#edenramblesss

[thedmvsacc]

That tumblr post about the cloud has been living in my head rent free, especially the part about “primitive” explanation that 19th century thinkers talked about in explaining away nature by myth.

When in reality we’re all just a species silly funky bards making silly funky stories for fun. Clouds get names, our favorite bench has a personality and we blame things on random people bc it’s funny like to blame random shit on Todd Howard.

We’re just easily entertained monkeys and like to get more monkeys in on the joke. We literally just commit to the bit my guy.

[thedmvsacc]

I think it’s beyond just “human exceptionalism” and the “pseudo mystical capabilities of the human mind” it’s that we don’t just take in a single type of stimulus.

These AI art programs are plagiarism because they’re only taking in one medium or maybe two or three at most. Digitally made art and photographs and scans of traditional art.

Say we want to use the human vs ai art thing again in terms of stimulus. I think it goes beyond stimulus because there is a word creatives use to categorize this already it’s called a “creative bank”.

When artists, visual media artists, writers, poets, photographers, musicians and crafts people, make things. They by in large do not only consume that single medium or even a few mediums. They have their entire experience as a person, living life, experiencing things, feeling, seeing, touching, interacting, talking and performing tasks to draw from.

Brandon Sanderson, a prolific fantasy author has talked about how he became a better writer. It wasn’t reading more, it wasn’t even writing more, it was living life. And also taking in different art

The thing that AI is robbed on is not, perhaps, the capability for this but, more so the culmination of it.

I agree that there may not be a difference between AI experiencing and formulating stimulus but the key part you are missing is that they are doing a *single* part of it.

As human artists we are interweaving our personal experience with the art we take in on a daily basis. THAT is the thing AI art is missing and THAT is why Human Artists are mad about AI art. It misses the depth of lived experience that sits behind every word, every brushstroke and every note, in our art work.

What is being created is a cruel caricature of our humanity. That is why we’re angry. A mesh of the experience of people with no regard for the emotion poured into the original pieces and their mean to us and our observers.

AGAIN, i’m not saying AI doesn’t have the capacity for this. It probably does. But what is being done with it currently is not Art. It’s a thoughtless collage of our works with no regard for us or even itself creating it.

I hope you read this and possibly understand

Complaints about AI art using human artists' work as training data seem uncompelling to me, because that is also how human art works.

[thedmvsacc]

For the solider, poet, king uquiz, here’s my thoughts

I think, Poets are just Kings that didn’t let themselves die on the inside. People who fought tooth and nail to fulfil those obligations while not letting the small child and human elegance and awe die.

Poets fell Kings not because of frilly words or because of silly songs, Poets fell Kings because the are able to rip straight into their heart and eat it as an afternoon snack. Poets fell Kings because we are Kings but instead of being tethered to human flaws and falling because of them, we embrace them, let them go, and go back to seeing beauty in everything around us, even that the cracks in the throne

Poets refuse duty placed on them by other people. Embracing their duty to give freely themselves and their art, a refusal to bend to anything else beyond being a whole and authentic self.

There will only be one you, even through the pain and suffer. Those don’t make it meaningful, because lord knows its my friends’ laughs, the sound of snow after it has just come down and the taste of a meal cooked with love. But just as with all experiences in life it teaches you something.

The Kings wish for one thing, freedom, but bind themselves to duty. The Soldiers aspire for steadiness and structure, but are ruled by passion. And The Poets ache for impactfulness, while succumbing to whims.

Each is its own curse and blessing, each wishing for the other. But ultimately, it is a choice as to what to strive for and what hill to die on.

I am willing to lay my pen against the ever erasing onward march of time, hoping even one person may be mildly impacted by what I write, and if that is the case I have won.

Those are my win conditions, can you set yours well enough you will actually be happy? And that’s what I ultimately think this quiz is asking. Given your current position, will you stay or will you go? Only you can know, so just make sure you’re okay with choosing what you do. Because, if nothing else, you always have a choice.

[thedmvsacc]

I think the thing people fundamentally miss in this ai and automation debate is that people do things for reasons other than money

Like i hate to break it to ya bub but uhh i actually enjoy sitting down at a computer or a journal and writing out all my ideas. And visual artists actually enjoy thumbnailing, sketching, their brushstrokes on canvas, and completing a piece or journal page.

Like, a lot of people in normal jobs enjoy their jobs too, mechanics, hairdressers, carpenters, etc. There are a lot of people in these professions that love the act of that profession. Hell I know adhd and other neurodivergent people that thrive in high stress restaurant jobs but just hate it at times because of shit people (managers and customers alike).

The things we do as our jobs are not always soul sucking horrid work. My passion may not always be my job, but i at least enjoy using my brain for science as my day job and my free time being dedicated to artistic pursuits. Sure I would ideally just sit around all day being a philosopher, scientist, and artist but alas I have bills to pay.

Think about all of the community organizations that exist for no reason beyond a group of people like a thing. We as humans existed before capitalism and we will exist after it.

[thedmvsacc]

Sometimes i forget how gay i am and then i remember i listen to Death by Glamour voluntarily on an almost weekly basis, and then i remember i do be heckin gay

[thedmvsacc]

I agree with all of this, I just wanted to add something even though I don’t have an art degree.

Fundamentally, I think conservative critics comment badly on contemporary art because they can’t access the art moment of the piece. (for an explanation of an art moment please see this video by it’s original creator) but for a brief summary, the reason we think of art as *art* and it’s subjective is because we have the unique ability to tap into “art moments” that make us *feel* something.

I think this happens for 2 reasons:

1) Conservatives, and in extension, people who do not have a lot of points of intersection/oppressive, cannot access certain peaces because don’t come from a background where they are made to wrestle with self identity or their place in the world.

2) Not having those points of intersection don’t allow them to put themself as close as possible to other people’s shoes, hence why they complain about representation. They either are unable or refuse to.

So when contemporary art, with often times marginalized creators, challenges them to do either of these things, they are unable and cannot access those moments.

frankly I think a lot more people would be open to postmodern art if we all stopped pretending you had to be very smart to understand it and start acknowledging that the starting point for deriving meaning from it is frequently ‘this is stupid bullshit’

[thedmvsacc]

Watching Developing Hell by NoClip once again and it makes me think so much about game development. I remember that meme a couple years ago about shorter games, with shittier graphics and their developers paid more and i know it’s mostly a meme, but it’s not really.

What people really want are games with good art direction, gameplay and story. And as “AAA” games decline because of corporate greed squeezing the life out of their developers, indies continue to rise due to their passion, strong vision and love of the craft. Naughty dog’s insane hours and shitty story with good combat show this. It is touted as a fantastic genre breaking game when it’s the furthest thing from it. It doesn’t tell the story it wants to tell and in fact, treats the player so badly it’s pathetic. On top of having gameplay that goes against it’s main message.

In contrast, Supergiant and Hades show what is possible. Healthy work life balance with people who love the craft but also want to prioritize that they are people first. And they do that while producing one of the best roguelikes and indie games of this generation. It shows art doesn’t have to be commodified or built on human suffering to be worthwhile. It’s amazing to see an outlier but when it seems to be so few and far between that hope gets hard to hold onto.

This also makes me think how AI art is the same thing being done to the visual arts. These tech bros and finance bros just want the most money not caring about human cost, when that is the part that matters most. Art is ultimately communication, and the fact that a significant population of people that hold a lot of wealth or more than the working class don’t understand that because they haven’t been taught to care about wholistic and multifaceted, instead of specialist, learning really disappoints me and is frankly a failing of college and schooling.

Art is, so very important. We all know about cave paintings and viking graffiti. Humans have not changed all that much, we are still silly to the core and in a fight with time to leave a mark. So to have people reduce it down to just pretty pictures or generated words for some essay hurts.

Having AO3 scrapped, and knowing my work(albeit not that much of it and it being fairly old) was scraped to create some random writing generation is awful. I can only imagine artists who’s whole livelihood is their art having AI trained with it without permission feel.

We used to make fun of the AI generating scripts stuff back in the late 2010s but it’s getting genuinely scary. I can’t help think of the Luddites, and the actual ones, not the caricatures of them. Have I wasted a significant portion of my life dedicating myself to a skill that will soon be replaced by machines who will do it better than me but without all of the mistakes that make it handmade? Is it equal to the work i make? Is it worse? Better? I don’t really know the answers to these questions, but if we continue on the same path, i think fighting it will be futile but fighting to keep what i do alive, will be the more important fight. Tailors, master craftsman, cobblers still exist(though in dwindling numbers) despite great changes and much to the chagrin of people who make money making cheaper versions of their products. So id there is anything to take from this, it’s that we need to find support now and stick to each other so the tide is less likely to wash us all away.