Programming note: I turned on paid subscriptions a couple of weeks back. Thanks to everyone who noticed and subscribed. I will be writing 3 free and 1 paid piece per month to start. I’ll iterate on the format as things evolve. I had a troubling realization about my artist and creator friends the other day - I rarely consume any of the art they create but, instead, voraciously consume their identity as an artist. Not that they are bad at what they do. Occasionally, I will read the odd short story or poem or watch a movie and marvel at their genius while being slightly envious. However, their identity as an artist, which they expertly perform, is inescapable and is part of my every day on social platforms. Since the physical world is mostly a sandbox for creating content these days, this identity performance also extends into real life. I don't think any of them would be angry at me for saying this because this newsletter is my contribution to the same phenomenon.
It is interesting that the medium that has the longest history of mechanical reproduction, printed word fiction, has the least dependence on the cult of personality, of some mystique of the creator.
Visual artists need to have some backstory - witness the blocks of text that accompany art exhibitions talking about the meaning of the materials and the ideological critique inherent in the use of colors. Film needs (or needed, I'm not so sure about today) film stars. YouTube influencers are selling an image of themselves. Musicians and singers have to be personalities even before they are talents.
As for novelists - has anyone ever cared what Stephen King thought about anything? I adore Neal Stephenson's fiction but I don't give the slightest damn what what he thinks about the Israel-Palestine Conflict, the latest police shooting of a minority, or transgender competitors in team sports. Simon Leys, in a review of a biography of Victor Hugo, questioned why write such a biography at all: "all you need to say about Victor Hugo is that for 30 years he looked at the sea and he wrote."
The fundamental fact about art and artistic creation is that works of art are books from the Library of Babel: possibilities for arrangements of words, pigment, sound, or pixels. In the past we have needed human beings to find them, and have, since the Romantic era, attributed special powers and insight to them. Now, with generative art and LLMs, the things themselves can be beautiful apart from creators.
Compare works of art to magic spells: the wizard finds the spell, but the spell is not the wizard. What the creators of ML systems have found is ways to automate magic.
Are You Content Yet?
It is interesting that the medium that has the longest history of mechanical reproduction, printed word fiction, has the least dependence on the cult of personality, of some mystique of the creator.
Visual artists need to have some backstory - witness the blocks of text that accompany art exhibitions talking about the meaning of the materials and the ideological critique inherent in the use of colors. Film needs (or needed, I'm not so sure about today) film stars. YouTube influencers are selling an image of themselves. Musicians and singers have to be personalities even before they are talents.
As for novelists - has anyone ever cared what Stephen King thought about anything? I adore Neal Stephenson's fiction but I don't give the slightest damn what what he thinks about the Israel-Palestine Conflict, the latest police shooting of a minority, or transgender competitors in team sports. Simon Leys, in a review of a biography of Victor Hugo, questioned why write such a biography at all: "all you need to say about Victor Hugo is that for 30 years he looked at the sea and he wrote."
The fundamental fact about art and artistic creation is that works of art are books from the Library of Babel: possibilities for arrangements of words, pigment, sound, or pixels. In the past we have needed human beings to find them, and have, since the Romantic era, attributed special powers and insight to them. Now, with generative art and LLMs, the things themselves can be beautiful apart from creators.
Compare works of art to magic spells: the wizard finds the spell, but the spell is not the wizard. What the creators of ML systems have found is ways to automate magic.
The sitcom comparison paragraph was dead on. Appreciate your thoughts, well done!
“The era of a spell of personality is now facing its biggest challenge yet in Large Language Models and Artificial Intelligence.”
Feels like this idea could be a post all its own, heck probably a book.
Great piece Sachin, you really tap into something here