Art Advice 2023 Part 1

I know these art advice posts have become a family favorite every holiday season, so I certainly didn’t want to disappoint this year.

Your Truly,

Santa

1. Be cautious about tutorials, gurus, and how-to guides for art.?

In this Golden Age of Con everything has a counterfeit, and in any direction you can imagine.? The more tell and the less show (chatter vs evidence) are good signals to back away. There are problems with this deeper than conman and victim.? Cons are often based on the “lies we tell ourselves”.? Being an artist is something people dream of, work for, and struggle to become.? But it isn’t open to all, for a wide number of reasons.? I often use the analogy of becoming a brain surgeon.? Not everyone who strives to become a brain surgeon succeeds due to education, physical constraints, misunderstanding, and misplaced desire.? This last reason is important for art.? Art is prestigious, interesting, and has a history embedded with magic.? People want something around art:?To be a wizard artist (Master) in terms of a recognized caste.? To be skillful and clever and recognized as such.? To have “secrets” or “secret knowledge” of a Master (wizard) and even if unable to do magic can be considered one of the society of elite magicians as a connoisseur and seer.? The social hunt to be the titled or validated artist is a diagnostic of a vulnerability to being conned about your status.? This isn’t to say calling yourself an artist is bad.? It is good and important to do so?if you meet a simple criterion: you can induce the experiential state “art”.? If you run into someone saying something like “I don’t even call myself an artist, because that is something someone else calls you” or “because that term is meaningless, I just do…blah blah blah…” it might be wise for you not to call them an artist either.

Tutorials can be useful and informative, but the market is so saturated, and becoming more and more filled with snake oil nonsense (“old masters” is a red flag) that you will have to hunt for a long while to get to good stuff.? This isn’t to say there aren’t good tutorials, it is to say they are being crowded by bad tutorials driven by marketing.? But there is a serious question you need to ask when you look for tutorials: why are you looking?? Is it for knowledge or social credit?? Both are on offer and knowing which drives you will help you choose.

Gurus are never good.? Run from gurus.? Run!? And be very, very careful about portfolio advice.? Very careful! Consider the intentions of those offering advice.? Old veterans will often maintain a terrible status quo and let you know how to maintain it too.? Others get glory handing out advice about subjects which they do not know.? Still, others will tell you how to best please them and what they need to accept you.?Be careful. Don't forget your portfolio is yours.

Guides for art, much like tutorials, are good and bad and will appeal to you based on what you are looking for whether that is skills or a sense of validation.? The latter offer things like learning fast, learning secrets, learning the tricks that will get you a job…these are red flags.? Tricks aren’t how you get there and as Tolkien noted, “short cuts make long delays”. ?What will help you do your work better and meet the needs to enhance your ability to see the sights you are making?? Chase that.? No single tutorial, book, class, conversation, convention, or zoom meeting will be the key.? And don’t forget: in the end learning lands in your hands alone. You will have to learn how to discover new tools, new methods, new ideas, and how to learn new things yourself. Often it is good to seek out tutorials, mentors, or guides after you have undertaken some attempts for some time.

2.? AI is a slot machine.

You may have seen me post about this around the internets (maybe not), but I’m not an AI enthusiast. At the same time, I’m not deeply entrenched in the copyright and legal issues around AI, so I won’t be discussing that side much.? I think there are much better-informed people on that set of subjects.

Instead, let me go through some of the advice and warnings around AI that have caught my attention.

The first thing is superstition. The hype, prophecies, and nonsense around AI aren’t innovations.? This is old stuff.? Very old.? Like reassembling bones and dressing them in skins in the bowels of a cave old.? I’ve seen a few articles floating around touching on the long history of the super automata, but nothing in depth. There could be depth...but not here. In overview, the idea of a creation “ensouled and conscious” made through the techniques of man with the ability to tell the future and do human tasks is archaic.? Some variations include costumes and masks or coded paints that imbue the wearer prophetic power and possess the wearer, automata and machines (elaborate puppets), statues made with heating devices and steam that sing prophecy (like a tea kettle), and automata that prophecy but can also become lovers. In the modern era the AI precursors have been connected to combination devices that can “think” like Ramon Lull’s thinking machine, the Kabbalah,?or mixtures like alchemy (which AI marketers have equated with AI and the distillations of pure spirit – more on this in a moment), and have ended up being satired by Swift in Gulliver’s Travels in his description of the Engine:

“... Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.” He then led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without any order. The professor then desired me “to observe; for he was going to set his engine at work.” The pupils, at his command, took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down."

And let’s not forget David Bowie’s song “Saviour Machine”.

A common aspect in this ancient tradition is the theme of healing or panaceas- cures for man’s woes, creating Gods, or bringing about the end of everything (either through perfection or purgation…in other words curing Creation).

Even prompts aren’t new.? The first AI was the invention of writing.? For several thousand years written works started with prompts like “Letter that I’m writing, tell Ramses he will likely die of scepsis from his rotting teeth.”? Not exactly that, but you get the idea.? This attribution of agency or intelligence to writing occurs from the advent of writing in Sumer to rune scripts carved by Vikings.? It is why magic charms and curses were written on objects.? It was thought the writing was alive in some sense.

Dredging up and aiming the vulnerabilities of our bias to project agency into things we make or direct is a major signal of concern. It is shady business.? I have seen a few spots where “alchemy” has been used by AI enthusiasts and businessmen to describe how magical AI is.? Which sounds awesome if you don’t know anything about alchemy.? Alchemy didn’t work.? It didn’t turn lead to gold, it didn’t cure all diseases, it didn’t turn base man into pure spirit (or any Singularities).? Absolute fail.? It did poison many, ruined many, drove the greed and ambitions of corrupt politicians and royalty, misdirected the efforts of many (including Isaac Newton who’s main body of writings are about alchemy and trying to find the significance and perfect measures of the Temple of Jerusalem…and he several times poisoned himself with mercury).? We don’t use alchemy.? Alchemy is bad because it doesn’t work and it is based in nonsense.? We have Chemistry, which is neither good nor bad but is demonstrable and factual.

The next problem with AI is it is bad.? Poor quality.? Garbage.? All of it.? Aside from being an echo, of a rumor, of a quote from a parrot of work that already exists, strictly on its own: it is garbage. You wouldn’t accept it from a human. To the untrained eye, for a moment, everything seems fine.? But this is a parlor trick. Our visual system temporarily “forgives” and fills in the blanks of incomplete or distorted sights.? But with time and variation, we see through it.? I won’t go into too much depth at the misses and insufficiency of AI in detail or by process for the moment.? I worry about how that information will be used.? Not that Ai can be trained in these “secrets” but that AI marketing will commandeer and derange the terms and ideas.? Right now the marketing is based in some superficial silly nonsense, I don’t want actual ideas and terms to be misused. Specialty is easy to use to confuse and deceive. Those of you who have taken my classes or we’ve done mentoring sessions will likely recall some of the subjects.

Now, let’s get to the slot machine and prompts that ensnare artists.? I saw some artists and sculptors giving AI a go with the release of Midjourney.? They seemed enthusiastic and showed their results.? And the results were awful compared to their other work.? This was often admitted but also rationalized by “I can see how it has potential”- meaning they could see steps and ways to make what wasn’t sufficient minimally acceptable.? This has to do with their knowledge, not AI potential or prompts.? Given a mess of images most trained artists can see potential in it and make it something, so much so it is a game: make something of this scribble.? As artist experiments went along participation seemed to drop off as it took longer to make something coherent with less control than it did to take a pencil and a “post it” note to form a concise and controlled image.? But it seemed like potential.? Almost something.

This is how slot machines work. The outputs of images, like a three reel, four reel, twelve reel, etc slot machine give variations that seem to be aiming at a predefined set of wins and almost achieve them.? So close!? Almost won!? I must be getting close!? You aren’t.? By setting the slot game theme with your prompts you fall into a rabbit hole of having your ideas bend to the game as you aim for a win. Each “almost” you step further away from the track and pursue the will-o-the-wisp.? I have tracked prompters as their original prompts transform to fit the trend of the AI output instead of the AI output fitting the initial prompt (or idea).? Their change blindness doesn’t track the near misses and gradually they start to chase anything with the keywords, they become much like the AI and build a predictive model.? This develops investment.? So much time and effort, and seeming near success, distorts and builds investment or “endowment”.? The rationale used to explain the aspect of getting off track includes “inspiration” or “experimenting” or “AI’s creativity collaborating with the artist”.? This is magical thinking and gambling.? Counting the hits and ignoring the misses, while also ignoring what the “hits” were at the start.

3. Imposter syndrome (again).? My advice: cut it out.? If you have time and luxury to indulge in imposter syndrome you are doing it wrong, or maybe more gently put: you are not wisely using your time and attention.? And if you think you can’t help it, help it.? No joke.? This type of learned helplessness can be, must be, unlearned to do anything.? Develop criteria by which you can measure your accomplishments and stop begging for recognition or validation.? It is undignified and corrosive.? Stop pleasing the ghosts who have bullied you. It is easier done than said.

4.? Don’t join in with mass pessimism, trends, or orthodoxy in any direction.? It is your job as an artist to see through these things and show other options, even impossible ones.? Show everyone else how to garden in hell.? Being an artist alters and adapts how you experience away from the norm. Don’t break or contort this for the sake of anything. As Mark Twain noted, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” I’d include the minority as well.

5.? Don’t forget to invent your jobs, and do not rely on industries.? Art is a difficult area to make a living.? Not only difficult to learn the skills needed to become a professionally viable artist, but also because art itself is a strange thing.? It has been part of our evolutionary survival kit for (possibly) 500,000 years.? When we were a different kind of human with 74% of our current brain volume.? It has (definitely) existed before business, philosophy, science, politics, and underpins ways we develop memory and identity (as well as making memory and identity somewhat contagious).? So, expecting it to fit into services or products will involve some losses, some diminishment, contortion, and a great deal of frustration.? Artists can collaborate and work with any number of industries and endeavors but should never rely on or subordinate to these.? Industries don’t define, lead, or in most cases know how to get the best value, from art or artists. It is up to us to make sure we are tilling the soil, redefining our terrain, and assisting others to understand the changes and progress we make.? Your security doesn’t rest in dependency.? Security may never come. Especially, as it is part of our tool kit to make sure the customer is not right and could have much better.? It will be the case that there are times when the industries we comfortably rely on will disappear, drastically change, or retract in scale and other areas will appear.? We have to be dynamic and inventive.

6. Stop specializing!? You are hurting yourself.

7. Exercise. Now!? Right now!?

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