RSS SL

1. What is peeving you now, while logged into Second Life

   Yes, the "democratization of art" argument. It sounds good; I'm all for enabling people's creativity. But last night I did a search for "art AND gallery" on the MP, looking for useful stuff, and in the "Home and Garden" category got 17 pages of hits -- roughly half of which were really pretty dreadful AI art. The fact that I could tell it was AI generated without even expanding the image should tell you something. So should the fact that it was almost all of it riddled with cliches and mindless repetitions of the same dozen themes. Oh look! A large breasted woman in utterly impractical armour mounted on a dragon against a backdrop of alien skies! Again! And look! A generic "native princess" with large breasts just barely covered by a flimsy leather bralette! All of them looking like they are composed of plastic and shrouded in shrink wrap. Much creativity! Many self-expression! I actually don't blame AI for this, entirely: it's producing what it has been prompted to produce. And there has always been crappy "art": for every "masterpiece" there are 10,000 barely competent works out there. But I do wonder if the "frictionless" creative process some here have lauded isn't part of the problem. Maybe we require a bit of "friction" to produce something worthwhile? Maybe labour is part of the creative process, and not just an impediment to it? I have a feeling that the tidal wave of AI-generated art will change tastes. Possibly the audience for the kind of stuff I produce is shrinking. But I know this much. I can take upwards of three or four days to produce a single photo for an exhibition: there's sketching out the composition, obtaining, retexturing, modifying, or building from scratch the components, and constructing the backdrop. Getting the lighting exactly how I want it can take an hour or two on its own, and getting multiple "takes" another. And then there's post-processing it. I am sure that I could knock off a reasonable facsimile of my shot in a fraction of that time in AI. But where's the joy in that?

2. What are you listening to?

3. Take a word leave a word (game)

   Alcohol free.

4. Take a word leave a word (game)

   Grain Alcohol (in a watermelon is all I'm going to say)

5. Confused? You appear to be!

   Yet again a post appears on the Grid Status Page with the wrong date in the text. You clearly know which day is meant but Sunday June 16th is fictional this year. Sunday is June 14th!! Looks like someone needs to update their calendar!