Slop [7]

Here is another thought experiment.  

Suppose there were a blogger who had an idea about writing comic strips. 

Writing about his life, say. 

And suppose that he couldn’t draw worth a damn. 

Now, if he took a generative art package and said “Generate a comic strip about my life” it would not be a very good comic strip and it would definitely not be about his life.

It would, in fact, almost certainly be slop.

But suppose the blogger wrote a script for the strip he wanted to write. Worked out what incidents he wanted to include. Broke it down into frames. 

Suppose he described the characters to the generative AI software,  and went through many iterations until the soulless algorithm had produced sketches he was happy with. 

And suppose he did the same with each location. 

And suppose he described each frame, and didn’t stop until he was happy with the result. 

“So, I want character 1 to go into location A, and notice that character 2 is already there, but he pretends not to see them, because he is embarrassed that he can’t remember their name, so character one walks over….”

And suppose the result is quite good. 

Has he outsourced his consciousness to a machine? 

Has he abnegated the whole concept of art? 

Or is he simply using an interesting new tool as if it were an interesting new tool? 

Is AI incapable of producing anything but slop?

Or is anything AI produces slop by virtue of it having been produced by AI? 

I don’t know what the point is, but I am pretty sure it isn’t that.

I have a habit of starting each day with some “improving” reading. A page or two from the Bible (I am still trying to get my head around Maccabees). Some poetry: I enjoyed the huge Being Alive anthologies, but am now reading some collected works of one or two of the poets whose names I underlined. An American named Alden Nowlan, since you asked. A little literary fiction (the short stories of Julian Barnes.) And I am always reading Books To Encourage Writers. The one I am reading at the moment is by a man named Seth Rodin. It is called The Practice. It is more drill sergeant than yoga retreat, with a strong overtone of Dragons Den. No such thing as talent...just showing up and putting the hours in...the only thing stopping you is you....etc etc etc.

But something which resonated with me was his emphasis on practice. Not in the sense of a guitarist practicing his chords or a tennis player practicing whatever it is a tennis player has to do to become adept at playing tennis. “Practice” in the sense of spiritual practice, in the sense of doing the same thing every day whether you want to or not. 

I have noticed that the signs in modern art exhibition often talk about the artists "practice". This seems to recognise that there isn't a clear demarcation between 'life' and 'art'. “Putting things on top of other things” and “Sitting in a bag” is much part of being an artist as actually producing paintings and sculptures.

What you as a writer or a painter or an artisan baker have to develop is your practice, says Rodin. The art is a by-product. But the better your practice, the better your art.

I’ve been working on this essay for, I suppose ten days. Semi-retirement (committing myself to writing full time) allows me to find a practice which suits me: I spent several days sitting in cafes writing and writing and writing and writing and since then have been sitting at my desk editing and editing and editing and editing--which includes a lot of deleting. And quite a lot of googling, I admit. And I am doing this because I like it, or if I am being cynical, I am doing it because I don’t know what else to do. 

“Nay” says the nay-sayer; if we do not stop it, right now, then AI will do your job. If AI really does get to the point where it can write a chatty but meaty article as well as a semi-retired librarian could have done, then there will be no jobs for writers. 

And definitely, that would be a shame. 

But what would I do if all the articles in all the papers and all the comic strips and all the movies and all the streaming boxed sets were being written by robots?

I think that what I would do would be to get up, read a few pages of poetry, and then write, write, write, write and edit, edit, edit, edit. Because that is what I do. Because that is who I am. And because I don’t know what else to do.

And I very much assume that the same thing is true of painters and musicians and artisan bakers as well.

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