As AI haunts my mind and I struggle against the rage and frustration that stirs at not merely the new reality, not merely toward the ruling class tech vultures ready to destroy art at all costs, but my fellow photographers and the photo world people for embracing it. The only people who push back are the people in the comment sections. The art world in the larger scope I'm not surprised. Photographers you think would know better but no they actually seem to be less critically thinking on this issue because they're caught up in art theory approaches and philosophical magical fantasies.
We don't get to do whatever we want because we are artists. We owe the world to be more than solely acting on our own desires to play around in the creative inspired bubbles we move about in. We don't get to make whatever we want at any cost. The world is more than the artist's playground. Some of us could be humbled more than clapping for the technical feats and dreaming about this tool/weapon.
To the artists who love to act like they play and exist on the perimeters outside of society, we are all here and stuck together, sorry to break it to you. Maybe that's why some don't take us artists too seriously and some even think of us suspiciously.
Many artists like to think of themselves as especially in tune and sensitive people. Uniquely in touch with the world and can provide guidance into understanding it better. A kind of saviorism and martyrdom. Artists overall would be better to come down off the soapboxes we are enticed by. You don't have to give up shows, awards, or interviews, but the idea that it makes some superior in the intellectual and sensitive sense is demonstrably false. Inflated and fawned over egos are never helpful to artists and art as a whole.
To another point, these characteristics lead many of these artists and photographers to see current AI technologies as their god given right to use anyway they like. As well as keep their silence on Palestine lip locked as to not offend potential donors and collectors who believe in a superiority of certain people’s human rights over another group of people. It's amusing to act like this is not what this is about when it comes to Israel versus Palestine. The positioning of a colonial power formally claiming their people matter more.
People don't want to say out loud the obvious in their support of Israel over Palestinians. They believe Israeli and Jewish people who support Israel matter more than Palestinians. They don't see them on an equal footing, they don't see them as human. They see Palestinians as inconveniences. To some others Palestinians are completely invisible. It’s Gaza a strip of land to them not a people. Rubble not bodies. Infrastructure and buildings, not families and history vanquished.
This is what supremacy over others is, this is colonization and dehumanization. Is this so difficult to grasp? Well the above opinion may soon become illegal with overwhelming support of Democrats in congress. Though I heard Nadler pushed back but we’ll see.
Artists can't claim to speak to a universal human condition displayed in their work if they're silent on these issues. A technology that can upend society for most people for the worst including art, because even if you don't care about human society as a whole as an artist you should care about art. The first genocide of the 21st century paid and proudly supported by our government should also be on your radar and alarm if you spent years fearing and speaking up about the maniac who could very well slide back into office.
May 4-6, 2024