ABOUT

Standing on the Green near my home in the Forest of Dean, a place where it is hoped no building will be ever be allowed, one of many scattered between the villages and trees, I heard before I saw, a flashing like a migraine disturbance in the sky. The man who had a large garden nearby had opened his pigeon loft to let his birds fly free, safe in the knowledge they would return once their energy spent sent them home for their supper.
The day was bright, breezy, made hopeful by the birds whirling. Flash! The sun caught the underside of wings. Flash! The mood changed as the flock darkened, the sun now behind them turning them in to cut-out shapes. Huge clouds pillared behind them, summer heat making cloud towers in the blue. Some were still growing, still white, while others had reached maturity and taken on a heavy, grey frown. A storm on the way? Maybe, but not now, not yet, the sun still held its place and the birds swam in the air, white black white black, flash, flash, flash.

I had my Brief. I saw it, I thought it, I wrote it. I had given myself another project.

Thinking about the different wing movements and alternative sun-light direction led to nine distinct shapes. I expect other artists might find more, I expect a computer could find many, however I was content with my nine. I knew I could make up a block with them, three rows of three. The black/white nature of the project screamed only one medium for me to use - Lino-Cut.

AI is scratching at all creative people’s livelihoods. How to defend our corner?

My way is to dig in, dig deeper, go back to the older-ways and use or resurrect skills, human hands, eyes, minds and historical knowledge of our lived cultures.
I don’t exclude digital art as it is at the present - when human-led not AI-led.

Please don’t forget the power of touch that leads to thought. A thought that can only be born as the act of doing is done. So many connections, minute decisions, most unconcious. Many I am sure are carried down to my brain from a past family brain. I am a collective of other people’s cells, so why not memories and skills and feelings?

When AI can claim to process all of those plus the strange ability to simply wonder, then I can assume it has become alive and can become an artist along side us.
I am not saying AI can’t become an artist, I am saying we need to be as Human as we can in our own art.

What we need to make sure is that human skills, views and feelings such are found in crafts from pen and ink to stone carving, are valued and given space within society’s respect.

What frightens me is the prospect of the glitter, the glossy, the new all-dancing quick-as-lighting AI seduces us all, leaving the naked traditional artist unloved and unused.

We are not just fighting for our jobs we are fighting for what it is to be Human.