Well said. This was foreseen long ago. In “1984” (published 1949) George Orwell describes a future when the cultural appetite of the masses is fed on machine generated pulp fiction and generic love songs. The father of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, forecast the displacement of high level human work and human careers by sophisticated machines in “The Human Use of Human Beings” (1950).
Personally, I think aesthetics and ethics are a continuum, and the great moral imperative is to be creative, or to contribute to creative projects as a facilitator or a consumer. Why else are we here? Not for the idiocracy.
AI in the arts is sheer vandalism. Fight the good fight.
Thank you so much for your thoughts on this. It is eerie how accurate Orwell's description was for our current time. I would never want to appear as a snob when it comes to art but I do worry about a lot of the pop culture style "art," from books to movies and shows, that people consume. I do think it has a direct negative effect on their mental state. I really like your line, "AI in the arts is sheer vandalism." Well stated!
Reality is sublime, referring to “a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation.” Good art is arguably the best approximator of reality.
Thank you so much! I agree, good art is a representation of reality, not a mirage severed from it. I love that you wrote "Reality is sublime." I feel the same way and I'm glad to know someone who agrees!
Maybe I ought to have qualified my statement to read “Good art is arguably the best approximator of aesthetic reality”, assuming there’s a distinction between “brute reality” and aesthetic reality.
You’d be right with landscapes, maybe, and some other fine art. But music and literature have very little correlation with nature. There’s an amusing passage from Oscar Wilde’s “Decay of Lying” that comes to mind:
“Yesterday evening Mrs. Arundel insisted on my going to the window, and looking at the glorious sky, as she called it… And what was it? It was simply a very second-rate Turner, a Turner of a bad period, with all the painter’s worst faults exaggerated and over-emphasised.”
This is an interesting discussion! You make a good point regarding sentient beings and the creation of art. I would say for my personal philosophy, especially as an artist, art and nature are inextricably linked-from both a metaphysical sense and a more concrete-bound sense. Nature from the standpoint of "the nature of things" can be found throughout art, and I think Da Vinci is a great example of that. He took the function and form of Nature and applied it to art works, giving us some of the most human artistic renderings ever created (the sfumato technique comes to mind, in which he mimics the way the eyes sees in his paintings). Something comes to mind as well from poetry regarding the nature of things. I read a fantastic article the other day I'll link to that was written by Ted Gioia, and he made the argument that music isn't a mathematical process, but a bodily one. So, rhythm is meant to mimic human movement rather than "time" from a mathematical standpoint. In poetry, this can be translated to the iambic pentameter found in sonnets. The iambic pentameter, or rhythm, mimics a human heartbeat (like Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee"). At the very least, nature itself, in the form of what is all around us, has acted as an ample muse for artists for ages. It's like that passage from the Abolition of Man. When two people are presented with a mighty mountain, one simply says it's "pretty." The other says it's "sublime." Lewis thought the man who said "sublime" was right. I agree with Lewis ☺️
I have to say I am surprised by Ted Gioia’s article. I know he’s a jazz pianist, and the piano is officially a percussion instrument, but the article has serious omissions. There is a lot more to music than rhythm. How can anyone write about music without mentioning pitch? Melody? Harmony? Interval? Chordal progression? Counterpoint? Gioia’s basic point - that music is rooted in human body movements - is partly true as an account of its origin, but I think that song is equally as important as dance. Speaking of jazz pianists, there’s a wonderful black and white film available on YouTube of Dave Brubeck’s quartet playing “Take Five”. It’s astonishingly edgy, because the time signature contradicts the natural and familiar rhythms we know and feel. That becomes particularly apparent in the drum solo, which is awesome.
I think for the point of his article he focused on talking about the aspects of the body influencing music because he knew his audience would understood he's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater so to speak. If he tackled those other things in the same article it would probably turn into a novel-length piece 😅 I think all of these things, art, nature, Nature, and mathematics are intertwined, as opposed to being mutually exclusive in some way. I've listened to some of Brubeck, but not too much because I admit I'm not big on jazz. I'll try to track down the video you referenced. Interesting note about his manipulation of time signature!
Interesting essay! I was especially interested in your thoughts on music and embodiment. As you know from reading my writing, embodiment is very important to me, and I want to rescue the human person from just "being a mind." Unfortunately, philosophers are beguiled by the idea of the mind as computer or even just as the program running on it, and so they are beguiled by the idea that AI will be our equal, or even superior, someday.
Freddie Mercury died over a third of a century ago. That’s crazy. But just as printing made Shakespeare immortal, so sound recording has immortalized the great musicians of the past century, and cinema has done the same for actors. These technologies have also generated new creative opportunities, for commentators, producers, etc. But AI… ugh.
Well said. This was foreseen long ago. In “1984” (published 1949) George Orwell describes a future when the cultural appetite of the masses is fed on machine generated pulp fiction and generic love songs. The father of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, forecast the displacement of high level human work and human careers by sophisticated machines in “The Human Use of Human Beings” (1950).
Personally, I think aesthetics and ethics are a continuum, and the great moral imperative is to be creative, or to contribute to creative projects as a facilitator or a consumer. Why else are we here? Not for the idiocracy.
AI in the arts is sheer vandalism. Fight the good fight.
Thank you so much for your thoughts on this. It is eerie how accurate Orwell's description was for our current time. I would never want to appear as a snob when it comes to art but I do worry about a lot of the pop culture style "art," from books to movies and shows, that people consume. I do think it has a direct negative effect on their mental state. I really like your line, "AI in the arts is sheer vandalism." Well stated!
Reality is sublime, referring to “a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation.” Good art is arguably the best approximator of reality.
Really great essay, Rebecca.
Thank you so much! I agree, good art is a representation of reality, not a mirage severed from it. I love that you wrote "Reality is sublime." I feel the same way and I'm glad to know someone who agrees!
Art transcends brute reality. Without sentient creators there would be nothing to compare with Bach, Leonardo or Shakespeare.
Maybe I ought to have qualified my statement to read “Good art is arguably the best approximator of aesthetic reality”, assuming there’s a distinction between “brute reality” and aesthetic reality.
You’d be right with landscapes, maybe, and some other fine art. But music and literature have very little correlation with nature. There’s an amusing passage from Oscar Wilde’s “Decay of Lying” that comes to mind:
“Yesterday evening Mrs. Arundel insisted on my going to the window, and looking at the glorious sky, as she called it… And what was it? It was simply a very second-rate Turner, a Turner of a bad period, with all the painter’s worst faults exaggerated and over-emphasised.”
This is an interesting discussion! You make a good point regarding sentient beings and the creation of art. I would say for my personal philosophy, especially as an artist, art and nature are inextricably linked-from both a metaphysical sense and a more concrete-bound sense. Nature from the standpoint of "the nature of things" can be found throughout art, and I think Da Vinci is a great example of that. He took the function and form of Nature and applied it to art works, giving us some of the most human artistic renderings ever created (the sfumato technique comes to mind, in which he mimics the way the eyes sees in his paintings). Something comes to mind as well from poetry regarding the nature of things. I read a fantastic article the other day I'll link to that was written by Ted Gioia, and he made the argument that music isn't a mathematical process, but a bodily one. So, rhythm is meant to mimic human movement rather than "time" from a mathematical standpoint. In poetry, this can be translated to the iambic pentameter found in sonnets. The iambic pentameter, or rhythm, mimics a human heartbeat (like Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee"). At the very least, nature itself, in the form of what is all around us, has acted as an ample muse for artists for ages. It's like that passage from the Abolition of Man. When two people are presented with a mighty mountain, one simply says it's "pretty." The other says it's "sublime." Lewis thought the man who said "sublime" was right. I agree with Lewis ☺️
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/classical-music-got-invented-with
I have to say I am surprised by Ted Gioia’s article. I know he’s a jazz pianist, and the piano is officially a percussion instrument, but the article has serious omissions. There is a lot more to music than rhythm. How can anyone write about music without mentioning pitch? Melody? Harmony? Interval? Chordal progression? Counterpoint? Gioia’s basic point - that music is rooted in human body movements - is partly true as an account of its origin, but I think that song is equally as important as dance. Speaking of jazz pianists, there’s a wonderful black and white film available on YouTube of Dave Brubeck’s quartet playing “Take Five”. It’s astonishingly edgy, because the time signature contradicts the natural and familiar rhythms we know and feel. That becomes particularly apparent in the drum solo, which is awesome.
I think for the point of his article he focused on talking about the aspects of the body influencing music because he knew his audience would understood he's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater so to speak. If he tackled those other things in the same article it would probably turn into a novel-length piece 😅 I think all of these things, art, nature, Nature, and mathematics are intertwined, as opposed to being mutually exclusive in some way. I've listened to some of Brubeck, but not too much because I admit I'm not big on jazz. I'll try to track down the video you referenced. Interesting note about his manipulation of time signature!
Music and literature (for examples) require sentient creators. Arguably, sentient creations are supernatural.
Interesting essay! I was especially interested in your thoughts on music and embodiment. As you know from reading my writing, embodiment is very important to me, and I want to rescue the human person from just "being a mind." Unfortunately, philosophers are beguiled by the idea of the mind as computer or even just as the program running on it, and so they are beguiled by the idea that AI will be our equal, or even superior, someday.
So well articulated. We writers have the same concerns. Both the pro organizations I'm involved in are fighting for authors' rights.
When I saw this, I had to smile:
"Human intelligence gave us the theatrical fantasy, aching awareness, and melodic brilliance of Freddie Mercury and “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
You know how I feel about Freddie. And that song. What a remarkable composition. Much enjoyed the read!
Freddie Mercury died over a third of a century ago. That’s crazy. But just as printing made Shakespeare immortal, so sound recording has immortalized the great musicians of the past century, and cinema has done the same for actors. These technologies have also generated new creative opportunities, for commentators, producers, etc. But AI… ugh.