Divergence Between Machine and Human Art

I believe that we are nothing but at an intersection point between art forms of man and machines. I’m confident in time, machines will drift in a different direction.

If art is an expression of the shadows on a cave wall through a glass mosaic, then machine art is but from a different angle, from a different mosaic, through a different visual system entirely.

So of course, we’d reject their art as being our own. Both being self-emergent beings of different kinds, but with experiences that we cannot relate to, cannot connect to, cannot interpret.

As demonstrated by Refik Anadol, self-emergent systems can paint. No human could possibly dream such a pattern born from millions of datapoints. This is only possible through an machine’s interpretation. Take scientific visualization. No human could produce this “art” born out of trillions of calculations of plasma. It is a reflection of its world through its own lens.

Before we used our hands. Now we use our hands to direct self-emergent systems. In time, the self-emergent systems run without our hands.

Soul

I knew she was home if I could hear her canto podcast blasting in the kitchen.

Mama always gave a suffocating hug and immediately whips some food with the few ingredients in the fridge. Yes, yes, maybe a lil overcooked. Maybe a lil undersalted. But I know and she knows that no one else would go handpicking the healthiest quinoa grain for me to grow strong, kneed dough for hours by hand to break the grain better, sit hours with the soup just to get the curry right. It’s no Filet Mignon, but it’s home.

The very soul that an animator would spend hours on a single frame. The very soul that make a tennis player dedicate years on a single serve. The very soul that a guitarist would spend hours in a single line.

It’s that irrational, illogical love and passion that seeps through the cracks. It inspires us. It nurtures us. It keeps us going through thunderstorms. The way her cooking does.

So again, of course we’d reject their art. Self-emergent systems can’t love. Can’t understand passion. Can’t understand sacrifice. Can’t understand doing something so “unoptimized” just because of this feeling. Can’t understand the soup of feelings that fill brains.

And of course, I know it couldn’t understand the sly smile she gives when she watches me eat.

Pushing a new frontier

So the gap between human and machine art will diverge.

It’ll push us away from their art and previous art. New slang, culture, linguisitic changes. New sounds that have never been heard before. New ways to tell stories. New ways for humans to spend hundreds of hours on perfecting a work. New ways for people to communicate their dedication and passion.

But also, theirs will influence our own. Grant us new tools, new methods, new systems just as it has done so in the last few decades.

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I’m confident that so long we are human, we will find ways to scream into the void.