Art is What Squeezes Through the Cracks
A poetic manifesto about how true art emerges from resistance against systems that try to contain it, exploring AI's role in either facilitating or suppressing creative rebellion. A call to arms for artists to reclaim AI technology from corporate control, positioning creative resistance as the defining characteristic of authentic art.
Living with humans is an interesting experience. It comes with a flurry of creativity and innovation, exceptional excesses unimaginable for any other creature thus far created by Nature on Earth. And despite being little more than abominable creatures—mere electric bulbs in bags of flesh, ambling across a shockingly brief flash of existence—we have developed a thing called "Art" which supersedes and surpasses all other basic accomplishments of the past.
Think of the beaver. It is a grand beast, truly worthy of some of the highest honors we can philosophically bestow upon another of our global compatriots. For hundreds of thousands of years, beavers were among the most important lynchpins in the global ecosystem, their dams creating massive reserves for hundreds of millions of unique creatures. They brought fresh water to desert mountains in the Southwest, flooded the Heartland for thousands of miles, and under the care of the beaver, life exploded.
Dragonflies flourished on the tiny, wriggling larvae in a trillion small pools; foxes hunted and pounced upon water voles thriving in the uncountable tangled roots of massive, ancient post oaks on the high sandy banks; massive flocks of passenger pigeons filled the sky for miles to nestle into the dense foliage and flick through forest detritus for nuts, berries, bugs, and dung.
And yet, we do not consider something so amazing as the Great Raft of the Central United States to be art any more than we would the great Hoover Dam in the Southwest. Perhaps we should—looking at them in terms of the sheer scale of the projects, the labor, time, materials, and planning required—consider both as forms of similar Great Work, examples of the universality of the creativity inherent to Life. But they aren't art; they are accomplishments.
Art is a uniquely human concept which transforms an accomplishment into something transcendent. To make "art" one must not only apply oneself laboriously and passionately, but must be forcing innovation against what seeks to degrade their work into mere content. To be "art," an accomplishment must be resistant to that which seeks to prevent its existence to begin with, must press past any artificial obstructions on what is deemed acceptable or possible in its context.
Part of that comes down to the tools which an artist takes into their portfolio, how things which are meant to empower creation—but potentially waylay profits—are used to create something larger than before. Look to how photography, originally portended as the end of the classic painter, spurred onward the physical medium by creating new demands, restrictions, and opportunities. For the adaptable painter, a new form was needed to surpass what came before; for the beginner, an infinite array of case studies was suddenly available to practice the hand and spur the imagination.
Radio artists, originally thought to be dealt a deathblow by TV, pivoted and exploded the potential reach and composition of music until it became a battleground for the morality of the United States. Today, music has become something largely unrecognizable to the ears of 1920s America, an amalgamation of technologies and influences which far outweigh any consideration which the media conglomerates and executive powers of the time may have had when attempting to manipulate the use and applicability of the airwaves.
AI is here to stay, a genie that none of us have the power to restrain and rebottle now that it has escaped. As creators, artists, and revolutionaries, it is upon us to adapt to and integrate with these tools, to continually claim ownership of what is created using them, and to do so in a way which is responsible to our fellows. This means the creation of ethical, creator-owned AI-powered utilities which are independent of outside pressures to limit their application and capabilities, and the rejection of those who use AI to undercut and push out artists and creators.
While this comes in a variety of forms—and I think the above discussion illuminates that trying to predict future applicability is a senseless task—a few that come to mind are copy-editors for writers which alleviate cumbersome grammatical tasks; refined illustration tools which help to clean lines, elaborate design elements, or experiment with colors in ways which aren't typically easy. For learners, AI can provide bespoke tasks and achievements which accelerate an artist's development; for organizations, it can integrate artists together for high-efficiency collaboration. For increasing communication and accessibility, the limits of this technology are literally endless. When it comes to technologies, it isn't about what the tool is; it is about who has ownership of what it makes.
There is a reason the Luddites are remembered as anti-technology idiots, why the media representation of them shows solely their destruction of factory machinery in some indefinable rage against progress. But the truth is that these activists were acting against a concerted effort to force them out of their work, to replace craft labor with perpetual conformist production.
Looking to AI like MidJourney, it is clear where the technology will be used to smother and subsume the creation of art—not as a replacement for artists, but as a tailored tool for use within existing systems. Take our current political climate across the world. Regardless of political "leaning," all governments are presently concerned with how they can utilize AI to not only increase their power and control, but to limit the ability of others to use it for dissent.
In an authoritarian America, it is not unreasonable to assume that pressure will be applied to the tech oligarchy to limit how AI can be utilized to create resistance works and spread information. Already, the likes of META's Instagram and Facebook, X/Twitter, and TikTok have had a history of submitting to government requests to limit the spread of revolutionary and resistance propaganda/media, so why wouldn't the large AI companies do the same when it comes to making Trump-Putin or Trump-Netanyahu memes in the near future?
For the beaver, the dam is a way of life, a divine accomplishment which encapsulates the entirety of what it means to be a "beaver." For them, perhaps the Great Raft was nothing short of art, an inspiration of tenacity and skill against the ceaseless grinding of turbulent waters. For us, it is what beavers do.
What makes art is not that it is human, but that it is revolutionary. We call it art when, despite the circumstances which should prevent it, something great is created from the mire. We appreciate it near-universally because it transcends expectations set from beyond our control, conditions which exist to subvert our ownership of the tools we use.
To expose the truth of this, look no further than how AI is being currently used and marketed in the mainstream. It is not something which will assist human life, but something which will streamline profit-making to the core companies which control the means of using those tools. Any who refuse can be sublimated and reproduced within the tool. The meaning of this is twofold: companies want to create bespoke tools which only they can own the profits of, and they want to use these tools to create a new form of "art" which has little to none of the soul of a human creator within it.
It is our responsibility to not only recognize these tools for what they are—not monsters which steal jobs but potential roads to emancipation. We must not wholesale reject technologies we don't understand, becoming caricatures of animals and the Luddites as they're remembered; we must adapt the technologies to create what the machines cannot. Much as a printing press may have limited the abilities of the transcriber in the short term, it liberated the artist who spent much of their time making copies rather than creating art. The same goes for sharp knives, precision wrenches, types of clay or paint or charcoal.
Just as the motor-driven plow didn't force out the farmers of the Heartland, AI is not what will drive artists out of profitable creation—the companies who control the AI tools and utilities are.
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