Art Made Human? – Huck’s September Newsletter

There is a high prob­a­bil­i­ty that, some­where in Los Ange­les, Matt Stone and Trey Park­er are draft­ing a ​“they terk er jerbs” sketch for the upcom­ing sea­son of South Park – but with their usu­al con­fed­er­ate flag-wav­ing white men in over­alls replaced by, like, Alan Ruck and a bunch of diverse, long-suf­fer­ing mil­len­ni­als who write for Net­flix. In one of the biggest ongo­ing news sto­ries of the year, Hol­ly­wood is on strike for the first time since the 1980s, with thou­sands of WGA and SAG-AFTRA mem­bers on the pick­et line tak­ing a $3 bil­lion sledge­ham­mer to California’s econ­o­my alone. There are sev­er­al rea­sons why. There’s the same issues of dogshit com­pen­sa­tion, staffing and greedy boss­es that trig­gered 2022’s ​‘hot strike sum­mer’ (which has since become ​‘hot strike for­ev­er’), when a wave of indus­tri­al action erupt­ed across sec­tors that bore the brunt of the pan­dem­ic. But there’s also the more exis­ten­tial ques­tion of automation.

Until recent­ly, ​“machines are com­ing for our jobs” was a large­ly indus­tri­al con­cern. Jobs in man­u­fac­tur­ing, agri­cul­ture and cus­tomer ser­vice have been con­sis­tent­ly dwin­dling, as assem­bly lines and pub­lic-fac­ing roles are replaced by robot matrons hav­ing a go at you for hav­ing an unex­pect­ed item in the bag­ging area and so on. This has been hap­pen­ing for ages and, while tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment is not inher­ent­ly bad, right now things feel a bit… off. It’s hard not to feel like you’re slip­ping slow­ly into mad­ness when there’s an app for every­thing and yet noth­ing fuck­ing works, mean­while tech bil­lion­aires are busy con­grat­u­lat­ing them­selves for invent­ing the bus. As Daniel Susskind, author of A World With­out Work: Tech­nol­o­gy, Automa­tion and How We Should Respond, put it in a unique­ly depress­ing state­ment to Time in August 2020, the pan­dem­ic ​“cre­at­ed a very strong incen­tive to auto­mate the work of human beings… Machines don’t fall ill, they don’t need to iso­late to pro­tect peers, they don’t need to take time off work.”

Three years and the release of Chat­G­PT lat­er, and a sim­i­lar cri­sis is now com­ing for Hol­ly­wood. In a prag­mat­ic run-down of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes on Vul­ture, enter­tain­ment lawyer Jonathan Han­del explains that AI has become the dom­i­nant talk­ing point because of the hype cycle around AI in gen­er­al. In Sil­i­con Val­ley, peo­ple are excit­ed about AI – to some degree ​“unre­al­is­ti­cal­ly.” In Hol­ly­wood, peo­ple are scared about AI – also to some degree unre­al­is­ti­cal­ly. ​“The dog can dance, but it’s not gonna be per­form­ing in the New York Bal­let next week,” as Han­del puts it. ​“Nonethe­less […] the writ­ers are afraid that if the contract’s lan­guage only reflect­ed the cur­rent state of affairs, then that lan­guage would get locked in and change to it would be resist­ed as the tech­nol­o­gy evolves.”

Han­del adds that ​“all Hol­ly­wood strikes have been about tech­no­log­i­cal change,” nod­ding to the dual SAG and WGA strikes in 1960 that came off the back of a 12-year fight over whether movies played on TV would gen­er­ate resid­u­als. As back then, today’s unions aren’t tak­ing a Lud­dite stance on new tech­nol­o­gy. They just want to be fair­ly com­pen­sat­ed and ensure that it’s used as a tool rather than a replace­ment for work­ers. The WGA’s stance on AI is to ​“har­ness – rather than – ban” it.

Amid eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty and an indus­try in flux – the box office is down, cable is dying, stream­ing doesn’t have the cap­i­tal it once did – it’s under­stand­able that most peo­ple wor­ry that AI will be used in ser­vice of the bot­tom line. From a con­sumer per­spec­tive, cer­tain­ly, it’s hard to get too excit­ed about AI based on the ways in which it’s cur­rent­ly being used. Yes, it can dig­i­tal­ly res­ur­rect Car­rie Fish­er. Yes, it can de-age Al Paci­no and ​“add 30 more years” to Robert De Niro’s career. Yes, it can show you what Hank Williams might sound like singing ​“Straight Out­ta Comp­ton.” That’s cool, but when you view these things in the wider con­text of how much the cre­ative indus­tries are strug­gling, the gains pale in com­par­i­son to the losses.

There’s already a stark lack of oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to make unique films, weird shows and left-field music. And I’m not doubt­ing the appeal of long-run­ning fran­chis­es, CGI-heavy super­hero epics and brand IP – I have ​“I’m Just Ken” liv­ing rent free in my head as much as the next per­son – but that can’t be all there is. Not every­thing has to be Pee-wee’s Play­house, but it would be a sad state of affairs if all that’s on offer down the line is the rean­i­mat­ed cast of Reser­voir Dogs doing an ori­gin sto­ry of the Beanie Babies.

With­out strikes and with­out change, this is what we’ll default to: indus­tries that fil­ter every deci­sion through the prism of com­merce, ruth­less­ly cut­ting bud­gets to main­tain bonus­es in the board­room and spit­ting out soul­less, eas­i­ly-repli­cat­ed con­tent whose val­ue is mea­sured by the tick­ing of arbi­trary box­es. None of us are above a Big Mac here and there, but imag­ine being force-fed one for every sin­gle meal by a suit who knows it’s not as good as a fresh Cap­rese grilled cheese on Pane Lat­erza done by someone’s Non­na, but doesn’t think you deserve a fresh Cap­rese grilled cheese on Pane Lat­erza done by someone’s Non­na if it will delay their own acqui­si­tion of a hol­i­day home in Portofi­no. Per­haps the intro­duc­tion of AI won’t make a huge amount of dif­fer­ence to the end prod­uct as far as the Big Macs of Hol­ly­wood go, but it cer­tain­ly won’t ush­er in a bold new era for Nonna’s grilled cheese.

Call me old fash­ioned, but I also don’t believe that AI is capa­ble of pro­duc­ing art that can move peo­ple the way some­one like Sinéad O’Connor, who Nick Levine beau­ti­ful­ly eulo­gised for Huck, can. The breath­tak­ing phys­i­cal­i­ty in her per­for­mance of one of the most vul­ner­a­ble love songs of all time, the way she howls ​“You’re still a liar” for the third time at the end of ​“Troy.” These things are sin­gu­lar, light­ning-in-a-bot­tle moments that cap­ture the truth of the human expe­ri­ence the same way look­ing up at a vast moun­tain range can make you believe in god – even just for a sec­ond. So I say if you need hope for the future of non-AI art, sim­ply inter­act with some. True art can only come from some­one who has expe­ri­enced, enjoyed and most impor­tant­ly suf­fered the many psy­che­del­ic hor­rors of being alive.

Now, can I inter­est you in some cool pic­tures of don­keys?

See you next month,
Emma

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Emma

Cur­rent obses­sion: Jim Legx­a­cy – a wild­ly fresh blend of emo, rap, glitch, lo-fi and a load of oth­er influ­ences from Lewisham, Lon­don. The beats are insane but what I real­ly rate about Jim Legx­a­cy is that every­thing about his art is unmis­tak­ably his, because he puts his heart in the small details and front­loads them – whether it’s the diaris­tic lyrics or the DIY aesthetics.

Best new dis­cov­ery: The Blog Era pod­cast – a lov­ing and rig­or­ous­ly researched his­to­ry of how the mid-00s to ear­ly-2010s land­scape of rap blogs and free mix­tapes reshaped the music indus­try by cir­cum­vent­ing its gate­keep­ers. Essen­tial lis­ten­ing for any­one raised on a diet of Curren$y and COMME des FUCK­DOWN snapbacks.

Most look­ing for­ward to: Porth­cawl Elvis Fes­ti­val – haters will say I’m at least three gen­er­a­tions too young to enjoy a cel­e­bra­tion of The King in the kind of sea­side town Mor­ris­sey prob­a­bly had in mind when he sang ​“come Armaged­don, come.” But if the words ​“The Best Fes­ti­val Elvis Com­pe­ti­tion (Heat One)” don’t send shiv­ers up your spine and your knees slid­ing across the near­est par­quet floor then I don’t know what to tell you.

Alex (Senior Edi­tor): I’ve just start­ed read­ing Ways of Being: Ani­mals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Plan­e­tary Intel­li­gence by James Bri­dle, which puts devel­op­ments in AI in a much broad­er – plan­e­tary – con­text. Mind-expand­ing stuff!

Isaac (Social Edi­tor & Pho­tog­ra­phy Writer): I’m lov­ing this Masahisa Fukase pho­to­book. It basi­cal­ly pulls togeth­er some of the Japan­ese master’s lat­er works, where he inter­ro­gates his role and pres­ence as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er with 20^th cen­tu­ry self­ies – a true pio­neer. And he even added colour paints to blur the lines between artist and photographer.

Ben (Dig­i­tal Edi­tor): I’ve just fin­ished re-read­ing Phillipe Besson’s Lie With Me trans­lat­ed by Mol­ly Ring­wald (yes, that one!) ahead of watch­ing the film and loved it even more the sec­ond time around. Been mak­ing my way through Shat­tered Nation by Dan­ny Dor­ling ahead of a col­lab for our At What Cost series (lit­tle newslet­ter exclu­sive for you there!) and I’ve had the lat­est Suf­jan tune on repeat ahead of the record drop next month (huge day for sad pre­ten­tious homo­sex­u­als the land over!).

Josh (Print Edi­tor): I’ve been star­ing at the art of James-Lee Duffy, whose fre­net­ic, anar­chic style stems from the heavy car­toon con­sump­tion of his child­hood. I’ve been read­ing Amer­i­can satirist, talk show host and come­di­an Ziwe’s debut book, Black Friend, which is an incred­i­bly fun­ny, poignant and edu­ca­tion­al series of essays.

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