I hope if you’re reading this you are taking care of yourself, it’s been a hard start to a new year for everyone I know.

I had “write a post” on my TODO list but kept putting it off because I don’t know how to address what’s happening in my country. Then, just a few minutes ago, I had an unexpected conversation with someone online— we are both participating in Genuary, posting a piece of generative art every day this month. (Generative art is not AI, it is art guided by algorithmic rules, the lines of code are as human as brush strokes.) This person, an established artist, had posted that while the act of working on a piece each day was a helpful distraction it can be challenging to actually put a piece out. It is always vulnerable— “is this my best work? is this even good?” but worse is that right now it also feels frivolous. Why am I posting a GIF of weird fireflies when people are being kidnapped and now murdered by our government?

I told this person that their art had cheered me up and that I anticipated their posts each day. A few guaranteed minutes when my mind is allowed to relax from keeping up with the latest horrors. To my surprise they replied that mine had done the same for them.

There’s something here. Something about creating things in the face of people that are far more interested in destruction than creation.

If you want to see my Genuary sketches they’re here: https://h9.bees.free/genuary26/01-one-color-one-shape/ (still working on the overall site/presentation, but you can flip through them with the dropdown at the top)

I think my best two so far are these:

If you’re interested in making a piece of generative art, pick a prompt from the list (https://genuary.art/prompts) and post it!

And of course, if that isn’t your thing, I just hope that you try and create something. Make sure that you share it, Maybe just with a few friends, or make an anonymous account and post under that. The prevalence of AI slop has made me far more appreciative of human work with all of its imperfections. I’d so much rather read a rambling blog post with typos and imperfect grammar than anything with that unmistakable ChatGPT cadence.

zines

I’ve spent a good part of the past three years thinking a lot about how to encourage/assist more people in creating things.

One other idea, in part inspired by pagedout.institute is to try to get a collaborative blog/digital zine or two off the ground.

Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next? matches my thinking on this pretty well. We need more people writing human content and one way to do that would be to join forces with others that want to write about similar things instead of expecting everyone to run their own blog. (But also, please— give me links to your RSS feeds!)

Personally, I want to figure out how to write about how our relationship to technology needs to change and how we can have a healthier web. As well as why that might be a stepping stone (prerequisite?) to a healthier democratic world. Realistically, I think I’ll need to do that in a pseudonymous way, not here, but I’d love to have others writing alongside me. If that’s of interest please let me know.

-jpt

Stay warm. Stay safe. Stay in the fight.

If you think someone you know might enjoy this, please send it along to them.