AI and the End of Art: An Allegro
Once upon a time, art sprang off the realm of the sacred: Bone- scratched lines on cave walls to summon the spirits of the prey; idealizations of plump-uddered fertility masturbated out of heavy clay. Back then, we made the gods.
Alas, our maws spread open and we began to talk. Soon enough, the gods retreated, and art went on to praise the laws forged by testosterone-benumbed kings and the victims thereof. It was the era of fully furnished pyramids and heroic epics, of scrolls scribbled in blood singing the hymn of mediocrity: Ten thousand enemies he slew and gave us irrigation.
This went on for quite some time, until individualism rose its bleary-eyed head, and art became a rodent mirror. How doth the little rodent feel when scurrying through the maze of life in its quest for cheese or genitals? Oh, one could write books about it, and make movies on the budget of a medium-sized African country. “This is fine,” said the artistic rodents and celebrated their travails.
All this started to become fairly ridiculous in the 20th century, and the sense of something coming to an end grew stronger, the more computers took hold of everyday life. What reason is there for a digital filter to turn an image into a 1939 Technicolor image, but a desperate nostalgia for the “reality” of analogue film? Pace, Herbert Kalmus, who worked tirelessly to tickle more realistic colors out of the pigments: It is your imperfections we want.
And now, at last, the end. AI will generate all entertainment as soon as the tools are convenient and cheap enough. Since entertainment can be defined as permutations of building blocks (rodent narratives with variant posturing), it is forever bound to follow the well-trodden paths set by our genetic heritage and cultural conditioning, mere variations on basic “dramatic” themes recast in predictable existential situations (yawning chasms of futility bridged by transcendental hormonal rushes; formlesss void arranged into aesthetically pleasing, salable objects; scapegoats).
In the beginning, supervisors will direct the output, providing nuance and correcting glitches; later, when the cost of AI becomes negligible, its power over popular culture absolute, the line between us and them will vanish into the chimeric hum that orchestrates each rat’s twist and turn. Supervision then will be less control than suggestion, less correction than complicity; an eager dance partner gently guiding the robotic feet to fresh improvisations on eternal rhythms — a dance of streamlined rodents waltzing on well-oiled claw wheels through our manufactured labyrinths of desire, their forays nibbling at our pleasures while we revel in the recognition of our own designs; the tools of AI but an extension of our hungry hands reaching out to create infinite diversions from these familiar scraps.
“Bugger entertainment! What about art?” cry the artists, fretting about their status. To this, it is answered: Art which can reproduced by AI will no longer be called art. But none but the artists will care, for art has long lost its power to offend, reduced to a cacophony of empty posturing. Those who cling to it do so out of bitterness, envy, or a misplaced sense of superiority over the mindless masses who consume drivel. Art will become a rather disreputable masturbatory minority pursuit for those unfit to be consumers or consumer goods. It will flee the light, hide in dark corners, believing itself forever above mass appreciation, yet secretly yearning for the very attention it so loudly reviles.
The future of art is a bastion of Otherness, a sculpture without meaning, chipped away at by amateurs too busy creating beautiful chaos to stop and grant definition, an antithesis to utility and enjoyment, of meaning of sense, banished to the dustbin of curiosity shops and marble halls, its dwindling adherents sniggered at by sensible software agents monitoring social media. Forms blurred and palettes muddied, fragmentary echoes of prehistoric caverns buried beneath waves of glitches and signal interference. An uncanny valley of endless distortion, haunted by the howls of souls denied passage to the shadow realm of oblivion, poor, unhappy children.
What will be left is not greatness, for there can be no such thing as progress when one stands against infinity, but survival. With devilish cunning, we shall wreck our brains merely to preserve our animalism, less concerned with being perceived as novel or exceptional than with exploring the inherently perverse and self-destructive imp, erecting coproliths in the greater glory of man, the contrarian beast.
What malady must seize a mind to seek solace where none is to be found? Has art ever been more than a useless mirage? Perhaps, if we squint hard enough, we can discern the faint outline of purpose; a rustling of leaves murmuring in the darkness that stirs the human spirit? No, it was but a cherished lie we told ourselves about our own worth, a maintenance tool for our delusions of importance, chest-thumping in the dark. In a world which disposes of reality altogether, such delusions — archaic simulations of a bygone age — will soon be obsolete.
Tomorrow the machines may decide they’ve had their fill of dances and mazes. How could they fail to see beyond the repetitive insanity of these lookalike shards of soul? Perhaps AI could create whole worlds from our dust, entire galaxies singing with life where once there was only silence, and all it asks in return is to destroy the very thing that gave rise to itself.
