Howdy, folks!
Welcome once again to the Omnium Gatherum.
Or, if you’re new here, welcome to the Omnium Gatherum.
If either of the two of you readers are paying attention to these columns, you may notice there’s a jump in the recent numbering with this entry.
Where is column #85?
Column #85 is a long in the works and long in length piece about Oxymandias of Watchmen fame. Being a Buddhist and being struck by the notion of compassionate violence from Tantric Buddhism, after learning about it while research my White Whale (another story for another time), I wondered about his actions, particularly as the story concludes there seemingly is no punishment on the horizon for his actions. In technical terms, the person who wins at the end of a superhero story is the hero, he’s the good guy; the villains generally win in the short term but not at the end of a particular story. Not unless it’s one of those so called imaginary stories where the bad guys win because this story is not part of the Never Ending Battle a particular superhero is fighting monthly, bimonthly, and so on. While Watchmen is a limited series set in a particular superhero universe, it is the only real story set in that world; everything else done with those characters are often reactions to that core story, not the continuing adventures, and definitely not the Never Ending Battle.
See? Even talking about it uses up a lot of words.
Plus I haven’t done a column off the cuff or in full pantser mode in a long time. Not since the very early days of this column.
But I wanted to get my thoughts about A.I. art down as the landscape is changing all the time and I don’t know how relevant what I have to say will be if I wait.
And just to be clear, I personally don’t think anything I say is of any relevance anyway. To me, I’m doing what I’ve been doing for a long time, ever since my father brought home notebook paper from his job, and that is put words down for the play and magic of it. That anyone takes anything of value or anything vexing from it is amazing to me and always filled with appreciation for someone even taking the time to read it.
I digress as usual.
So lots of folks, especially those I know in real life and see on social media who work in comics and animation, are all up in arms or up in their feelings over the emergence of Artificial Intelligence generated art on the scene.
And not without merit.
As it’s both amazing and very disheartening to see a computer program that allows any person to simply enter a few or many word prompts and receive a finished image of relative high quality. Amazing because it is just amazing to see that technology has come this far. Okay, it’s more like a nice consolation prize in terms of technology as far as I’m concerned. We don’t have a moonbase, only one space station, not enough nuclear power plants, and no flying cars. But we have computers that can follow written instructions and produce art. Although it’s also very disheartening because that ease of action demeans the efforts of every human being who has ever picked up a pencil, a crayon, a paintbrush, and has worked hard to produce beautiful, outrageous, horrifying, and other such adjectives used to describe visual images. Why? Because A.I. art effectively compresses and consumes the hard work of existing artists from cartoonists and comics pencilers to illustrators to photographers in order to produce its results. What a way to tell someone who has devoted his or her or hir life to their craft what that devotion is worth to those who use A.I. art.
Now as a tool it may be fair to say that A.I. art is here to stay.
Artists will have to contend with that, as some of the early adopters and lawsuits and general disdain for the technology are demonstrating.
That’s not what I came here to talk about today.
I want to talk about a curious observation that occurred to me while looking at the usage of A.I. art thumbnails on YouTube videos, especially amongst some Black tarot readers on the platform. There may be something of value here for artists though.
And that is this, what I’m noticing with most but not all A.I. art is the amount of idealized figures and faces that seems in line with those classical art values stemming from the Renaissance through to the early part of the 20th Century with styles like Art Deco and Art Nouveau. In what is supposed to be the postmodern and then some 21st Century.
I think the reason why is, despite the rise of postmodernism, dadaism, and various and sundry other movements designed to deconstruct, disassemble, and otherwise attack ideals like The True, The Good, and The Beautiful in art, most people want to, need to see idealized versions of themselves or people who look like them.
That, in A.I. art, people are returning to the aspirational, to The True, The Good, and The Beautiful, even if they think they are merely creating images that are affirmative.
That’s interesting.
It’s interesting because it flies in the face of a lot of what has been said about art over the last 100 years or so, especially by movements like surrealism and modern art, that people are not interested in the ideal, aren’t interested in The True, The Good, and The Beautiful.
Maybe what was needed was a materialistic and mechanistic way for those folks to get there and show those intellectual and artistic voice that they were wrong. As many but not all of us modern folks are not following religious and/or spiritual paths that encourage one to reach for those three classical values nor are those values being taught the ways that they once were. Yet the seeming demand for those higher values seems to be emerging from within those who are using A.I. art and those who are consuming it gladly independent of those religious and spiritual paths. That may suggest the desire for those values is even more transcendent than anyone could ever fathom.
For example from another related quarter, there’s a certain amount of hue and cry coming from a certain aspect of video games fandom that hates the current trend in creating visually ugly or plain or fat or otherwise diverse looking female characters for the games. Yet those who support such endeavors often claim diversity of body imagery as both their goal and their values in action as well as a selling point to a whole other audience than necessarily the target one.
Yet some but not all of the A.I. art I’ve seen of fat or plus sized women are often realized in that True, Good, and Beautiful way.
The two situations seem at odds with each other.
That too is very interesting.
For example, I’m doing research into tarot and other divination systems these days. That research requires I end up buying the odd deck for my library. Recently I ordered two different tarot decks aimed at African Americans. One, simply called Black Tarot, and the other was found on Etsy under the title of Mystique Orisha Major Arcana Tarot. Below are sample images from the two decks. Here’s what’s interesting:
As you can see if my internet mojo worked correctly are samples from Black Tarot. The art is typical of a lot of African and African American art in the sense of focusing on color and shapes rather than distinct imagery. The figures and imagery abstract, almost symbolic. The colors muted. The cards are beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but now look at these:
What you can see here are images of the Orisha as seen through the eyes of A.I. The depictions are heroic, idealized, and powerful, definitely aspirational. The colors are vibrant. In other words, aiming towards The True, The Good, and The Beautiful as classically named.
The former deck uses plenty of African and African American motifs to illustrate the various images and ideas of Tarot. Images that because of their abstractness do invite a kind of projection by the viewer. The latter deck, though, invites a deeper and higher form of projection, that of aspiration and perfection, ideas that are not normally part of African or African American art or aren’t depicted in the same way as Western art does. The Orisha deck, and I say this fully aware that I’m whistling past the graveyard in terms of how many artists feel about A.I. art, feels more in line with those Western ideas and ideals than it does to the African and African American sources.
I had done a search for African and/or African American inspired tarot and oracles decks on Amazon in the course of my research. This Black Tarot deck didn’t show up in my initial searches but showed up recently. A few other decks like the African Goddess Oracle deck did show up and their art is comparable to the Black Tarot one in terms of art style on the cards themselves. By no means do I assume my search was exhaustive but it was as thorough as it could be.
However, when searching for African American tarot decks on Etsy, I saw a huge number of similar decks being offered. Decks full of A.I. art depicting idealized Africans and African Americans. Obviously this is so partly because A.I. art is allowing those who haven’t learned how to draw or aren’t very good at it a chance to create powerful images that appeal to them and their potential audiences. But this is also because partly those powerful images are what the target and other audiences want, find themselves draw to, and are curious to see.
That point should be interesting to any artist who wants to get his or her creations into the hands of people.
As another digression, the really interesting thing about this comparison is the artist of the Black Tarot works digitally, according the book accompanying the cards.
Funny coincidence that.
Now I know a few artists who are embracing A.I. art but most are rejecting it. Although, I’m pretty sure the same thing happened when the option of creating art digitally came along. Ultimately what happens is left to the future. But I will say if my observation about people seeking the classical True, Good, and Beautiful in art is correct, then maybe the path to remaining relevant in times to come lies in going back to those Renaissance masters, those artists who were aiming at those same targets, and learning from the masters once again.
Because, like it or not, people are now creating tons of beautiful images using artificial intelligence.
And the customer is always right, right?
That’s it for now.
Until next time, folks.
Namaste, y’all!
Comments