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Helloooo,
Sternal Journalists. No upcoming shows at the moment, but possible some on the east coast. Otherwise, I’m going dark and burrowing into the artistic goop for holidays to see what chrysalises out the other side.
A mea culpa: for my last four shows, I used AI digital art because it was fun and interesting, but the recent monsoon of digital art AI selfies has jostled me into realizing how bad this is. Like many things, it is cool but it is also very bad.
Those of you into this sort of bullshit are probably aware, but at the same time many of us were posting vivid digital renderings of ourselves as Mr. Tumnus, Open AI released GPT-3, which takes text prompts and creates text (as opposed to the ones I was using before which takes texts prompts and creates images; or the selfie generator which takes photos and generates images).
For instance, I told GPT-3 to “Write a sonnet about butter.”
And it spat out this:
I. Soft, golden, creamy butter,
Called to us from far and wide,
A delight for us to savor
And a pleasure to our eyesII. A spread of joy to many,
Just a spoonful makes us smile,
Butter brings us all together
And can last for quite a whileIII. On toast, with biscuits, a topping
For vegetables and steak,
Its versatility is endless
And our taste buds it will takeIV. It melts and soothes, and bakes,
And even graces our popcorn,
Oh how we do adore thee,
Butter, so sweet and nonstopV. Though it can be a struggle
To choose which one to buy,
We always come out happy
Whatever kind we tryVI. No matter how you eat it,
With pancakes or with jam,
Butter is a timeless treat
That we all cannot help but clamor!
This is wild. And it’s not a great sonnet, but it’s not a bad one. Stanzas 4 and 6 are bad, rhyming “popcorn” with “nonstop” and “jam” with “clamor.” But the rest are fine, and stanza 2 is kinda awesome.
But the problem isn’t this technology being available as it is. The problem is the next iterations could be even better. I’ll probably yammer on about this more in the future, but as we all go into the holidays and maybe look into different ways to pass the time, don’t mess with any of this stuff.
To paraphrase Joe Cabello’s Instagram story which I think only I saw and he refused to turn into a reel, this is a slippery slope. If everyone just uses programs that generate art rather than trying to make art itself, art loses its intrinsic value, art loses money, and we all lose our souls.
I know sometimes we cannot help but clamor, but just try! Like DO ONE MAYBE. Bu that’s it. Just to see it. Do “Write a Jack Harlow rap about Quantum Leap,” and then be done. Make things, don’t generate things.
Recommendations
The Menu. Movie. This fun thriller about an ultra-ultra-ultra-high-end chef who decides to turn on his clientele is everything it promises in the trailer. If the trailer looks fun, you’ll like it. Not as horror-y as I thought in case that’s something you worry about. Also, I laughed a lot but nobody else did.
Triangle of Sadness. Movie. This makes White Lotus (which I love) look like a CW show.
Fleishman is in Trouble. Show. This is the first show based on a book I can remember watching that made me feel the experience of reading a book which is very cool.
Everybody Wants a Song That’s Never Been Written. Song. Stuck in my head all weekend.
And finally, here’s some human-made art I found in the wild this week:
Keep clamorin’!
Julian
P.S. I spend anywhere between two and twelve hours a week on the Sternal Journal. If you enjoy receiving it (and are RICH) consider becoming a paying subscriber. For just a few bucks a month, you can provide me with a bit more time to come up with fun topics, poems, and interviews; and you with probably fewer typos.