‘I feel like we are nearing the end of times.’ ~ Hayao Miyazaki

dub spectrum and ai

People are often surprised to discover that I don't use Copilot or ChatGPT.  Writing is a skill and I consider myself pretty decent and feel it’s something that can always be improved upon so best to keep practising – whether writing creatively, emailing a friend or colleague, or typing up a patient’s note at work. I feel the more we lose touch with the skills we have – be it writing, playing a musical instrument or carpentry – not only do we risk losing touch with ourselves, but also risk giving away our autonomy (in a world where such a thing is rapidly diminishing!).

I have experimented a little with the AI denoise tool in Lightroom and thought it was a bit crap – putting a bland sheen over the character of human faces… a statistically rendered bag of probabilities divorced from reality, simulacra now the basis for high art: no uniqueness, no eccentricity, no mystery, no beauty, no personality; just a standardised sheen of bland (like those freakish Botox influencers who all look the same!). I find such attempts at cold 'perfection’ disturbing (indeed, weren’t modern statistics born from eugenics?).

Personally, right now, AI strikes me as probably the next phase of neoliberalism: Francis Fukuyama declared ‘The End of History’ after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Vapid consumerism reigns supreme; there is no alternative! As I understand it, AI is basically a ‘super-processor’ of research and information, which is hypothesised and produced by humans that provide the basis for scientific advancements in, for example, medicine and engineering applied in everyday life. However, if we follow the current trajectory of using AI for everything because we have arbitrarily deemed it as somehow superior to us (not sure what the evidence for that is… other than a calculator being quicker at maths than most humans?), then will we reach a point where humans no longer produce new research and information (and by extension music, literature and art) because we lazily rely on AI to process everything already done to that point?  Would such a thing not mark ‘The End of Progress’? I don't quite buy the hype that AI will destroy humanity, at least not through some kind of Skynet ‘cybergeddon’ (see below); I suspect it's a more prosaic case of fear equals government contracts thus forming the culmination of the neoliberal dream: an oddly anti-scientific state of repetitious rectilinearity in servitude to profit margins (doomscroll your life away siloed into algorithmically vetted thoughts, buy the new iPhone, vote for this year's pop star, watch the new season of I'm a Celebrity, support the current thing, don't think, etc.). An 'End of Times' of sorts. Can't wait.

As Hito Steyerl discusses in her book, Medium Hot, tech companies (Palantir etc.) are not only using war torn areas, such as Gaza and Ukraine, as grotesque sites for research and development opportunities, but other companies, such as Google and Microsoft, are openly admitting to failing to live up to carbon neutral targets as a result of the massive amounts of resources required to power AI in its aggressive arms race with the CCP. At present, it appears AI is a tool predominantly utilised to not only make power a more efficient killing machine, but also a means of accelerating environmental destruction on a global scale; while the ‘art’ it produces is best summed up by that ubiquitous (though highly accurate) noun: ‘slop’ (I suck at maths so calculators are great, but they have not in any way improved my ability to add and subtract any more, it seems, than AI will enhance the creative abilities of someone who is not particularly imaginative or artistic). In this context, the word ‘intelligence’ has surely never been so ironic!

Exposing technological advances as tools appropriated by the Military Industrial Complex constructing a narrative of ‘human psychology’ that suggests we are inherently warlike and thus in need of said complex in perpetuum – of which the sophisticated propaganda campaigns openly contradict, I.e., most of us have no fucking desire to go to war – is nothing new. Be it Edward Bernays, Rudolf Rocker, Arthur Ponsonby, General Smedley Butler, Julian Assange or John Pilger et al., Steyerl’s concerns reveal, if anything, there really is nothing new under the sun when it comes to power. So how does all this link with a DIY ethos in art? I came of age around free parties and DJ’d at a few in the early 2000s. While I’m too old for such shindigs now, I remain drawn to its understated rebellion. Culturally, politically and aesthetically, such events were not only inherently inclusive but ran contrary to the establishment to the point they were aggressively shut down and outlawed by the authorities in the 90s. Looking back, I find it curious that such events were decidedly apolitical. In contrast to punk, for example, they were primarily celebrations of people simply getting together and dancing yet this had the authorities running scared. It seems they don’t fear ‘the enemy’, they fear the opposite, I.e., people coming together! Free parties sum up an ideal for art in the modern era: keeping the human – and humanity – at the heart of the creative process is key to any resistance where technology becomes oppressive. I don’t doubt AI’s potential for contributing to advances in, for example, medical science but best to keep it out of the arts (and war), I think.

As an indie, I am drawn to the warmth and feel of vinyl (not a 'perfect' sound); the audio romance of a rushing, atmospheric d'n'b break with ethereal soundscapes and melodic breakdowns, which another person will not understand (or like), hits me while a complete stranger will similarly be moved to tears likewise for reasons neither of us understand… other than it makes us human (and connected). For reasons unknown, I find a degree of believability in the DIY, makeshift approach of early cinema to create its effects (films such as The Invisible Man), which leave gaps to be filled by the imagination; as opposed to the explicit, gamer aesthetic (not to mention infantile dialogue) of those ubiquitous green screen movies that leave room for zip. I wonder, in attempts to 'perfect' film-making through technology, are we not destroying it? I don’t know why the gnarled oaks of Dartmoor woodland soothe my restless mind and I don’t care to know why: being in that space, in that moment, requires nothing more as I reconnect with my inner soul.

Contrary to reason, art dwells in a vast lake of not-knowing, what Rudolf Otto referred to as the ‘non-rational’ (as opposed to irrational) state of being. If we shut out the unknowing of the non-rational, do we not reduce ourselves to little more than soporifically obedient automatons?  It's interesting to note scientist, J.D. Bernal’s The World, the Flesh and the Devil (written a century ago) not least in his remarkably imaginative, somewhat terrifying vision for the evolution of the human body into something barely recognisable living inside an asteroid. Our current increasingly disembodied world is turning out rather different in its imaginative capacities! My beef with neoliberalism is that it seems to have perpetuated an interminably banal era of soft-totalitarianism and war spearheaded by governments and Big Tech. Utopian nerds (and indeed many scientists) appear to have a depressingly limited idea of what makes us human (and our potential).

No doubt Theodor Adorno was being a bit of a cultural snob when writing The Stars Down to Earth (and maybe just a tad literal in his interpretation of Freud while perhaps reading too much into something most people take with a pinch of salt), but he was nevertheless on to something in terms of irrationality in a capitalist society. I think we can certainly see ‘the dangers’ he predicted playing out through the mind-numbingly conformist hyper-irrationality of social media and its godawful mix of incessantly uniform slop, paranoia, narcissism, stupidity, depravity and intolerance: dispiriting times!

As Japanese filmmaker, Hayao Miyazaki, said in response to advances in AI and technology: ‘We humans are losing faith in ourselves’. It’s a trite observation to say that technology can be used to great effect in art and culture. It’s as banal as that tedious question: ‘what is art?’ I think maybe it's time to ask what (or rather who) makes art? In a deeply troubled and divided world, the arts can restore faith in humanity. Entirely remove the embodied human, I feel we could be, to quote Hayao Miyazaki, ‘nearing the end of times’.

Resistance through re-enchantment.

10/26

© Christopher Sharp