On the Eternal Nature & Principles of Art

On the Eternal Nature & Principles of Art: Future, Past & Present

Only a few of you are aware of this fact about my life, but before pursuing YouTube or studying Political Science professionally (that is, in a university environment), I was obsessed with Art. Not only did I think about it, but I have also actively created it, with some pieces being sold for over 100 dollars. For a high school student like myself at the time, this could have been a potential career path if I were to invest more of my time and effort into it.

This stage began somewhere in early 2016 when I started listening to classical music on the daily basis. Naturally, I also began looking into Art, exploring the works of such artists like Caspar David Friedrich, John Martin and Viktor Vasnetsov. If I were to find a common denominator between this trinity - all of them belong to some variation of the Romantic Nationalism School. Soon enough I have signed up for a grade 11 class of Art and then took another one in grade 12.

Despite this, I did not make any paintings in the Classical and Realistic styles inside or outside class, instead I specialized under the “Abstract Art” umbrella, where I nonetheless have produced a lot of Artwork with Romantic or Religious symbolism underneath them.

My teacher unfortunately did not focus a lot of her attention to the Romantic Art, but her Art history lessons from before the Renaissance and up to the Post-Modern Art were of great utility and I do remember them well. Although I am not certain for sure, I was likely my teacher’s favourite student not only because of my high grades but also passion for Art that she was astutely aware of.

Unlike most Conservatives of today and the past, I have never felt any disdain towards Abstract Art and instead considered it to be a fine medium for conveying a symbolic or emotional meaning, but in a different and non-obvious shape. Much like how Poetry is different from Perfect Logic but nonetheless sends a message so does Abstract Art I thought to myself, as I filled the canvas with paint.

Very quickly though my passion for making Art faded away completely. The years of 2017-2019 have probably been the most nihilistic and depressing years of my life underpinned by the total breakdown of all previous assumptions about the world that I once held. It was a time, when I abandoned religion, the idea that meaning is something that exists out there and began to see society to be built upon lies of different variety upheld for poor reasons. How does this relate to Art you may ask? Well, this is where we go to part two:

PART I: The Magic Logic Behind Art

The first ever piece of Art and the subsequent pieces of Art that spanned for tens of thousands of years before probably the Medieval Era were depictions of reality that served a practical purpose. The most common theme in these cave paintings was the depiction of animals that I imagine served as some form of a pre-modern Encyclopedia before the invention of the written language.

As technology and society have progressed forward so did Art in a sense that it evolved further as a communication medium increasing the degree to which it conveyed useful information. Historical textbooks had plenty of illustrations, battles and important people began to be documented in a picture format while places of worship began to be decorated with religious iconography.

Perhaps the main general direction of Art has been the movement towards greater accuracy that has culminated in the invention of photography. The other direction of Art with which my Abstracted Paintings were concerned with, is the conveying of meaning that correlates with accuracy only slightly and almost always happens inside the head of the Artist.

Now unlike accuracy, communicating meaning has never been a straight line of progression because the more Abstracted a piece of Art is, the more interpretations of it arise. There is a Literary school of thought called the “Reader-Response-Theory”, arguing that whatever the original meaning behind an Artwork, is ultimately meaningless in relation to those who interpret it. I find this to be the most acute observation that relates to the perception of Abstract and Post-Modern Art by the audience that is not familiar with the original intention of the Artist. Assuming of course there was an intention given a large amount of Artistic pieces happen to be made by spilling multiple buckets of paint over a canvas in a chaotic manner, barely following any guidelines by which a certain meaning can be uncovered later on.

People often exclaim of “human creativity” and separate Arts from Sciences assuming that the former can never be understood or subordinated by the latter. There is this popular notion that creativity, spirituality or emotionality exists in some weird realm that could never be properly decoded and understood. Ideological leftist types will also apply the same logic to intelligence, but for many Biorealists on the Right who understand that intelligence is determined by one’s biology it is sometimes difficult to also understand that it could be easily quantified and copied, adequately deciphered and even transmitted into a different medium. However both Art and Science have a common origin - language. There is this almost magical consensus formed since the dawn of computing with regards to Artificial Intelligence’s ability to think or to produce Art that I have also believed in for some period of time. It is perfectly summed up by Ludwig Wittgenstein who to the question of whether machines can think has once responded with "Can a machine liquefy a gas?". However recent technological breakthroughs in Genomic studies, neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence seem to suggest that even human thoughts can finally be deciphered. Below is the recent neuroscientific study where an AI has successfully analyzed the brain scan of a person listening to Pink Floyd and reconstructed what it perceived the human was experiencing.

While much like GWAS was 10 years ago, this technology is at it’s inception, the fundamental point is that political implications aside, we are now able to quantify and code human emotions into a different medium and consequently the idea of a '“soul”, or supposedly unique human emotions that can never be properly scientifically measured or copied is once again fully discredited. Even 15 years ago, such a breakthrough was imagined to be beyond the pale of reason and was generally regarded as “science fiction” that belongs only among science nerds or philosophical seminars. Not anymore. But how does it relate to Art you may ask?

The truth of the matter is that unlike an Enigma code or even Raven’s matrices an abstract Art’s meaning can never be uncovered as there is no guidelines by which it can be deciphered. To my knowledge there’s been zero successful human or AI conversions from Abstract art into real art or text. Funny enough if you put a text into an AI program and ask it to create an Artwork from it, it will comply and you will get the results that you wanted, but the same AI is not able to to convert abstract Art back into text or into real Art. What do you think are the implications of this?

As we just learned, the AI can read your minds and emotions, but something having zero logic behind it, like an Abstract Art the AI is able to only copy but not produce without a 100% dispersion of meaning.

It therefore is a totally useless way of communicating information given it cannot be expressed in other medium nor can it be understood in the original format, as different people will see in it different things, usually something resembling humans. This psychological phenomenon is called “pareidolia” whereby the human brain tends to perceive familiar patterns or shapes, in random or ambiguous stimuli. But ultimately this is nothing but an illusion created by the chaotic variations and modifications of the form. There is nothing “special” about it. It’s not that “you don’t get it”, it’s that nobody does and this is no good thing. Imagine if we were to apply the same principles of Post-Modernism to Linguistics or Mendeleev’s Periodic Table. We have to be clear. It’s not that their Art is ugly, it’s that it’s meaningless.

PART II: Transactional Art

What the Post-modern Abstract Art does do well however is making sales.

While, Art initially began as a communication and knowledge sharing venue. At present time, Art is best understood as commodity hyperfetishism and its accelerating rapidly with the Contemporary Art marking growing from 100 million sales from 2000 to over 2 billion in 2019. It became a form of investment where the price of art is not determined by the Art’s content but rather by the social position of the artist that made it. 4 out of 8 Artists of 19 of the most expensive Artworks ever sold on an auction happened to have their Artwork included in the list just once. Jeff Koons (who was on the list) won both gold and bronze with his Balloon Dog being sold at 58.4 million USD before inflation.

The artist puts the meaning and significance of his work as: "I've always enjoyed balloon animals because they're like us ... We're balloons. You take a breath and you inhale, it's an optimism. You exhale, and it's kind of a symbol of death". But would an AI ever decipher such meaning? I think not. It will only give you a possible set of themes like “absurdism” and “artistic expressionism” without saying anything concrete. Obviously a work like this can never be judged by any objective Art criteria. But it does seem to be judged really well from a subjective monetary criteria. Whoever bought it, thought it would be a good investment, worth the money. In-fact the return of investment for Art is estimated to be at 7.5% annually which is greater than ROI for S&P500. The monetary incentives have unironically ruined Art by pushing it away from quality. And while you’re thinking about buying a silicon sex robot to then pour cement on it to then place it in an aquarium and put a price tag of 2 million dollars on it, don’t bother because this doesn’t work like a regular capitalist market, whereby a product is judged by its quality and the general supply and demand dynamics. It is a hyper-subjective and status sensitive market where the product itself never matters. in such an incentives, the most arrogant, well connected, degenerate, innovative (good!) and high status Artists survive. Conservative Artists meanwhile are not to be seen in the “official Art club”.

If you look over at the left-leaning reactionary opposition to the AI Art by many Artists. It doesn’t come from just a place of fearmongering. If we look at the Chinese data, because of the AI Art, their productivity has increased 40-fold while 70% of Artists found themselves with no job, but that is a video game sector. While we don’t have any data for the US as of yet, we can expect that as a result of a large supply of AI Art and it’s relative quality, Post-Modern Art will decrease in value while human Artistic “workforce” will shrink. For now we see this in certain sectors but with further technological innovations this effect will be seen in every domain of Art. Currently AI Art’s capitalization is estimated at around 300 million dollars which is 9 less than Contemporary Art, however according to the most Conservative estimations by 2030-31 AI Art is expected to overtake it (this also assumes that Contemporary Art sales won’t plummet much like push-button phone sales did when they began to be outcompeted by touch screens).

Below is the geographical breakdown of turnover from Contemporary Art auctions (July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2022) Although this is just a speculation, but the recent Chinese contemporary art turnover may have already declined as a result of AI Art’s innovation.

PART III: High Art Formula

Whilst I disagree with the notion that Art should equate to beauty or that someone’s labour determines the worth of a painting because if it did, then our Art market would look totally different, however Art should not be equated to business transactions either. For me, Art is just like a language, a venue for expressing a coded message regardless of its content. I am not nihilistic enough to completely rule out the use value of an Artwork because the Art of those with much higher social status than average gets sold 1000 times the price of an actually great piece of Art and neither should you. In-fact I am very optimistic about Art, as its “unofficial” trajectory has been migrating, into undergrounds memes, edits, digit Art and other aesthetically pleasing mediums. It is the “official” Art that I have a problem with. I perceive Art as communicating an Aesthetic value, and much like I judge other consumption goods based on their quality and not investment - Art should be judged again by its quality.

While much like in any other sphere of life, there are good quality things and bad quality things. The market works in such a way that whatever is valued the most highly will be incentivized for further reproduction. This is a good thing and evolutionary selection (sexual selection especially), culture, technology and the market all work in accordance with this same principle of selecting out the best.

Unfortunately, in the early XXth century we began to be socially valuing shock value and then soon enough began to see Art as an investment, and so consequently for the first time in History we have redefined Art (at least the High Art) use value from social or educational into transactional. That is, much like we are under selection for ADHD like traits as a result of relaxation of the struggle for existence, the Art market began to select the Artwork that produced not the most amount of social value but the Art which produced greater amount of return of investment. So how do we bring good Art back into the game?

Governmental “eugenics program” for correcting Art sounds implausible as similar pro-social Art projects in the XXth century have been undergone by the Soviets, the FDR administration and the Nazis have proven to be failures (arguably you can say that the Nazis didn’t have enough time, but after the pogroms on the degenerate Art their Art market has never recovered). The monetary incentives outweigh aesthetic preferences by a gigantic margin. In such circumstances whereby the Laws of the Market are so set against socially useful Art, one must undergo a paradigm shift. Much like past innovations have led to perturbations of the market resulting in the growth of Formalism, degenerate Art and now recently what I call Cynical or Transactional Art. A new perturbation of the market ought to occur!

The answer to hyper-commodified consumption and erosion of Art is the AI-Art because it will hit where it is most painful - jobs and prices. Instead of a centralized coordinated approach, we have to take a maximally decentralized approach. One thing for certain, is that it will and already does disturb the market. It will put many pretentious, cynical and self-aggrandizing Artists out of business and disincentivize further Art which is of degenerate quality. The AI Art may mostly target web, poster and game designers for now, but it is only a matter of time before there will be AI machines capable of artistic composition on the canvas and beyond while doing other specialized Artist tasks.

All the evil people in the world oppose AI Art. This is a sign that supporting it is the right thing for any feasible anti-establishment right wing movement or to those who like High Art, because AI Art goes directly against both degenerate and also transactional Art. It already is qualitatively superior to every human Artist on the internet, thereby putting degenerates and cynical narcissists off the market looks increasingly more feasible. On top of that almost every AI work that I’ve seen looks beautiful and promotes a pro-social image on almost every variation that it produces. Perhaps it is a selection bias, so I recommend you to try it yourselves.

By removing financial incentives the structure of the market will readjust again, but it will only readjust to act in the interest of the most financially rewording type of Art, and so there must be a financially feasible alternative to degenerate Art unless 90% of our population becomes ardent Conservatives.

In order for pro-social Art to succeed, Artists need to follow a logical language that will allow their artwork to be perfectly converted into multiple mediums and use the latest set of technology to their best abilities. Digital Art, video and audio formats included. A good Art, much like Classical Art or the current variations of Digit Artworks can never be just on the canvas or on the walls of the Church. Furthermore, much like there is no reader-response theory for Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics or Intelligence and Genomic Research. There should not be one for Art! There is no place for subjectivity in Science. And whatever is Scientific is more-superior than non-Scientific and so if the Art industry wants to stay relevant, they ought to stay up to date with other industries. Industry will remain stagnant if it does not apply the latest Scientific accumulations for its efforts.

One of the things that I’m slowly working on is developing the universal laws of Progression that could be observed in any real category that is experiencing permutations, progression or expansion. In light of that it is wise to recognize that the multitude of constantly generating mediums of art, also constitutes a category that just like all categories of life has a certain usage value that can be significantly improved if it were to be organized more properly and with accordance to Progressive principles of development.

The formula for an ideal Art deciphered by the present technological developments is therefore communicating a message through a code that can be understood and if needed converted into another medium. The more powerful a code is, the better it is for the message to get across and consequently the higher is the usage value. That has been the same principle underpinning the earliest forms of Art as well as the height of our pre-Abstract Artistic development and it is also the same principle by which a computer and subsequently AI Art functions. Finally it also has to produce and incentivize a reaction from the viewer, which requires the Art to be of high quality.

Regardless, the formula for great Art is simple:

1. Art conveys information which is readable and generates minimal interpretations

2. Said information is able to be transported into multiple mediums

3. Said information produces a strong response by the viewer

4. Said information incentivizes a pro-social action

5. Said artwork stands above its rivals on the market

Classical and Romantic Art and to some extent Digital AI Art follows these five principles to the teeth. An Abstracted Art can not be regarded as Progressive because it fails to convey information properly, be converted into a different format and reconverted backwards, produce a strong response by the viewer and does not incentivize a pro-social action and thus constitutes a downgrade from both Classical and AI Art. It sits somewhere just above the cave art because of the variety of colour, patterns and shapes that it uses. Yet, should an aesthete be truly content with that? I think not.

Here is the most crucial aspect for achieving Artistic perfection: Now we have a great opportunity for an AI Art + Artist synthesis whereby many Artists of our views, much like intellectuals using chat GPT could produce a fusion of the “both worlds”. AI for now works on already existing algorithms that operate on the information which is put in its database, unlike humans who scoop their creativity from outside the AI’s database. Presently, AI Art remains the highest but also most undervalued domain of Art. The AI Art looks great because it functions similar to a perfect selective machine that picks only a few dozen best generations out of endless amount of variations. Imagine that you have viewed a 100 edits of Fight Club with Phonk music, but pick only a few best ones from a 100. This is akin to how egg by sperm fertilization and the entire process of evolution works, and consequently at it’s core it’s natural and most importantly is inherently Progressive. By synthesizing your Art with the best picked patterns, contrast, shapes and motifs with human subjectivity, its market price will go up, as the Artwork itself is tied to human agency and with enough repetitions - status. At the present stage of AI Art development, +99.98% of the pieces are not copyrighted, and much like any other unclaimed product are thus not being subjected to market dynamics. I argue that we should commit an act of “original appropriation” (privatization) of as much of Digital and AI Artwork as we can in order to disturb and undermine the prices of degenerate Art. Only when proper Art that is in accordance with Progressive principles of Aesthetics is outcompeting its rivals on the market, only then will our structural incentives will switch back to normal.