The Impulse to Create Physical Art in a Digital World

Getting back into creative output in 2023 is a freaking absurd proposition, as absurd as it has ever been, and it has always been absurd. The truth of the matter is most artists who have found a way for themselves commercially have always served powerful masters, and today the masters are on the one hand, the gated community of “real art” and on the other, the algorithm of the digital world created by the rise of technologists.

How will you find me, my friends, without a deep fake of Grant Cardone in the body of Paul McCarthy by my side? How will you know the difference between my sketchy sketch above and the one made by, respectfully, some nerd calling himself an artist using a Midjourney clone? How will you see the video of my big toe that I made and shared as a reel on Instagram? It’s art, but does the algorithm think so? This is the world we are living in as emerging, or re-emerging artists.

It looks to me that the algorithm is promoting content it can learn from with the interest of replacing artists. Instagram can mine your content and capture it for the purpose of training AI, and to that end, I see a surge of realism on Instagram and other platforms, that seems to be feeding the Midjourney and Stable Diffusion outputs we increasingly see mixed in with the real thing. If you want the spirit of real art, you can find that too, in the cloistered sanctuaries of collectors, curators, and reputable galleries. Hello! I’m here.

Combatting the AI?

Powerful interests have plowed flesh and bone into the fields for millennia when necessary, and it sort of makes it a hopeless battle to try to resist or to appeal to people when you have a ball gag in your mouth, but as we approach a world where humans might be considered obsolete by some, we continue to exist, and paint.

We’re organic. Let’s be organic.

Physical art in a digital world is part of our calling card that makes us truly who we are. Over the last many years, I have tried to re-create myself for the digital world. Given the fact that I live in Japan, I don’t speak Japanese fluently, and I’m a stubborn creative at that, I had a hard time finding a new identity once in Japan that actually connected me to anything authentic or historically continuous. The communities that I was a part of back in the US were practically lost to me. But the digital footprint I leave can at least be real output from my body and mind, unaided by AI manipulation and unswayed by social media’s push to create a certain type of content in order to be showcased. A choice one has to make I suppose.

But I am thinking of offering a sketch service as an alternative to this fake, hokey, plastic computer art trash that proliferates our screens. The sketches on this page are two-minute idea drawings, short and to the point, quick illustrations of ideas. More refinement or different processes are always possible.

If you want a drawing, use this form which has prompts similar to an AI interface and I’ll whip up an output for you. Visit the F*** the AI sketch commission page and fill out the form.