Hope

"Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, dissident, and first president of democratic

Czechoslovakia Václav Havel would have been 90 today. He was a one-off, too bad 

we don’t have more like him today in Central Europe, and beyond."

It's an irony of history that in the same week we remember the horror of October 7 (Lest We Forget!), we should also acknowledge the birth of Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, dissident, and first president of democratic Czechoslovakia Václav Havel with his message of hope -- who would have been 90 this week.

The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) | understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul; it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. 

Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. 

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but, rather, an ability to work for something that is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

We are living in the Age of Slop

"A century ago, the creative world was buzzing with exciting artistic movements. Everything was fresh, new, and vital:

• You could be a Surrealist or a Futurist or a Post-Impressionist or a Cubist. 
• You could align yourself with Art Deco or Dada or Bauhaus or Fauvism. 
• You could proclaim your allegiance to Imagism or Verismo or the Harlem Renaissance—and dozens of other creative movements.

"And what about today? …..

"Instead of aesthetic manifestos, we get web platforms. They have machines to make big decisions—and the machines have invented the dominant art style of our day.

"It’s called Slop. And it’s everywhere.

"There’s Slop music and Slop visual art and Slop video. There’s Slop enough for all of us—because the machines Slop nonstop. ... It’s easy: Just find an AI bot, and give it a prompt—the goofier the better.

"So I created this image of Vladimir Putin and Taylor Swift on a motorbike, with teddy bears celebrating the couple’s impending nuptials.

"Yes, I am deliberately creating something ridiculous. But that’s the essence of Slop. ...

"AI image generation is boring unless the results are stupid. That’s the consensus view. And it’s why AI artists are in a race to make the most abominable Slop they can extract from the bots.

"People collect and curate these images. Entire social media accounts are devoted to stupid Slop. ... The supply is endless—because AI never sleeps.

"We have come a long way from the days of Impressionism and Naturalism and all the rest. Those were serious movements. They happened because of dedicated artists committed to their craft.

"Slop is the opposite.

"It’s the perfect aesthetic theory for twelve-year olds with no artistic sensitivity—but possessing a crude sense of humour and lots of pop culture detritus in their heads. ...

"[N]one of this happens by chance.

"AI does not possess a self. It lacks personhood. It has no experience of subjectivity. So any art it creates will inevitably feel empty and hollow.

"Any human quality it possesses will be based on imitation, pretense, and deception. None of it is real.

"AI doesn’t even have a direct sense of objectivity—its knowledge of objects is all secondhand, assimilated through data. This results in a lack of depth or felt significance in any artistic work it creates.

"That why Slop is inevitable in an Age of AI.

"But this will not stop it from dominating the aesthetics of our time. ...

"In a previous day, people who got rich quick but lacked good taste were called vulgar. I don’t hear that word much anymore. But maybe it should have a comeback."

~ Ted Gioia from his post 'The New Aesthetics of Slop'