Exploring Rabbit Holes…. and Checking out Elephants - Vicky JOnes’ article in response to Carole Shepherd’s Talk at Printopia.
Exploring Rabbit holes... and Checking out Elephants!
One of the artist ’s talks at the recent Printopia in Auckland was presented by Dr Carole Shepheard and was titled Slow horses: exploring how print artists can assert the true worth of their work. The pre-presentation publicity noted the increasingly commercialised visual landscape and said that “During the talk, the audience will be invited to reflect on how artists, galleries and collectors can collectively shift the culture of print—strengthening its value, visibility, and future vitality”... “This talk will delve into the creative risks and disciplinary challenges that shape contemporary print practice, and consider what it means to carve out an authentic place as a print artist amidst a global flood of reproduced imagery.”
Carole plans to publish the paper sometime in the future, so I will not analyse it in any depth here. Instead, her talk prompted some rabbit hole exploring for me, so let’s go rabbit hole discovering together! ... (also keep in mind that at one point Carole noted that AI was the elephant in the room!)
A phrase that popped up at one point in the presentation caught my attention because I’d not come across it before, and because the idea of metaphor has interested me for some time... “Every technology is a metaphor”... That was enough to get the retired librarian in me off to explore some rabbit holes! The phrase is an idea popularised by Neil Postman, author of Tehnopoly. It means that our tools are more than a means to do things; technology is also a lens by which we see the world, determine our values and shape our habits. Some even claim it is a means of defining what it means to be human. According to philosopher Bernard Stiegler, technics – the making and use of technology, in the broadest sense – is what makes us human [https://aeon.co/essays/bernard-stieglers-philosophy-on-how-technology-shapes-our-world].
One example of technology as a metaphor was the shift from written text to television, shifting culture from a metaphor based on logic and literacy to one based on imagery and instant entertainment. Another example is that AI is a metaphor for the human brain – AI is often said to “think,” and “reason” – we often anthropomorphise AI technology (interestingly, Google gave no references, so I wondered if I was gathering material hoovered up and presented via AI?). But I wondered... is AI really a brain... or is AI just technology that is computer generated in an attempt to function like a human brain. Consciousness or computation? Is saying that AI is a metaphor for the human brain really a helpful or accurate metaphor? And is the comparison important? And why?
More rabbit holes... Metaphors are great for making complex ideas more easily and simply understood... but I wondered... How far can you take a metaphor before it leads to unhelpful comparisons? The rabbit holes were getting deeper! Then I found the idea that when we rely heavily on tools like artificial intelligence or social media, technology stops just serving us and starts shaping our definitions of truth, community, and memory.” Interesting! Will we give technology that much power? Is there an element of choice here?
In Technopoly Postman arg ued that when society allows technology to define its cultural values, it stops treating technology as a tool and begins to treat it as a belief system. The metaphor becomes so embedded that we forget we created it and we start to believe the tool represents the absolute truth of how things ‘must’ be done. So what are some of the options for our responses to technology? Why is this important?
And where does that leave me as a print artist... ? I recently had an interesting experience. I had taken a photograph from our back fence of a paddock with rows of newly sprouted maize plants. It was particularly pleasing rural scene. I wondered how I would approach the image as an etcher – but my gut feeling was that it would make a better woodcut (not a print form I am experienced in). A friend said she had an app that could edit a photo into different formats – line drawings, multi-colour blocks, pen and ink, woodcut... so I sent her the image. I was initially very impressed with the results!... but it didn’t take long for my fingers to itch and out came a pen to make the young seedlings more ‘life-like’ and I spent some time researching how I could cut the sky in a style that was more appealing to me, and then I wanted to elongate the overall shape of the print - not quite so A4-ish...
The image was AI generated... and I felt like I had cheated. I want my work to be wholly my work. But I also felt I had been cheated. It wasn’t a great image. I showed the image to an experienced printmaker and his first comments were around how lifeless and mechanical it seemed. As a novice woodcut printer the traditional forms used in the AI image had initially wowed me... I thought it would help me learn the basics of woodcut techniques... but the longer I looked at it, the more I had reservations... and to an experienced printmaker the lack of a human input was obvious immediately.
So... some more questions to ponder... Is every technology a metaphor? Is a metaphor always helpful? Is AI really a human brain? I learned things from my brief encounter with AI in my practice, and it has improved my practice – because it has increased my awareness of where technology can be present in the print artist’s world. I can choose not to allow technology to create my art, but that can also mean I potentially make better art by at least weighing up the options. There are still lots of questions – that is one way that we learn. To see where my work can fit in the changing world of print, I must first begin to understand some of the landscape.
Carole’s presentation has given me a window into that process. Carole’s presentation was a more considered and much broader exploration of important aspects of the contemporary print artist’s world... and so I look forward to reading Carole’s published paper. In the meantime, I will continue to make art (with varying levels of technology!) and I will continue to ponder my relationship with technology... and to explore rabbit holes and check out elephants!
Vicki Jones
p.s. This is part of a much bigger conversation, and probably a conversation that needs to be wider than just our region... but let’s make a start! Your responses are welcomed! Perhaps we can create a stream of communication thru the PCANZ members page or webpage or privately. Do please let me know your thoughts.