Ampersands and AI Art
Pictured: Me playing around ChatGPT. Haven’t officially asked it to write me a grant, but one day I’ll see if it can make the process less miserable.
Ariel Davis, co-founder of the Arts Administrators of Color Network, hosted an informal workshop about ChatGPT about a month ago. Part of it was a show-and-tell about the capabilities of the technology, and there was also space made for a conversation surrounding its ethical implications. I asked the group about any reflections they had about a high-profile case of a fake AI-generated African fashion model that was actually created by a white man, and what it means for our respective cultures to be distilled into these algorithms and used for dishonest purposes.
My interest in AI-generated art is not mere curiosity. At the start of a lot of public conversations surrounding AI art, I was actually pro-AI art and I was even frustrated by most artists’ knee-jerk aversion to the concept. Nowadays, my stance is much more neutral, and I’m in a headspace where I’m seeing an equal amount of pros and cons. Currently, I find myself hungry to understand what type of art I’m trying to create with these technologies, as I’m interested in creating a stage play using AI software as a collaborator (full title: Can I please have a Turner Prize so I can stop trying to kill myself?; abbreviated as a Turner Prize), which you can read more about by checking out the bullet list here.
Where I’m landing right now with a Turner Prize is that that there’s three characters: two of whom are a couple, and the third is the AI itself - playing multiple characters throughout the narrative. I think they both have punctuation in their artist name (don’t @ me, it’s only semi-autobiographical), and I think they’re a Black and mestizx Latinx couple.
What I’m thinking is that &rade (pronounced Andrade), an AFAB non-binary Latinx visual artist, is in a constant state of suicidal ideation. They can barely leave their apartment, and their partner Randi – a more successful Black queer artist – has a hard time lifting them out of their funk. They’re lovers, but there’s also a lot of tension between them due to their differing levels of success. It begins when Randi changes their name to R&i (pronounced Randi) and starts identifying as non-binary, leading to some frustration from &rade, who unconsciously feels like they came up with the idea first. Eventually, I think one of the plot points that arises is that &rade ends up feeding R&i’s art to an AI software so that it can create winning applications and submissions for contests and awards.
Perhaps there’s even a fake persona that’s created using R&ie’s art. For the type of story I’m trying to tell, it would actually be way messier and uncomfortable if neither of them were white. I’m so tired of narratives that explore the tension between white people and “people of color.” I think it’s more fascinating (or even dangerous) to talk about some of the interracial tension within communities “of color.” (Quotes in this paragraph are used to highlight the ambiguity of the term, not to throw shade at anyone who uses it.)
I haven’t officially named the AI yet. Its name needs to feel specific and purposeful. I’ve already decided that the AI plays multiple roles, and takes on the form of whatever is needed in the moment. But the AI itself is also its own character, and has something to teach &rade – and by extension, the audience. I also think it unlocks a traumatic memory of some kind, some kind of wound that &rade has not yet processed for themselves.
This does not want to be a play about the controversy surrounding AI art. It wants to be a play about what ambition and success mean in a late-stage capitalist world, and how tokenization informs our artistic choices. My thinking is that the AI’s creations are a device that’s not really meant to be the final product of the work. Structurally, I’m interested in seeing what it would be like for me to write all the dialogue for &rade and R&i, and for a service like ChatGPT to respond to all their dialogue as the AI character. What would happen if I try to push a narrative onto the AI, but it keeps going in a different direction?
About a month ago, I visited Roopa Vasudevan’s exhibition at ABC No Rio, and she recommended I look into Annie Dorsen’s work. That’ll probably be part of my research as well.