiques and conclusions didn't land.
Art has already been industrialized. Content, which is the only thing AI can make, is not all of art. Art and the creative fields are part of an evolutionary survival strategy to impart experiences to others. If you've ever wondered why the Greeks had only two genres, Drama and Tragedy, it is because Drama was about helping people navigate the world, and tragedy was a warning of what not to do and why. So if class consciousness will help people the most, then the most substantial form of art will pass that experience along (e.g., Social Realism). Modern narratives are mainly content—and we can see that they are unsubstantial because they are "just entertainment" (Fun fact: American films had their right to free speech revoked in 1952 for this reason). They exist for profit. Art is much more than that, and if art helps us, the working class, better navigate life with experiences we don't yet have, I would argue such art is inherently revolutionary. That is why the ruling class can't make new stories; they only make entertainment and content, lest they risk imparting valuable lessons to the working class. And yes, this is a summed-up version of a fascinating thread of soviet art philosophy but one that the author of that article has either never encountered or has a more limited audience (i.e. western lib artists) the article is applying to than let on in the preamble.
I think the author's perspective is the solution should aim towards the social organisation of workers (in this case artists) as a group in a step towards the worker's state; the technology is not the problem but the privatisation of the surplus value from socialised labour is. Art-luddites (if such a thing is even possible now) would actually be a good thing - they could threaten "machinary" to gain leverage for workers at large.
It is not one's personal failure for attempting to survive in a system that exploits one and their labour, neither is a recognition of any classes that we fit in that is not exclusively proleteriat. As individuals maybe our only realistic solution be attempts towards becoming petty-bourgoisie or highly sought after labour aristocrats - if not already there - (which will not mitigate sufficiently the contradictions) but as an organisation the scope is much much more.
We have to remember when we are reading more radical writing that they are trying to push where we could be as a society ie the opposite of tailism. However, we should always place those ideas in the context of our own realities and trial them where appropriate, and learn on the feedback from this process - that is the more scientific and dialectic approach.
At the risk of fedposting, if I ended up homeless and with nothing left to lose thanks to AI art, I probably would find some way to threaten the machinery that makes it happen.
You do raise a good point though. I might look into forming solidarity with other artists and maybe forming/joining some kind of union and push for education. The call for IP law to protect artists isn't a petty bourgeois action, it's one done because artists aren't educated on the other tools they could be using to ensure their livelihoods.