Category: art

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Human Creativity Is Not Artificial

I found this article a few months ago via the 32-bit Cafe Discourse forum. One of the participants wrote it…

The Colonization of Confidence

It’s great. READ IT.

A little background on it. The author is, in fact, a professional writer and is blind. Not sure that matters at all, but maybe it does? Is an intelligent blind writer harder to sweep up in the Generative AI Hype Train? I have no idea.

Anyway, I enjoyed this short story a lot. Apparently it is a true story. Frankly, and I mean no insult to the author, there are parts that seem fictionalized. Nothing huge. A little bit of the dialog. Makes no difference if it is. It works.

In short, the story deals with an author in a writing group. One member of the group, a tech bro, has a boner for AI. Also, he’s a fucking douche. The rest of the group falls under his spell even as he destroys a good man’s confidence in his own writing.

Just read it. It’s about a 15-minute read, and worth it. Because here’s the thing.

WRITING is only done by humans. Not machines.

Writing, like all art, is a fundamentally human endeavor. Creating art involved human cognition. Remove human cognition and what you have left – is – just – shit.

I am doing writing at this exact moment. Sorry, if a machine put these exact words together, it’s not writing. ART is done by humans. I’ll go so far as to say that anyone who uses AI to write, or to even brainstorm, or to help arrange their thoughts on “paper” is not writing. Sorry. They just aren’t. If that’s you, then you are not writing.

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Make your own scene

One of the things I love about being a skateboarder, besides skating, is the tradition of doing things for ourselves. Making our own scenes, creating our own publications, etc. But I really really love the art created by skateboarders. From my friends Jeremy Elder (elderhousearts.com), and Mike Moore (http://www.mikemoorestudios.com), to widely known artists who came from skateboarding like Shepard Fairey and Michael Sieben, skateboarding fosters a lot of creativity. The list is long. Anyway, here are a few things I’ve got on my walls…

Owl, by Jeremy Elder.
Alternative Tentacles Jello Biafra board – graphics by Shepard Fairey, board manufactured by Powell.
Fist, but Jeremy Michael Elder.
Sun and bird, by Jeremy Michael Elder.
Skateboards. Photo by Tony Gale.
Various stickers, by Jeremy Michael Elder.
Cockfight skateboard deck, graphics by Michael Sieben.
Fickle Skateboards Austin Motel/Stupidfest 2018 graphic, and Sphinx cat graphic. Both will be on the wall after I finish riding them. Not only is the art cool, but the decks themselves are works of art — totally hand built. Laminate layed up in Lew’s workshop, glued, pressed, cut, finished. Only thing he didn’t do was produce the veneers.

 

 

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Ron Mueck

We went to see an exhibit of Ron Mueck‘s work this last weekend at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. I’ve seen a couple of is smaller pieces before, and they are incredible and disturbing. This time I got to see the giant baby and some others. Blown away. You just expect them to start breathing.

Here’s a link to some pics of his stuff.

 

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KAWS, 10/30/16, the Modern, Fort Worth

I went to this show knowing nothing at all about the artist.

A few things I noticed.

First, the sculptures, even if made from aluminum, fibreglass, or whatever, really looked like giant plastic toys. The texture was amazing. So when I saw the giant wood sculptures, I didn’t just assume they were, in fact, of wood. They were.

The paintings: clearly I’m not a painter, because I was amazed at the line quality of the black outlines in these often big paintings. The lines were perfect. Finally, even with the obvious influence of American cartoons, the paintings often have a somewhat grotesque quality, like a body that has been cut open.

My friend Marshall Thompson tells me that he usually looks at mastery of the medium when looking at art, which is what I tried to do at this show. I thought it was impressive in that respect.

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Dallas Zine Party

Sunday afternoon I participated in the first Dallas Zine Party, an event created by Randy Guthmiller and hosted at the Wild Detectives bookstore.

The Dallas Observer did a write-up of the event, as did Central Track, which even gave our mag (Broken Fingers: Freestyle Skateboarding Quarterly) a shout-out. I was really happy to see that!

Kitbashes manipulates sounds in a most pleasing way.
Kitbashes manipulates sounds in a most pleasing way.

The event hosted several musical acts, all doing super creative electronic/noise/ambient/minimalist kind of stuff. My friends Micah and Shelby, as Kitbashes, were there. It was my first time to hear them live, and I could have used more. It’s hard to describe what they do. Just see them, close your eyes, and let the sound wash over you.

The crowd drew people from various different spheres of influence – the “art” scene, the real art scene, hippies, weirdos, librarians, skaters, literati, etc, etc.

Getting so many creative people together is fantastic. It’s great to see what other people are doing and share ideas.

Can’t wait until next year’s event!

Oh, I should note that my favorite zine is Big Hands. It is uncommon in that it is composed of very well-written autobiographical stories — very engaging. I discovered it on Microcosm Publishing’s website, but the seem to be out, so email the writer, Aaron, and ask if you can buy them.