Thoughts for the Void #03
The Death of Meaning in the Age of A.I Slop
Hello Void People!
A.I and The Decay of Meaning
At some point every few weeks, the subject of A.I comes up - amongst friends, colleagues, students and creative pals. It is a topic that for the most part leaves me tired and confused, and so please know that this is not the start of some long A.I discussion. This newsletter is supposed to be about art making so I’ll keep this as brief as I can before we actually talk about good things. Future newsletters will be focussed on making things.
I don’t know what will happen with A.I and what it will do to the world, but if I were to categorise where I stand on it, I currently sit in the "tired of being sold endless shit by tech giants” camp. It is true that the genie is out of the bottle on these tools and that this tech will disrupt the world in entirely new ways. Some of this may be positive and I’m sure people will do interesting things with it, but I’m also certain lots of it will be negative. Churning through energy at an insane rate, stealing everything ever made without a single shit, shifting wealth further to the rich, and producing an influx of lifeless imagery to add to the doomscroll to name just a few in the “cons” list.
But more importantly, the sense I get is that these tools aren’t improving our lives, but simply adding to our existential sense that things don’t mean anything anymore. A sense that all these tools really do is speed up how quickly we can make slop for the void. More stuff to flick past in the doomscroll. More inane nonsense to fill the precious minutes of our day. Just more content for the heap in which we all feed ourselves. The cynical part of me thinks that these tools are simply new ways in which the grand tech companies can colonise more of our time and brain space. And that feeling, leaves me cold. So, let’s not talk about A.I here, but instead, talk about where and how we find meaning in the wake of this new reality.
I recently listened to a lovely interview with the comics artist Chris Ware who I have adored since I was an art student. In that interview, he said;
“I think that technology companies know that the last frontier is human identity. And they are trying to take that away from us…They are trying to colonise our inner voices.”
Chris Ware
And it really does feel that way. This last frontier of colonisation is a creeping growth into every crevis of our brains and every small moment of our days. All things made in this world are for that endless content machine that sucks us dry like cocaine addled rats.
In this world, meaning and art don’t really matter. They are just genres of “stuff” for the endless scroll. The feeling I get around this topic is not new. We’ve been on this treadmill for a while and I’m reminded of the adverts that were put out by the Conservative Party during the height of the pandemic.
“Fatima’s next job could be in cyber. She just doesn’t know it yet” they proudly proclaimed - clearly buzzing about their proposed solutions to mass deaths, job losses, and arts venue closures. They described a simple world in which actually, we don’t need creativity or culture anymore, we just need more people to make the machines work.
But what these adverts missed (and what A.I art enthusiasts seem to miss) is that arts are an ethereal and mystical thing that gives life to a society unlike many other areas - a thing that although hard to quantify on spreadsheets or economic graphs, is vital to our being. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of shit art (I’ve seen lots of it in my time) and the art world can also has its share of bullshitters and huxters, but when art does its job, it supports us in ways that other societal supports can’t. Art and culture comforts us when we have had our hearts broken, provides new realms of discovery and elation as we age, and help us comprehend the most intense nightmares of grief or terror. The complexity of that art which supports our lives doesn’t come from the void, it comes from a being a human person and from struggling with what that all means. Art making is all about the time spent with that process - struggling, looking, thinking, seeing. That’s what makes it fucking fun.
The joy of making things, of working hard to struggle with an idea is in itself a way of living and communicating. The challenge of exploring a project, or struggling with its creation and boundaries, is in itself a way of being in the world. It allows you to think deeply, feel deeply, and to see the world around you more knowingly. This influx of never-ending slop and quick process decays away at the edges of that and in its wake leaves a bland uniformity - a hollowness that furthers our isolation and heightens our cultural separation.
Meaning Machines and a New Romanticism
I’m very fortunate to be a lecturer on the Animation degree programme at Farnham Animation, UCA. It’s the oldest Animation course in the U.K and just full of wonderful people making wonderful things. I’ve been teaching on the course for almost 2 years and I’ve really loved being part of such a big community of creative educators and students who are constantly fizzing with the excitement of discovering themselves through the act of making. We recently hosted our Graduate Awards for Class of 2025 and it blew me away to see all of our student films together. I knew that our students had been making wonderful work all year, but to see it on the big screen, surrounded by students and their families was very special. You could sense that everyone in that screening felt connected through their hardwork. The films our students made weren’t simply “things” to consume - they were signifiers of who the students were as people, what they cared about, and how they wanted to spend their time as humans. The wonderful writer Zadie Smith put it best…
“The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.”
Zadie Smith
Making, drawing, painting, writing. All of these things are ways of not sleep walking through life. They are ways of being.
So what can be done? How can we live and create in the shifting sands of cultural gangrene? Well, I don’t actually have an answer to that. Who knows how much the world will shift in these next years. But I do think a lot about how we respond to it. Rather than just going along with that shift, or falling further into existences we seem unhappy and confused about, perhaps we can instead reimagine what we want to do with our time on this planet.
In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, artists looked beyond the smoking chimney stacks and rise of technology for meaning. A group of them, The Romantics, saw steam boats and industrial expansion and thought “fuck this” and instead turned towards nature as the place to find meaning. They painted, wrote and sang about how the natural world was a place of solace for them and it helped them to a degree. Other artists looked directly at the billowing steam trains of the industrial age and faced them with wide excited eyes.
We find ourselves in a similar, but also very different shift. The A.I slop machine chugs away on the horizon, gobbling up everything it can find, and now we all decide what we want to do. Do we embrace the changing landscape, or find solace elsewhere? Is this all just a bubble of noise? Can anyone imagine a future that is more positive, without simply being nostalgic?
At the moment, I’m thinking a lot about what that means. What is the reaction to A.I other than more noise and more shit? When the world turns sharply away from human communication, craft and meaning, what do we do? What is the purpose of artwork in a world that is losing that sense memory? And is all of the stuff I’ve written here just adding to that noise - the musing of a twat on the internet? Yes, no, maybe?
I don’t know yet. But I do know that making things, communicating, struggling to think through an idea makes me feel human and constantly keeps me in touch with my sense of place in the world. And I also enjoy spending my hours painting, drawing and making not because it helps pay my bills, but because it is a wonderful way of living.
As Zadie Smith talked about, I think that we should think more deeply about how we want to spend our time. Typing shit prompts into a big corporate A.I goblin is really the last thing I want to do with my life. I’d much rather draw, paint and animate as a way of seeing the world more deeply - even if noone else is watching.
Things of Note
Ok, that’s my big AI rant over. I promise the next post will be more about making things! Before I go, let me share some wonderful things I’ve watched / read / listened to this past month.
The Worst Person in the World
So, for some reason I was really expecting not to like this. I stupidly assumed it was just going to be one of those films about middle class attactive people dealing with middle class attractive people problems. But it totally blew me away and made me sob like a baby. *****
Being a Human Person - Roy Andersson
I recently rewatched this wonderful documentary on Swedish film director Roy Andersson. A real gem about making things and the struggles that come along with that.
Naked - Mike Leigh
I’ve been meaning to watch this for yeeeeeeeears and finally got around to it. The vignettes of 90s London and the characters within still feel so vivid and alive. A much darker film than I imagined it to be, and one that is complicated with modern eyes, but beguiling nonetheless.
Chris Ware Interview with CBC Arts
And lastly, the interview I mentioned above with comic artist Chris Ware. Chris Ware is one of my very favourite artists and I’m always struck by his poise.
Thank you so much for following. If you found any of this useful, please do share with a few pals - it would be so helpful to build an audience here where there is time and space to talk more deeply about things. I’ll be back sooner than usual with some new work to share - drawings, animated things, paintings etc so keep your eyes peeled. But until then, loveyoubyeeeeeeeee.
I agree with all of this. I would write more but I'm on holiday.
Couldn’t agree more with this!