by Fraser Hibbitt for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog
Four years ago, the A.I. international film festival opened in California, a first of its kind. There are now many such festivals worldwide exploring whether A.I. has any merit in film-making. Premiering this year, the Omni international A.I. film festival recently took its place in the ephemera of news space for its boasting a well-known director to lead the judging panel: George Miller, of Mad Max fame.
“It’s here to stay” and “we must learn to surf the wave or face being washed away by it”. When asked about A.I., phrases like these are scattered throughout creative communities, less so by artists. The anxiety over A.I. is by now well documented, although perhaps not well understood; it is hard to say how this anxiety will unfold. (Back in 2022 one of our other writers, Vittorio Compagno wondered if AI Theater was the future).
When giving his reasons for leading the judging panel, George Miller spoke on the history of art. He reminded us of the controversies that followed the introduction of oil paint in the Renaissance and, closer to our time and understanding, the invention of photography. Art adapted to both these inventions, in fact art flourished. With oil paint, the artist was now able to correct their work, to build up layers on the canvas; photography shifted artistic attention away from ‘realism’. A.I., Miller argues, is yet another technological shift that art must embrace.
The comparison of A.I.’s effect on art with the induction of photography is worth dwelling on. The rise of Modernist art was swift and highly experimental. It is difficult to fit the variety and fertility of early Modernist art with its predecessors as it is with other changes in art history. For example, the Renaissance: there, art moves obviously to greater realism, higher attention paid to the body, but nothing a quick review of medieval art would not see coming. Giotto brought a greater sophistication to medieval painting, subtler body articulation, figures in landscapes, and tentative inclusions of perspective. He died in 1337; Leonardo Da Vinci died in 1519. Modernism, on the other hand: look at these fragmented bodies, landscapes, strange geometries and abstractions, and obscure subject matter. The deconstructions are not immediately obvious. This change happened in arguably less than thirty years.
The greater speed in which things progress has been citied continuously, from population to technology, in fact it is an integral quality of modernity. Photography provided realism to the viewer, relatively quickly. Now, as we all know, it is instantaneous. So, the debate went: why paint in the same way? It is true, there is always a difference between a photographed landscape and one that is painted (however exact the painting is). Put it down to some human essence which eludes the camera in certain circumstances. The main point is that the debate between technological representation and an artistic one had begun, and a basic question an experimental artist could now ask is: how else could I represent this Still-Life?
I won’t labour or overblow the point: photography had its obvious influence on Modernism but it is not to be thought that the camera created Cubism or any other ‘ism’. What to consider is the tension, perhaps anxiety, that creativity undergoes with the evolution of certain forms of technology. Regarding A.I. film, George Miller is correct, art keeps moving, technology keeps moving, and sometimes they lock antlers, sometimes embrace. Embracing does not mean merely using the technology, but allowing it to shape a vision, with or without the technology; it is being sensitive to the culture one lives in and seeing that a change has occurred.
It seems any rancour over creativity is unfounded. Economic and environmental strain ought to be the real crux of conversation. No one these days would say using a camera is somehow less creative than painting because the importance lies in the creator’s decisions, their powers of creation. Yes, if I have no idea and merely prompt ChatGPT and SORA (the new A.I. video generator) to create for me then I am careless, exercising in inputting. The only interest there would perhaps be a form of personal automatic writing, or rather a rapid form of Rorschach testing. The individual will have to make some leaps from the output, and even then, can it be considered close to automatic writing? … automatic writing does not work on formed sentences, grammatical accuracy, or even correct spelling.
But if I do have an idea and decide to then use A.I. … the A.I. international film festival posits itself as at the forefront of the future of cinema, like any original avant-gardist. However, if you read the endorsing quotes they have decided to use on the official website: ‘fascinating’, and ‘Like Academy Awards but for A.I. Film’. The former is a throwaway and the latter is funny because merely descriptive. Overall, neither excite. Take a quick read at the many Avant Garde manifestoes of the early twentieth century and you can still feel the excitement in them. You can also feel the gall. The matter-of-fact speech of the A.I. international film festival creates unease, an unstoppable technological wave; soon, it seems to say, all movies will be ‘like’ movies but by A.I. because what else can A.I. (for now) do but ride on its training wheels?
Between the two, you have some idea of what many commentators have said on A.I. art: it lacks the necessity of imperfection in thought. Human error, our unscrupulous minds, are named as artistic virtues that cannot be easily, if at all, replicated. But is all this unresolved conflict not really, again, unfounded? A.I. is a tool. It can be used poorly, of course, and an individual, or a small team, could make a movie without actors, without coordination. This is where the boundaries start to blur, where the ‘replacement’ issues start to flare. As the nineteenth century camera was to pictorial representation, now motion picture has its “contender”. I cannot remove the quotation marks because it cannot be said to be a real contender, yet.
So how will George Miller and co. judge each A.I. film, attempt to remove the quotation marks? By the standard of whether it could pass for streaming on HBO or Netflix. Is that acceptable? A.I. can already congratulate itself on being able to produce slop quicker than we can ourselves, for surely the streaming age has delivered that into our living rooms in ever greater quantities. The only difference here being that occasionally human slop gets a cult-like reverence because its vapidity is amusing and the implicit thought of those on set baffle the viewer; A.I. slop strikes us as an over indulgent chaos.
It is a time of great uncertainty for A.I.’s relationship with film. At this year’s Cannes film festival, in a roundtable discussion, one producer spoke of the wave that cannot be stopped. Others disagree, saying it is a slippery slope to kneel down before it. At the very centre is the burgeoning anxiety over the perceived slow depletion of human storytelling, the masking of the human essence. I still believe the issue is with the man: they who decide to cut corners, to disenfranchise, to put actors out of work, to put the whole host out of work. Art will abide, human essence will abide, precisely because neither have ever sat comfortably long enough for anyone to cast their net around them.
First, ChatGPT offended many writers and now it fails to make a news story. SORA, the A.I. video generator is doing something similar. The Tilly Norwood episode is another example. If you didn’t hear about Hollywood’s outrage, I wouldn’t blame you considering how fast news flies into a passion and then peters out into a nullity. Relying on the news is a sure way to be out of touch. But, as we keep hearing, “A.I. is here to stay”, it travels underground engorging itself and pops its head up every now and then to show us its new features and we gasp, ridicule, wax indignant, or praise the future that’s unfurling.
All that’s to say, there is a real ambivalence about how to accept A.I. into our personal creations. The bi-polarism of our responses tells us that. “All professional creatives will soon exist as hobbyists” is a quote cheerfully made by tech founder in Silicon Valley, recorded in the documentary made by classical composer Tarik O’Regan. This is exciting news, according to Silicon Valley – to others, righteous outrage: ‘optimisation’ in the arts is anathema. To those who are not caught between the fervent yeses and no’s – Could it be, rather, that they are on the cusp of a creative exploration of the likes of Modernism was to the late 19th century?
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The Carl Kruse Arts Blog homepage is at https://carlkruse.net
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Fraser include A Look at Cyanotypes, Delia Derbyshire, and Photography Over Time.
Find Carl Kruse also over on TED.
