Why These Enormous Chandeliers?

 

 

With more people using AI as a means to make product (what used to be called "to be creative"), it now seems that having original ideas--or even the desire to create something from an original idea--is somehow quaint and sentimental. The allure of artificial intelligence is that we're now going to have machines manufacture our content, and there's no need for us to be intimately involved in it because it would be too cloying, or even too human. It's the equivalent of avoiding the kitchen because it triggers our general dislike of cooking--the pointlessness of it when you can just get take-out--memories of your childhood where your mother was terrible at cooking, or just whined about it.

AI gives us a comfortable social distance as well. We're not supposed to have feelings, as they are too painful and emotionally bruising. The distance that machinic creativity provides gives us comfort from being triggered by sour grapes feelings (“It wouldn’t have been worth the trouble”), so creating a system to produce music flawlessly—or even with programmed flaws--seems like the more frictionless approach. (Who wants the pain of learning an F barre chord?)

We want things to be hands-off because we're not into being touched, or the touching involved in playing traditional musical instruments. Even if we don't like the things we're making, it's better than the fusty old things--or the idea of putting something in a pan and cooking it.

Like Le Corbusier said famously, and turned out to be almost "fascistic" in it's desire for a new manifesto for the future:

"Why then, on the pretty villas all around, these big useless roofs? Why the scant windows with small panes, why these large houses with so many locked rooms? Why the mirrored armoires, the washstands, the chest of drawers? And why these bookcases decorated with acanthus, these consoles, these vitrines, these China cabinets, the dressers, these sideboards? Why these enormous chandeliers? Why these mantelpieces...?" Toward an Architecture, Le Corbusier

Corbu’s out-with-the-old philosophy certainly was paradigmatic, but was more of a "cinematic" vision of the future, then became an old cliche. The idea that ___________ is a machine is already old once you've unboxed it.