AI, oy!
Welcome to the 75th edition of this newsletter!
With each email I'm sharing material that has inspired me recently. I'm hoping it will inspire you, too. If you want to support my work, you can sign up for my Patreon. This will get you access to exclusive material every week.
If Patreon is not your thing but you enjoy what I'm doing, feel free to send me a little something via Paypal. I'll use the funds to pay for the fee the service provider of this Mailing List charges me every month. If there's money left, I'll invest it into the Japanese green tea that fuels much of my creative work.
I can't believe that I wrote 74 emails such as this one already. But the numbers aren't lying, are they? At least that's what people tell me, especially when it comes to the years you've spent on this planet.
So this is number 75. However long you've been following these missives, I want to thank you for your attention. I know that these days, there is so much material trying to be seen or read. It's a real privilege knowing that what I produce here might brighten your day a little.
At least that's the hope.
See, I had to set things up this way, given that I need to start things off with a little advertising. I don't feel very good about advertising what I do. Tooting my own horn makes me feel very uncomfortable. But if I don't tell anyone that I am offering two workshops, nobody will know. And if nobody knows, nobody will sign up.
The workshops will both be four weekend days (starting in mid-March -- check out the website for details). One covers writing for photographers: how do you write those statements that you have to produce? How do you go about this? Are there any tricks? Well, yes, they are, and you'll learn all about them in this workshop. You'll also learn how and why writing is a lot easier than you think and that it's actually a great tool for your photographic practice. In this workshop, you'll have to do plenty of writing -- you can't learn something like writing by just hearing someone talk about it. But you'll end up with a brand new artist and project statement.
The second workshop covers work strategies for photographers. This workshop focuses on a number of practical strategies you can use to boost your productivity as a photographer. It's all the stuff art schools simply won't tell you because, I suppose, it's assumed that you figure it out on your own. I'm going to give away all my tips and tricks and strategies, and you'll be able to get a lot of advice on how to incorporate things into your own practice. That's the best way to become a better photographer. After all, what you really only want to worry about is your work -- and not how to do it, right?
If you want to join one of the workshops, send me an email!
Now that NFTs have imploded... Imagine the sound of the tiniest possible violins playing a sad song... Well, anyway, the art worlds clown car has moved on to artificial intelligence or "AI".
If you could heat your home with the hot takes produced these days, none of us would have any heating bills left. Everybody's house would be a sauna! But I suppose that the art world loves hype, and any hype will do. SO now it's AI and the text and/or pictures it produces.
"I’m an Art Critic," writes Martin, asking "Will AI Steal My Job?" Well, obviously not. But what kind of column would that be? Plus, Herbert is a smart writer. He knows how to produce a good argument, arriving, however, at a grim conclusion:
"Especially since the shift from art criticism to ‘art writing’ – and all the structural factors which seemingly occasioned it – many art writers have already trained themselves not to upset the applecart. A simple way around becoming outmoded by technology would seem to be ‘do what the technology can’t do’. But in a world where those things aren’t valued – aren’t lucrative for someone else, are distractingly provoking of thought rather than consumption, don’t promote consensus – well, good luck with that."
Agreed.
The idea of this email wasn't to bum you out. So here's a selfie of Tobey, the cat, with me. Sort of a mental-health break, which might not work if you either don't like selfies or don't like cats (but then: who doesn't like cats?).
Back to AI. Te Chiang wrote an interesting article in New Yorker magazine about ChatGPT. Here's the important part:
"Think of ChatGPT as a blurry JPEG of all the text on the Web. It retains much of the information on the Web, in the same way that a JPEG retains much of the information of a higher-resolution image, but, if you’re looking for an exact sequence of bits, you won’t find it; all you will ever get is an approximation. But, because the approximation is presented in the form of grammatical text, which ChatGPT excels at creating, it’s usually acceptable. You’re still looking at a blurry JPEG, but the blurriness occurs in a way that doesn’t make the picture as a whole look less sharp."
Even as you might argue that there is merit to the blurry JPEG (remember Hito Steyerl's In Defense of the Poor Image?), it's easy to see how a blurry JPEG will not be a proper replacement of a sharp one (whether literally or metaphorically).
At least for a while, AI will not replace quality work. It might replace the work that's mediocre or already pretty bad (and that often is performed by underpaid "content producers" who might or might not be located in countries outside the West -- there's a larger labour issue here, which, however, isn't new).
I'm personally not too worried about AI. Good art and good writing are a lot more than a lossy collage of existing material.
After all, a large part of what makes a lossy JPEG bearable is the realization that there is something un-lossy (so to speak) behind it. AI, however, starts out with the lossy, and there is nothing beyond. What kind of art is that supposed to be?
as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend. ChatGPT’s melancholy role is that it is destined to imitate and can never have an authentic human experience, no matter how devalued and inconsequential the human experience may in time become.
There was a lovely piece about Jem Southam's new work in BJP. I have always liked this photographer's sensibility as an artist and the work that he has produced. I was struck by the following quote:
"This work is the work of an old man [...] It’s about hope and loss, but it’s also very much about an old man contemplating his place in the universe. And beginning to come to terms with the fact that, slowly, ‘me’ is winding down. How many more springs or winters am I going to be here to make these pictures? Not that many. So it’s about contemplating life, my own mortality, as well."
I'd include another cat picture lest you get bummed out again. But I don't want to overplay that device.
This means that it's time to conclude this email.
As always thank you for reading!
-- Jörg