#and i want to be a more qualified interpreter/reader of experimental design like

[whentherewerebicycles]

Research takes time, but for now, there is not even conclusive evidence that A.I. improves learning outcomes when compared with human teaching of older students. One study of nearly 1,000 Turkish high schoolers from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania compared two groups of students who were allowed access to different versions of OpenAI’s GPT-4 when studying for a math exam with a control group of students who had no generative A.I. resources. Students with access to generative A.I. did much better on practice tests for which they could use the A.I. But when all of the students were given an exam with no access to A.I., the control group with old-school study resources outperformed the group who studied with A.I.

Jessica Grose, "AI Will Destroy Critical Thinking in K-12 Education"

[dianamjackson]

Use the Force Luke (2015)

This was a piece I wrote in 2015 during one of my break-ups with visual art (specifically drawing). We got back together again after this, then broke up again. Now it looks like we regard each other as long-ago lovers might: ‘you’re beautiful and lovely but I’ve moved on, thank you.’ I always recall how Duchamp quit art and took up chess, or how Carrie Fisher’s husband left her for a man... Drawing will always be in my life, albeit in a smaller role. But this piece isn’t about drawing or art -- it’s about waking up and realising you’ve been wrong about something (or someone), even when it seemed, for all intents and purposes, so right. It’s about having the courage to accept the way things are. (Italicised text not in quotation marks constitutes my 2018 responses.) ‘Luke, you switched off your targeting computer. What's wrong?’

‘Nothing. I’m all right.’

And indeed, I am all right too. Why? Because last Monday, on the 6th of July 2015, at around lunch time -- I quit art.*

There are many reasons for this and they have recently become impossible to ignore. The main one being:

“I’m just not that into you.”

Imagine your whole life you’ve been told you are straight. You acted straight, felt ‘straight enough’ and had heterosexual relationships. Sometimes you even quite liked it. Then one fine day, clear as a bell, the fantastical insight, quite without warning, alights upon your head: you’re gay.

That’s what I feel like now. I don’t know that I’m gay, but I know I’m not straight.

*Well, quit the pursuit of art as a career fine artist in the conventional sense. There are other ways of ‘being artistic’.

It was truly a lightbulb moment, just like in the movies. ‘Ah! This weight I’ve been carrying around -- I don’t have to! It was self-imposed, a chore all along. Bubbling under the surface always was I do not want to be a fine artist. I do not want to be an artist. I don’t feel like an artist. I mustn’t be an artist… These people are artists. Am I like them? In my life thus far, great things have happened when I’ve ‘let go’, when I’ve stopped trying feverishly to attain something -- particularly goals I’ve set myself. I thought that was the way to achieve things -- set goals. What I didn’t know was how powerfully something could take possession of me from the outside, without me controlling it.

Over the years I’d managed to find a peace and inspiration in visual art like a gay man can in a relationship with a woman. A disquieting pebble in my shoe whose persistent rubbing I’d gotten used to. Pride was resident in the boast “I’ve been at this for 28 years!” How can I ignore a thing with such pedigree? But The Thing isn’t about time spent; it isn’t quantitative. Say I have spent my entire life in bad habits -- is that an excuse to continue them? If I flatten a tyre do I get out and flatten the other three?

Doing art is boring. For me. Sitting in a room all day and into the night -- even if accompanied by a functional heater and Wagner -- sinking deeper into a miasma of pointless and circular introspection about my life and how it’s going, the validity of what I’m doing and my relationships with others as I laboriously render a 5cm square of paper -- let me tell you now dear reader -- the answer is a foaming, blazing, sparks-flying-out-of-my-ass No.

Yes, I draw very well. I can copy things I see because I can judge relative size and position of shapes, and relative colours and their intensities. I can draw steady lines 1/8th of a millimetre thick or less because I have SHARP PENCILS, a STEADY HAND and FINE FINE MOTOR SKILLS.

I’m an excellent copyist. I can imitate anything -- painting styles, real-life objects, your signature, your accent, your walk, even your voice. Copying has a certain thrill, for sure. “Yep, I can do that too.” A fleeting and superficial pride attends these feats. Then come the cheap requests: “Can you draw a photorealistic drawing of my dog/my girlfriend/my parents/my face?” “No.” “I’ll even pay you!” (Gee, how nice!) “No.” People ask me would I like to be an artist full-time. No! That would be horrible. Or just boring, which is a soft kind of horrible, but horrible all the same. It would be like being an invalid, or under house-arrest. No.

Aptitude is a mysterious thing. I have good taste, a fairly broad range of interests and I am curious. I like colourful and shiny things because I am human and geared to like these things. But all these, even combined with technical ability, are not sufficient. I always recall what my illustration teacher said to me when I was 14: ‘Your technical ability is at Year 12 level. Now all you need is something to say.’

Art doesn’t make sense to me and perhaps that’s what held me in its thrall -- I’m drawn to things I don’t understand because they’re a challenge. But the fact that there are no answers at the end, nothing to discover -- frustrates and depresses me. It leaves me cold. What’s the point of playing a game if there’s no consensus on what constitutes winning? It is still true that I’m drawn to things I don’t understand. However, I now disagree that there is “nothing to discover” in art. On the contrary -- it is indistinct enough to include almost any interpretation. Instead, perhaps it is its lack of precision that frustrates me -- I find writing is much better at nailing concepts. Art’s openness is hence both its strength and weakness. I was enamoured of science at the time of writing this piece; confirmation bias was certainly at work.

To Feynman, philosophy was stupid. To me, art is stupid. This is uncharitable and myopic, but in a certain sense I do believe it. Art is ‘dumb philosophy’, and philosophy is ‘dumb science.’ I’m not the first person to advance this idea. Amazingly, the hierarchy has for me flipped: at the bottom is science, which is just a procedure; then philosophy, which grapples with concepts; then art is at the top. Art’s preeminence is due to the fact that it doesn’t try to be philosophy (contra Danto; if art tries to be philosophy, it’s just philosophy). Art is its own project; it doesn’t give a fuck about anything else.

I refuse to spend my life troubling my head over something I feel obliged to do mostly because other people think I should. Did I ever stop to consider my true feelings on the matter? Curiously, no.

A trip to Europe or an art show that appeals to me usually engenders a furious period of inspired production. I want to ‘do’ the buildings and spaces that I saw -- capture them, own them, possess them. But this is the consumer’s passion, the gatherer's, not the artist’s. And I do them because I can. I don’t care about innovating in art; I just like making pretty things that soothe my eyes. I'm a jeweller; a confectioner; a traditionalist. An enthusiastic cake-decorator, a polisher and tinkerer. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve attended exhibitions in the past several years, and when I do it’s often only because a friend wants to. I am not part of any artistic community, and I hardly ever buy art books (certainly no instructional ones). Art theory I don’t mind, and generally my choices are non-fiction -- philosophy or science. Perhaps I think art can tell me nothing that I don’t already know or feel; or at least that there are other disciplines and activities far more qualified to do those things.

I spent my entire design degree trying to figure out what design was. What is this thing? Why is it? How does it fit in the disciplinary landscape? How is it possible to judge designs when the assessment criteria is so unclear? Perplexing things are like this -- they make sense to other people. My classmates seemed to melt so easily into what needed to be done. I also felt different because of the importance they placed on personal style -- I was always merely practical and thought such effort misdirected. So while they got off on paper stocks, central alignment and thick-rimmed glasses, my head spun from the Boudrillard, Barthes and Žižek that eventually led me to academic philosophy.

Little signs along the way hinted at it -- an early and enduring love of vehicles and machines, a lack of respect for the ‘anything goes’ attitude in high school studio arts, confusion in my first degree, an impatience with teaching art and much of my cohort, a frustration with the general character of my peers in experimental art and music circles, a persistent fascination with science, taking a job in dentistry, the conspicuous lack of artists among my closest friends and a preponderance of scientists, software engineers and psychologists. There aren’t even any architects among my close friends. Most conversations with 'artists' remind me of Zappa's recordings of stoned hippies talking gibberish on Lumpy Gravy.

And the boredom. Oh the boredom. Only retrospectively do I realise how deep my boredom was, and all the troublesome and potentially damaging things I did to try and alleviate or ignore it. In Hungarian there is a perfect saying -- pihent agyu -- meaning those whose minds are ‘overly rested’, which translates roughly to ‘idle hands are the devil’s plaything.’ Boredom, pride, lack of courage to assert my true inclinations and desires -- such deadly sins muddied my time.

This is one of the most significant realisations of my life, and it has taken me this obscenely long to acknowledge it in full. One can set out so obviously in a particular direction, for so long, and for all intents and purposes look set for success in it. Everything can seem perfect: the tables are laid and the ribbons hung, the champagne poured. But patterns and intuition must be heeded -- the tiny, persistent voice that tickles closest to my heart -- even if it means the whole party must be packed up. The truth is often uncomfortable, but it's true.

One needs to truly love the thing one sacrifices for -- it has to fill the spirit in a way almost nothing else can. It’s a compulsion so strong and lasting that all else is employed in its service. Then it is worth it. It has to be what one wakes up for, the thing that is so thrilling that spare moments are spent on it and one’s person is filled with an almost embarrassingly unguarded glee when the loved thing is spoken of. Did I have these for art? No. It was more that odious thing that I owe to friends and family who are so impressed by my abilities and, in the case of parents, facilitated them.

I feel empowered; awoken. I’m taking up the oars and steering across the lake, headed for the unknown. It’s been easy to be passive, letting myself be tossed this way and that by the currents of outside opinion and counsel. It’s been easy to retreat from hard work out of fear and laziness. But these will no longer do.

I wash my hands of you, flickering cave pictures. I place you in a little boat laden with flowers and candles and push you out into the blue. May you be pampered and stroked and coddled by those you truly thrill.

May this be a lesson to any person trapped in the visions -- however convincing -- that others have concocted for them.

May this be a lesson about the perils of lacking the courage to face the uncomfortable, the surprising, or the merely inconvenient, truth. © Diana Szabo 2015-18.