Art Beyond AI

AI art is here. How the hell are artists actually supposed to respond? If proposed answers all feel like dead ends, maybe it's time to look beyond art: to politics.

AI Dreams of Genies: AI Art and the Fantasy of a World Without Workers

As AI advances, the hype machine advances faster. Its boosters and detractors agree: AI Art can grant all your wishes. This hyperbolic discourse hides the truth about our tech-mediated culture: we're being sold cheap knockoffs of our desires.

Autonomous Dreams: AI Art and AI Agency

Throw out the science fictions about intelligent robots. To understand AI art we don't need to get lost in press release fantasies, we need to understand the century-old art that paved the way for Dall-E.

Dreaming With The Machine: The Art In AI Art

AI art programs are taking the internet by storm. But can the products of GANs like DALL-E or Midjourney ever be more than a cool tech demo? Where is the art in AI art?

An Objectively Better Square: Beyond Cryptoart's Aesthetic Field

NFT boosters try to claim the Blockchain is for every kind of artist. But what practices lie off the edge of the cryptoart map?

 

A Fleshy Pink Gradient: Inside Cryptoart's Quest for Aesthetic Definition

As cryptoart defenses get just a little bit smarter, a new narrative emerges: NFT artists are diverse outsiders, but conveniently are all on the same side! What does the actual range of NFT aesthetics look like, though, and just how aligned are their interests really?

 

The Corniness Is The Point

As celebrities sell out to NFT schemes, mutual hostility with the skeptics boils over. How can we keep our heads as cryptoart now achieves a seemingly impossible level of corniness?

Feels Dumb Man: I Really, Really Hated The Pepe The Frog Documentary

"Feels Good Man" reveals a lot about how Pepe the Frog and its creator Matt Furie suck... accidentally. When faced with that inconvenient truth, the film and its audience will go to astonishing lengths to pretend our cultural grift economy is doing just fine.

The NFT Rube Goldberg Machine, or, Why is NFT Art So Lazy?

Art and automation's merger long predates cryptoart's use of procedural generation.

You'll never hear NFT sellers talk seriously about that history, though, cause it reveals not just NFT art's contradictions, but also its cynical laziness. 

The NFT's Aura, or, Why Is NFT Art So Ugly?

NFT art is bad for the environment, and bad for artists, but critics and supporters of NFT art are both missing a key fact: it's also just bad art. Whether Beeple or Bugmeyer, it's time the stars of the NFT revolution experienced some real art criticism.