🗿 The Art of Sending Emails

After spending the past four weeks observing fine art and architecture, I want to have a candid conversation about the state of the arts – and how technology can play a positive role.

Author

Jared @ Supernova
July 02, 2024

No Fomo Moai Mascot

GM. Greetings from Paris. After spending the past four weeks observing fine art and architecture, I want to have a candid conversation about the state of the arts – and how technology can play a positive role.

Most importantly, I want to discuss why the arts (and the role of technology) are essential. It appears increasingly pertinent to justify the existence of artistic expression simply for the sake of itself in a “function-first” society. 

Without Further Ado. ☕ *knuckle cracks* ☕ Let’s get into it.

Why the Arts Matter, How Technology Can Save It

Young people know how to send an email and play video games. How many know how to sculpt a sculpture, paint a painting, or compose beautiful music? As a technologist, why does it matter?

Art is a permanent stain on contemporary culture and society. Without it, we are nothing more than ephemeral expressions of passing moments and fleeting pleasure.

When we are all gone and washed away, the only thing we will have left to mark our existence is through our tangible expression of art, poetry, film, literature, and the like.

Similarly, we remember our cave-dwelling ancestors not by the celebrity gossip of the day but by their artistic expression.

Science and technology will also play a pivotal role in how this period of history will be perceived. But technological feats are compounding efforts developed over hundreds of years.

Artistic expression, on the other hand, immediately teleports you to the present. It opens the door into the artist’s mind at the time of their creation, telling a different story to each beholder as they experience it.

The Role of Technology in Art

AI will never fully replace humans in the arts. But it can certainly help reprioritize our time and find new meaning in a post-industrial society.

In the technological revolution, we can better understand the “face” behind the art and use their perceived identity to find new interpretations and experiences alongside the art.

What inspired the artist? What was the process? What materials were used? How long did it take? What year did they make it? What was happening in that city or country around that time?

Can we use this information to create alternatives and suggestions for other parallel stories and creations?

Maybe the above piece looks masterful. Maybe it looks ordinary.

In fact, it's a 1939 piece by Picasso, displayed in a Museum in Paris.

If a faceless prompt generated this image, its meaning would perhaps be no deeper than a few words describing its surface-level characteristics.

But when you contextualize how Picasso created this image from his mind, the meaning expands into his invaluable life experiences and subsequently, his legendary visual expressions.

Of course, certain forms of entertainment transcend their creators too. Performances can provide aesthetic or sentimental value on their own. Shows, movies, and maybe even books and paintings in the future will certainly be engineered (successfully) by non-humans.

However, if you have any real taste, soul, or empathy for the difficulty of producing something tangible from your imagination and sharing it with the world, nothing compares to timeless human art and fundamental creativity.

Like a grown man playing Candy Crush on a subway, robots will surely entertain us. But it will be more bread and circus than a reflection of a life well-lived.

Conclusively,

We should view the arts as a creative expression, a momentary capture of the present moment, incapable of being repeated, never to happen again, instead of a useful dataset to inform new ideas.

Men used to devote their entire lives to one life’s work—800-page research papers, novels, or 10,000 m2 cathedrals. Now everything serves a commercial purpose first and a creative purpose second.

We should view AI development as a new era of industrial society – an opportunity to reprioritize our relationship with artistic expression and allow humans to once again sit in the grass to dream and build beautiful things.

Leisure is an essential part of a functioning global economy, after all.

What We’re Reading
AI App of the Week 💻

AI gets a lot of hype. But how does that help me?

This section is dedicated to No Fomo’s favorite AI tools.

We’ll try to fish for things that make your life easier. Or we’ll give honest, informative reviews of apps capturing Internet attention.

This Week’s App De Jour: Luma AI

Luma AI released its new keyframe feature within its Dream Machine.

The software update allows for better narrative control - like changing lighting and seasons, control perspectives, morph subjects, and "impossible" transitions.

TLDR: You can let Luma define the start and end frames then use simple text prompting to guide the journey.

We are watching image2video rapidly improve video editing with better visual control and image composition.

As always, another step toward using AI as a tool to enhance human creativity, rather than replace it.

Our directors at Supernova are leading the industry for the commercial use of Luma and the like. If you want a free demo of how we use Luma for our video content for brands, just reply to this email.

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