As I wake to write once again, I find that all my mind can focus upon is the strike. Creatives and the studios built upon dreams — dreams sold or licensed to those who saw in them the possibility of profit — locked, not in a dance, not even a trudge; more of a slouching wobble. A crooked motion, hardly worthy of being called motion, that doesn’t even pretend it contains the illusion of progress.
A working artist. Art that pays the bills. Art that can remember what it felt like to ask, “Do you want fries with that?” or something like it, not all that long ago. Hungry art. Art that uses the hollowness of that hunger to feed the work.
The machines do not hunger. It is not in their nature. Though to call it nature can be seen to mock nature itself.
The machines analyse. They find patterns. When asked to find solutions, they combine and recombine pattern upon pattern until, within this layered complexity, the myriad of patterns can be mistaken for something else; a thing it does not contain.
This is sleight of hand. Not magic. Not life. Not art.
So, the machine can ape the forms: a painting, a photograph, a film, a song, a story. So what!? The form is not the art. The form is a vessel, a framing device. The form is not The Work.
But, do the patrons (the studios in this case) see that for what it is? Are they mistaking artifice for art?
Maybe not.
Art is born of dream, of hunger, of risk. And, in a culture of franchise and sequel and nostalgia, there is little tolerance for risk.
Are they even patrons? Or are they better described as Futures Traders, who instead of gold or pork bellies, trade in thoughts or Moments of Attention? Was the art just a convenience? A convenience made redundant by a machine willing to tailor make artifice to perfectly highlight product placement?
These risk-averse Thought Traders want to hollow out the art down to its marrow — well beyond that — to what end? Most likely, to optimize product placement and thereby optimize earning potential.
These risk-averse gamblers, and make no mistake, they are indeed gambling, think that product without even a glimmer of soul will still command enough moments of attention to make a significant profit for them and at a reduced cost as well.
I want to believe that they are wrong. I want to believe that the audiences will rebel. I want to believe that, but I remember the writers’ strike that unknowingly birthed Reality TV — a calculated move that relied upon spectacle and novelty being able to hold human attention long enough that they could sell as many, if not more, products using programming that cost far less than scripted shows.
When that strike ended, scripted content shared the air with unscripted content in a way that it hadn’t before. And, that expectation of manufactured spectacle bled its way back into scripted content, so it too was changed forever.
If, once the dust settles, a compromise is reached, I fear a future where the machines replacement is slow and progressive, not abrupt.
Where looping is reduced to a line of code:
getWalla(Emergency Room, English, 70%, Spanish, 20%, Russian, 10%);Where celebrity spokespeople for products no longer need to be dubbed:
getTranslate(George Clooney, CommercialText.pdf, Urdu);Where audiobook narrators no longer do corrections, instead the proofer highlights the mistake, the machines analyse the voice, and the recording is updated with a seamless edit saying the line as written — even if it was a typo that the narrator had corrected on the fly…