Hi Rhea,
I enjoyed reading 'Complaint in the Age of its Operationalization. '
I am encouraged that you find much of anything related to Musk cringeworthy.
"They are cringe because everything Musk does is cringe. They are yet another
product of a needy, try-hard, middle-aged man-child nerd’s desperation for love
and attention, to be one of the popular kids, even and especially as a de facto
dictator. If the gap between power and the expression of desire defines cringe,
Musk is the Black-Scholes-being-hit-by-negative-prices of cringe."
The man-child's power to demolish anything he fancies is a harsh reminder that
people and communities online are vulnerable when they rely on the master's
tools to build shared values on platforms built by corporations. It's a warning
that if we rely too heavily on these corporate platforms and tools, we risk
cultural erosion and the loss of years of hard-earned, mutually beneficial
relationships with others.
"When considering the problem of fakes in art, Goodman uses examples of forged
paintings being revealed in order to argue that we cannot know which features
of an artwork will affect its authenticity in the future. These aren’t a matter
of chemical or radiological analysis of images, although these developments
have certainly revealed an increasing number of fakes in recent years. Rather
it is a matter of looking at the artwork and considering it in a different
light."
Social media platforms have been flooded with the AI-generated trend dubbed the
“Ghiblification” "with people transforming personal photos, memes and even
historical images into visuals reminiscent of Studio Ghibli’s art style. Users
also generated and shared other iconic visual aesthetics — from Disney, Pixar,
Lego, The Simpsons, and Dr. Seuss, as well as vintage styles such as those of
Rankin/Bass (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) [...]. The real danger of current
AI trends lies not just in fakes, ethics or automation but in the silent heat
rising from countless overworked servers. As AI use skyrockets, so does its
environmental impact, and that's a growing concern we can no longer afford to
ignore.
"We are not entitled to live off the epistemic passive income from our
investment in a romantic understanding of human uniqueness."
Completely agree. Deals with the nature of our knowledge in its own right is
'probably' as akin as anything in its own right, art, technology, sex, war,
food, etc. Everything is attached to a set of other elements, never in the
singular. That purity died along with the romanticism of genius propped up by
deluded visions of post-modernity and colonial defaults. However, these
romanticisms still exist in our everyday lives and networked forms, rebuilding
from the top down and reproducing the backward, masculine defaults and
structures promoted, funded, and maintained through technological protocols and
their underlying elite systems.
"It is a failure of critical imagination to simply object to a product’s
fulfilment of the limited terms chosen for its initial promotion. It is like a
cat chasing a red dot on the floor and feeling pleased with themself when they
catch it. While screaming at anyone who points out that the dot is coming from
somewhere and that lasers have other more interesting uses."
My position is not as a puritan or an absolutist. I know that if we’re going to
be using networked technology these days, AI will be involved in some way.
However, I see AI's massive shift in our culture worldwide as a political form
of digital colonialism. Still, it would be disingenuous to ignore that
technology has always been used to exploit others, simultaneously bringing
positive benefits. My job here is to identify the positives, negatives, and
grey areas of this accelerating, ubiquitous medium, which many people use daily
in various life activities.
My guide or critical palette for assessing and navigating through all this is
an assemblage of chosen methodologies that help me understand where the works
I’m examining sit within a broader cultural context. For example, I view these
artworks from a permacultural, political, ethical, class, and intersectional
perspective. Alongside these key elements, I bring years of working with art,
technology, and social change to the table.
My focus is: What are these artworks doing, and are they doing what they claim
to do? And if they are doing what they say, what does this mean, and is this
enough? What would the work look like if the artists took their propositions
and intentions towards a more critical awareness, openness and ethical
standing? This isn’t to suggest that by critiquing this work, my peers, allies,
and I hold all the answers. At what cost are these artworks made? By examining
the function, aesthetics, technology, motives, and narratives (abstract,
conceptual, or not) of these artworks more deeply, we can better understand
where the artists stand creatively, ecologically, politically, and culturally.
This will help me reflect on my and others' relationship with art and AI and
what that relationship truly means.
Wishing you well.
Marc
On Friday, 28 March 2025 at 03:52, Rhea Myers via NetBehaviour
<netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote:
> Slop, ghibliization, and the cringe of the Musk administration -
>
> https://rhea.art/2025/03/27/complaint-in-the-age-of-its-operationalization/
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