Tools of My Own Flesh - VLEX10 Portfolio

a visionary; one who allows the living fibre of creation to possess them, to explore them wholly and unbearably. to be an artist is to forge connection, to witness change - to proclaim it.

radically question yourself and your world. break what has yet to be broken.

attempt to see beyond the boundaries of your fleshy code.

WHAT IS RELATIONSHIP WE WANT TO HAVE WITH AI?

humans have relied on technology since the dawn of time. from the age of fire on a stick to the rise of the industrial talking light box, we were unable to deny our dependence on innovation and cultural accumulation.

at every pivotal development in the technological age, we have asked what happens if technology replaces us - what happens now.

i say we take the time to face our predecessors and ask: what did we do then?

IS THIS ART OR TECHNOLOGY?

art and technology are inseparable. as we evolve, so does our creation, built on those who came before us and whose creations allow us to pursue our own.

a collision of ai's will and my own. a dreamy tale which we both attempt to tell from our own lens, forced into one amalgamation through a hazy layering technique.

HOW ARE ART AND TECHNOLOGY ENTANGLED?

they have always been interwoven. though, now we must question, must forge the answers to our crumbling framework of utility.

answering the call to our use of ai in art begs the question to what i am answering in the first place - for what is the language of creativity being used to channel?

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF COLLABORATIONS AND NETWORKS?

institutions may provide structure, but they also inhibit exploration. the barriers to communication only increase with the systematization of creativity, and so we must endeavour to reach beyond our demographics, beyond our academic confines. we must decentralize.

HOW IS CREATIVITY LINKED TO PATTERNS?

one in the same, patterns and cycles hold hands in the great phenomenon of human creativity - technology merely acting as a medium, an instrument, in our means to an end: connection, communication, networks, collaboration.

the truth of authorship lies in our willingness to relinquish control. once before it was to the viewer; now, it is to the creator.

[E]MERGING BODIES - CYBORGS

when an identity is built from nothing but a framework of ideals, the construction of a body begins to change. what are you when you are not human? what constitutes the idea of humanism?

perhaps it is important to ask how much of us is already machine? how much have we given to our algorithms and conveniences that we can no longer retrieve - subsume into our fragile human identity? a cyborg is more than a mechanical enhancement. it is a way of being shaped by our media, its production, and our consumption of it.

[E]MERGING EXISTENCES

[E]MERGING INTELLIGENCES

what is to think as an artist in the age of AI?

It is to question what you know and how you know it, and a process which should be reflected in your artistic product. It is a reinventing of traditional or modern or personal tehcnique and minimizing the comfort of familiar patterns and understandings.

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I took a historical approach to a few of my collages and tried to reflect the themes in their subject matter - to represent the cyclical feeling of creation through human behaviour. The purpose of my art is as a form of criticism and exploration. This expansion is more evident in my later works; and while some of my earlier pieces occur without intention, others begin to volley a narrative - a flow - that carries the message of interconnection throughout my zines.

how should artists, and any creatives for that matter, relate to these new systems?

how do we embrace potential while being aware of its failures and dangers?

how do we expand our creativity through the use of these systems?

There are several ways to relate to these systems - these accumulations. You might first consider the perspective you take - the role you embody: you may be, in orbit, at the centre of the system, near the sides; you may be an observer, a passerby, or an arbiter.

If you see yourself as the system, you may attempt to grasp control of it. If you see others as the system - see technology as the system - then you must relinquish your belief of control over it. You might see all these components as your equals, all pieces as significant in individual ways to fully bring them together; but you might also see those parts as lesser and, therefore, take less from them - produce more from what does not yet exist in your world.

To move beyond the ever-growing confines of what is considered "traditional", artists must embrace the unknown. They are often the first to do so, and their indulge is unceremonious - without reward or gratitude. They must immerse themselves in these systems to understand and then recreate them in its evolution.

The existence of AI is in and of itself a danger, as many unknown things are. There is, undeniably, the ecological damage which its physical body cannot be divorced from (and which must also be considered in the process of creation). We may attempt to isolate some of these systems to be worked with independently of in a self-contained manner. However, the concept itself - within the system itself - is the potential opportunity (early, and devoid of decay) which persists. When photography was invented, though painters resisted its influence for fear of becoming obsolete or replaced, the camera did not turn to dust.

AI is the same. We may fear its overrule of the human mind, but we must overcome this belief and, perhaps, allow it to (in some cyborgian way) become a new appendage, a second brain. AI is a new system capable of the next fluxus or post-modern movement. We should question its failures, but we should not shy away from its lessons. They are flawed or "perfectly" flawed in a way that is controllable, that can be manipulated or made natural for purpose if we so allow it.

As technology is an extension of our will, AI is an extension of our mind - of possibility. It is meant to be built on and it is meant to simplify.

AI is a layering of those mental complexities. It is not an answer of how things come together, but what it brings when you contrast it with yourself and itself.

To expand our creativity, we must accept the role of our systems as guides for the expected and its defiance. We must challenge them and, by proxy, our comprehension of the physical and metaphysical self as arbiters of a system and nodes in a larger network.

That is to say: play, compete, explore - and most importantly, reflect - on what it can do, what it cannot; what you can do, what you cannot. From the void which this unknown inevitably arises, our creativity will take the form of a bridge.