art < Art

People are asking what art is again?

Again? A GAN? Can AI be art?

I had a funny run in with a digital artist some months ago, no doubt unintentional, enmeshed as we are in the awkward binaries and lost replies of twitter.

I’d been trying to track down an artist called Tim Knowles from a decade or so past, whose practise was a seeming analogue of modern generative methods. By attaching pens to the suspended branches of willow trees, Knowles harnessed the invisible patterns of wind to generate drawings. Steer the parameters and watch the outputs reveal. It felt like a proto FX Hash. The self declared pioneer disagreed, with a certain grandiosity about what was and wasn’t art. I stood my ground. It isnt important.

The form isn’t important. Nor the tools available to us, through luck, luxury or necessity. Paradoxically, nor is our output.

Our input is what makes art < Art.

Us. You. Me. What’s your spirit saying? Are you open? Are you cynical? Are you hopeful? Heart makes art.

I keep thinking about electronic music and how easy it is to make nowadays. Relatively speaking. Choose your sounds, select your plugins. Drag and drop into your timeline. Tweak. Export. There you have it.

Looks like it. Smells like it. Maybe it even sounds like it. But its not it. Its a simulacra of it.

Homage is fine. Some of us, many of us learn by copying. But if you’re biting, who’s that someone you’re avoiding? Is that someone you? If you’re avoiding yourself, you’re not making art. You’re noodling. Hobbying.

I need to believe in your authenticity. Your integrity. I’m not so interested in supporting your hobbies. I am not averse to them, happy for you to have some. But I wouldn’t go out of my way to collect editions of your jigsaws or your finished colouring books.

40 years ago when variously marginalised kids were using whatever tools they had to hand, bending archaic technology into new forms, new ideas, they weren’t intentionally creating house music. They were creating music. Community. Art.

Granted, some of them were copying disco, but they were doing it with open hearts. Only afterwards did a name stick. House music didn’t start as a genre, a formula to be followed.

It was an endeavour, of hope over cynicism.

We live in a strange post post modern era, where all of human history is accessible to us. We can copy. We can sample. We can steal. For many of us, it’s increasingly easy to create.

So we must acknowledge this. Our past. All of human history. Breathe it in. Research it. Reference it. Try to learn from it. With hope. Without cynicism.

Regardless of the tools you can or can’t access, your intentions are all that makes your art < Art.

Are you trying to fake something, to copy something, perhaps to prove you can do it, to yourself, the world, whoever?

Or are you trying to communicate? What are you trying to communicate, and how?

And why (if you can face going there) ?

Its ever such a fine line between hobbyist and artist. A shifting and sometimes faintly indiscernible line.

If all that seems to separate us is a heart or a souls choice between hope and cynicism, I hope I created with an open heart.