the barbenheimer experience i had was so funny i saw oppenheimer first and in a quiet scene we could literally hear ken singing in the theater next to us and then during barbie it when was quiet we could hear a fucking explosion coming from the oppenheimer screening
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the most frustrating thing about AI Art from a Discourse perspective is that the actual violation involved is pretty nebulous
like, the guys "laundering" specific artists' styles through AI models to mimic them for profit know exactly what they're doing, and it's extremely gross
but we cannot establish "my work was scraped from the public internet and used as part of a dataset for teaching a program what a painting of a tree looks like, without anyone asking or paying me" as, legally, Theft with a capital T. not only is this DMCA Logic which would be a nightmare for 99% of artists if enforced to its conclusion, it's not the right word for what's happening
the actual Violation here is that previously, "I can post my artwork to share with others for free, with minimal risk" was a safe assumption, which created a pretty generous culture of sharing artwork online. most (noteworthy) potential abuses of this digital commons were straightforwardly plagiarism in a way anyone could understand
but the way that generative AI uses its training data is significantly more complicated - there is a clear violation of trust involved, and often malicious intent, but most of the common arguments used to describe this fall short and end up in worse territory
by which I mean, it's hard to put forward an actual moral/legal solution unless you're willing to argue:
Potential sales "lost" count as Theft (so you should in fact stop sharing your Netflix password)
No amount of alteration makes it acceptable to use someone else's art in the production of other art without permission and/or compensation (this would kill entire artistic mediums and benefit nobody but Disney)
Art Styles should be considered Intellectual Property in an enforceable way (impossibly bad, are you kidding me)
it's extremely annoying to talk about, because you'll see people straight up gloating about their Intent To Plagiarize, but it's hard to stick them with any specific crime beyond Generally Scummy Behavior unless you want to create some truly horrible precedents and usher in The Thousand Year Reign of Intellectual Property Law
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RE: talking to conservative parents, I’ve found a good method to de-worming their brains is to not get riled up, just act a little bored and remind them “the news cycle only shows salacious stuff. They want you to be mad and scared because it makes you easier to control. Think about it for a second. Do you REALLY believe everything they have to say?” Or “you can’t believe everything you read or see on the internet. Remember, they earn money every time you click on their video.”
And especially when my dad starts getting huffy about Prices or Artists He Doesn’t Like, I tell him “that’s the beauty of capitalism. they have a product to sell and the freedom of expression if you don’t like it you don’t have to buy it.”
Might not work for everyone but dad’s KRYPTONITE especially is saying “but dad that’s capitalism! You LOVE capitalism!” And he either has to stop complaining or admit capitalism is bad and so far I haven’t lost
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Do you guys notice how when Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union, started planning a general strike, he did it by a) targeting his messaging towards unions with the ability to safely and effectively strike in large numbers, b) laid out a clear, actionable plan for those unions to follow (setting contracts to all expire at the same time, since many unions cannot strike while under contract), c) is using union contracts to set clear, actionable demands that can be met in order to gauge success and provide an end goal, and d) started organizing FOUR YEARS before the proposed strike date to give people the chance to plan accordingly, because it takes a really freaking long time to get tens of millions of people organized?
You notice how he didn't do it by slapping a message on Twitter saying 'hey nobody go to work on Monday, that'll really show 'em'?
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something. about. the horror of being sent on an impossible (death) quest and obligations and hospitality politics. the trauma of not having a home, and then the trauma of being in a house that becomes actively hostile to you, one that would swallow you whole and spit out your bones if you step out of line. all of this is conditional, your existence continues to be something men want gone.
it's about going back as far as I can with the perseus narrative because there's always a version of a myth that exists behind the one that survives. the missing pieces are clearly defined, but the oldest recorded version of it isn't there! and there's probably something older before that!! but it's doomed to forever be an unfilled space, clearly defined by an outline of something that was there and continues to be there in it's absence.
and love. it's also about love. even when you had nothing, you had love.
on the opposite side of the spectrum, this is Not About Ovid Or Roman-Renaissance Reception, Depictions And Discourses On The Perseus Narrative.
edit: to add to the above, while it's not about Ovid, because I'm specifically trying to peel things back to the oldest version of this story, Ovid is fine. alterations on the Perseus myth that give more attention Medusa predate Ovid by several centuries. this comic is also not about those, either! there are many versions of this story from the ancient world. there is not one singular True or Better version, they're all saying something.
Perseus, Daniel Ogden
Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation, edited & translated by Stephen M Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephen Brunet
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