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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1491529
Skill and practice become superfluous In our view, the desire to close the gap between ideation and execution is a chimera: There’s no separating ideas and execution. It is the work of making something real and working through its details that carries value, not simply that moment of imagining it. Artistic works are lauded not merely for the finished product, but for the struggle, the playful interaction and the skillful engagement with the artistic task, all of which carry the artist from the moment of inception to the end result. The focus on the idea and the framing of the artistic task amounts to the fetishization of the creative moment. Novelists write and rewrite the chapters of their manuscripts. Comedians “write on stage” in response to the laughs and groans of their audience. Musicians tweak their work in response to a discordant melody as they compose a piece. In fact, the process of execution is a gift, allowing artists to become fully immersed in a task and a practice. It allows them to enter what some psychologists call the “flow” state, where they are wholly attuned to something that they are doing, unaware of the passage of time and momentarily freed from the boredom or anxieties of everyday life. This playful state is something that would be a shame to miss out on. Play tends to be understood as an autotelic activity – a term derived from the Greek words auto, meaning “self,” and telos meaning “goal” or “end.” As an autotelic activity, play is done for itself – it is self-contained and requires no external validation. For the artist, the process of artistic creation is an integral part, maybe even the greatest part, of their vocation. But there is no flow state, no playfulness, without engaging in skill and practice. And the point of ChatGPT and DALL-E is to make this stage superfluous. A cheapened experience for the viewer But what about the perspective of those experiencing the art? Does it really matter how the art is produced if the finished product elicits delight? We think that it does matter, particularly because the process of creation adds to the value of art for the people experiencing it as much as it does for the artists themselves. Part of the experience of art is knowing that human effort and labor has gone into the work. Flow states and playfulness notwithstanding, art is the result of skillful and rigorous expression of human capabilities. Recall the famous scene from the 1997 film “Gattaca,” in which a pianist plays a haunting piece. At the conclusion of his performance, he throws his gloves into the admiring audience, which sees that the pianist has 12 fingers. They now understand that he was genetically engineered to play the transcendent piece they just heard – and that he could not play it with the 10 fingers of a mere mortal. Does that realization retroactively change the experience of listening? Does it take away any of the awe? As the philosopher Michael Sandel notes: Part of what gives art and athletic achievement its power is the process of witnessing natural gifts playing out. People enjoy and celebrate this talent because, in a fundamental way, it represents the paragon of human achievement – the amalgam of talent and work, human gifts and human sweat.