I came away from the exhibition with a stronger appreciation for my home town’s diverse and wonderful art scene and a fresh perspective on an issue plaguing my conscience - the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in creative spaces.
Like last year’s brief obsession with Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), AI has become the current tech zeitgeist with people claiming it to be either the death of an industry or humanity’s great saviour.
These programmes also seem to have a strong appeal to legacy companies in the entertainment business, with opening credits to Marvel Studio’s latest miniseries Secret Invasion being designed by an AI.
Even industry legends are getting in on the craze, with Sir Paul McCartney using AI to extricate John Lennon’s voice for what he’s calling The Beatles’ final song.
However, while executives may be salivating at the profits to be made from cutting pesky humans and their pesky need to be paid from the creative process, I find the encroachment of this technology an insulting perversion of a uniquely human endeavour.
I enjoy art not only for its aesthetic qualities but because each piece is a little window into another person’s life and experiences.
I find this true whether it’s a painting in a gallery, a book in a library, a carving on a marae or the Fall Out Boy record I’m listening to while writing this sentence.
To create a piece of art is to show yourself to others at your most vulnerable, to make something for no other reason than to show others and tell them your story.
I think that is a fundamental part of the human experience.
When I look at something created by AI, I see no deeper meaning, no story, no humanity. I see a collage of unconnected ideas stolen from actual artists and mashed together by an algorithm at the behest of creatively bankrupt hacks.
Further, I think the glee with which many discuss the potential of AI creations is the latest manifestation of an all-to-familiar societal disrespect of artistic pursuits.
Many seem to have built up this idea that artists are both privileged elites who deserved to be brought down a peg while also being lazy layabouts who need to get a real job.
You can see this contempt in the comments section of any story about the ongoing renovation of the Sarjeant Gallery, proclaiming how it’s all a big waste of money.
I hope these same people realise just how dull Whanganui would be if the art gallery ceased to exist or if all of the works in its collection were replaced with portraits of dead-eyed human replicants with too many fingers.
While it is true a select few artists make extravagant amounts of money, most are working-class people either doing it as a hobby or barely making enough money to get by but keeping at it because they love it.
Entertainment conglomerates are well aware of this issue and bank on it; for decades, creative workers across multiple industries have been asked to suck up horrible working hours for not enough pay under some notion of passion or love for the craft.
Thankfully, it appears people are fed up with their mouths starving from passion alone, with the ongoing WGA writers’ strike in America and similar rumblings of industrial action in other spaces.
However, as far as I’m concerned, the mistreatment of artists, the drive to recategorise art as nebulous “content” and the rise of NFTs and AI are all part of the same mega-problem - people like art but they don’t respect those who make it.
What can we do about it, though?
The introduction of a Universal Basic Income would be good for people in general, but especially artists because it means people could be free to create without the need for a day job sapping them of their energy.
I’m well aware that’s an unfortunately contentious issue and one which would likely take years to implement so, on an individual level, what can you do?
First, don’t feed the bots with prompts, even as a joke, because the only way they improve is by people giving them instructions to scrounge off.
Rather, support artists directly by paying for their work.
One part of the exhibition story I neglected to tell until now is I liked one piece so much I bought a print of it and, delightfully, the artist was at the exhibition so I got to meet them and thank them for their work.
The difference in experience between that and coldly waiting for a computer to cough up some generic nonsense was like chalk and cheese.
Finally, actually make art, whatever tickles your fancy.
It doesn’t matter if you suck at it because everyone does at first but, in doing so, you’ll take part in something far more enriching and human than asking a robot to do it for you.
