Is It Craft Yet?

 

 The flip-side of  Is It Art Yet?

Edward Weston, June 1930: "Photography suits the tempo of this age...it is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively...one does not think during creative work: any more than one thinks when driving a car...." 

[Art naturally adapts to the tempo of an age because new technologies give us more and more ideas (divergence). But eventually, you have to shape them (convergence). e). AI has shortened the gap between idea to product so the convergent phase is shorter. But people do not naturally adapt to the tempos of an age.]

Personally, I like seeing what a new technology does, so I jump right in. In 1998, I jumped right in and designed a website. I wasn't looking for something to be made convenient, which is what AI music is at the moment. It saves you the steps of writing and re-writing, recording, mixing, and mastering. Web design eventually became that about 10 years ago with sites like Wix and Weebly. I don't design sites any longer and don't miss the process. But I would miss the creative process in music. AI is good at "restyling", a quick way to rearrange pre-existing material. 

What I've found most compelling about AI music is how it interprets your lyrics, even found lyrics or wordplay. Sometimes I can resonate with the re-interpretation, other times it's terrible. As an artist, you know your music intimately because it came from you, and when you give it over to a sealed, soulless black box you're left with nothing to own. Ultimately what we want are collaborators and producers we trust. But there can be no real trust in a black box--or can there? 

The power is certainly here now, and even more power in another 25 years, but to what end in terms of real skill? I find that I feel happier when I'm engaged with music directly, playing an instrument, and writing notes on a staff. It's not produced at all, and I don't expect it to be. 

The rub between AI music and real music might be in the expectations: People expect music to be perfectly produced, and that is what we get from AI music, but it puts the brain in a different mode, which I think may make it more prone to anxiety. Playing music manually has a temporary calming effect. 

Everything we do is changing our brains in some way. The danger of AI-generation is that it makes us addicts, which is different from flow experiences. Addictions are a kind of flow experience,  but they are “sugar highs”.