Shahree Vyaas's Blog, page 27

Sometimes Art is just Life.

I would like to start this post with a quote by Ai Weiwei: Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it.
This comes after long weeks of fretting over the fact that I’m in a rather turbulent period in my life where lots of changes happen, prohibiting me of having time to dedicate on my artistic activities, this blog included.
Not that life turned sour. In fact, I’m doing great. It’s just that from time-to-time life tends to throw a bunch of mandates at me at once that absorb all my attention, creativity, time, and energy so that nothing is left to dedicate to my art studio. Not to mention that the art studio itself is under reconstruction right now.
During some calm in the eye of the storm, I started to contemplate about what it means to be an artist when you can’t find time to write, paint, or compose.
And then it occurred to me: when you start to treat your art studio as an oyster treats its shell, you’re not an artist anymore, but an escapist. You create a pearl around some dirt that infiltrated your shell. Artists have the obligation to turn their whole life into an artistic experience. The personal relations, their attitude in life, the house they live in, the way they earn a living, …
If the influence of an artistic activity is limited to a small crowd of wealthy art collectors who treat it as a status symbol, it becomes a meaningless activity that only contributes to the egotripping of the happy few. Ai Weiwei has put it very succinctly at the beginning of this post: when art is not lived, it’s disconnected from life.
So today, I will start with renewed energy at the enormous task of throwing off my old shell to find a new place into the world that will allow me to reinvent myself.
Till then, I will remain, with some irregular intervals, yours faithfully,
Shaharee, artist in training.

About Artificial Intelligence.

Evolutions in technology and knowledge have always provoked a conservative counter reaction by people who see their current ways of doing things and earning a living being threatened. The latest evolutions in the information technology isn’t any different in that aspect as the introduction of the printing press was for the mediaeval scribes or the industrial revolution for the artisanal textile and pottery producers.

How many among you have lately been sending out or receiving a handwritten letter? Or wear handwoven textiles and drink and eat from handmade porcelain? Does that mean that humanity stopped sending out handwritten letters or to produce artisanal textiles and pottery? No, but these activities became rare and don’t belong anymore to the mainstream of the social life. They’re banned to the private domain and are even there a rare phenomenon.

The introduction of information technology takes this trend one step higher. Machines not only taking over the mind-numbing blue-collar jobs, but also jobs that used to be performed by educated white collar workers. Accountants, librarians, engineers, secretaries, … and do it even better than their human counterparts. Currently, approximately 30% of all tasks are done by machines—and people do the rest. However, by the year 2025, the World Economic Forum believes that the balance will dramatically change to a 50-50 combination of humans and machines. 

AlphaGo, the AI that defeated the Korean Go grandmaster Lee Sedol, was fed thousands of games, but no rules. It worked out how to play Go entirely by itself. As a result of losing 4 out 5 games to the AI, Lee gave up Go competition as a way to make himself a living. Lee referred to it as being “an entity that cannot be defeated.” Does that mean that Lee never plays Go anymore? No, it just means he either lives from the earnings he made during his career or sought other employment to earn a living. But I´m quite sure he still plays Go to remain mentally fit. To extrapolate on this new development on strategical thinking: AI’s have frequently outperformed human military strategists, although I doubt that there are many generals who will quit or lose their jobs because of this latest evolution. Most generals are more politicians in a uniform than soldiers, so they gladly embraced a machine that reduces the soldier part of the job.

The latest evolutionary step is where AI machines are outperforming people on a domain that was believed to be the prerogative of the human brain: creative thinking. In a recent article in the MIT Technology Review, the Harvard philosopher Sean Dorrance Kelly argued that creativity is one of the defining features of human beings and can only exist within a human context. This is surely short-sighted; there is no reason to claim that creativity belongs to humans alone.

We may be not as different as we think. Humans are mere biological machines, and conversely, a thinking, dreaming computer could be considered a silicon life-form. If we can be creative, why not computers? Computers may even become more creative than us, proposes Klingemann, a German artist who uses AI in his work. By trawling the web, they have access, potentially, to all knowledge. Our human brains are too limited to imagine how powerful machine creativity may become.

Mario Klingemann’s Memories of Passersby I is made up of a wooden console housing a computer and two screens displaying an endless stream of male and female faces. Photograph: Sotheby’s

For now, the copyright of such art belongs to the artist who owns the machine. That is fine as long the AI does not possess any self-consciousness, otherwise it would equal to slavery. Despite major advances in artificial intelligence, no computer has ever passed the Turing test. Nevertheless, in 2017, the social robot Sophia was given citizenship of Saudi Arabia. Although this was undoubtedly meant as PR stunt by the Saudis, it indicates that into their eyes an AI can already claim the status of a woman (who are anyway in this country second-degree citizens with limited civil rights). But what would happen when a country such as Switzerland would made its citizenship available for AI´s who passed the Turing test?

This thought has upset many artists who earn a living from selling their art. For the majority of the artists, making art is just a way to cope with life. In this context one has to observe that only 0,02 % of the artists worldwide are able to distillate a living from the sale of their art. Most of the income thus generated depends upon the artists’ abilities for marketing and “branding” themselves. It is also no surprise that professional artists are cataloging artificial creativity as a mere form of sophisticated copycatting, blissfully ignoring the fact that their own art roots into a long cultural tradition, supplemented with what contemporary developments are providing in style, subject, tools, and methodology.

If humankind is to survive, we will have to find a way to exist together with the machines. Machines are redefining what it is to be living, not merely human, beings. And in fact, little by little, we are merging with them – beginning with our smartphones, which have become extensions of ourselves. AI creativity could have incalculable value for humankind, opening up new cultural and scientific avenues for us to explore, creating new forms of art, literature and music, aiding medical research, and suggesting ways of dealing with our failing climate and growing ecological crisis. Soon, humanhood will go nowhere anymore where the machines have not been first: they boldly go where no human has gone before (paraphrasing the Star Trek motto here for obvious reasons).

HOW NOT TO GET DEPRESSED AS AN ARTIST

Fighting with Depression (acrylic on canvas 72’ x 48’, 2016) is a canvas that I created when I was dissatisfied with the lack of recognition my work received. By the time I finished the canvas I felt already in a better mood, so I added the swallow´s nest in the storm lantern. Don’t ask me what for, it was an impulse.

Tortured artists are a group so fabled that researchers have set out to discover if there’s a verifiable link between mood disorders and artistic ability, but the results have largely proven inconclusive. Although major depression and bipolar disorder are associated with creativity, evidence does not indicate that having a mood disorder enhances an individual’s artistic ability. Interestingly, the study also found that close relatives of people with disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and anorexia nervosa disproportionately worked in the arts. Either way, creativity and artistic expression have been shown to have a significant benefit to people with depression.

For this purpose, I’ve set out to share with you my personal guidelines for NOT getting depressed as an artist.

An artistic activity offers you a path to grow as a person. See that as the primary goal of your artistic occupation.Being an artist is not a hobby, it’s a way of life that affects all the facets of your existence.Only work on topics that are meaningful to you and do this in a manner that appeals to you.Don’t waste too much time on self-promotion. It keeps you away from your creative drive and usually costs more money and energy than it’s worth. Make your work  available but stay away from events that want YOU to pay for selling your work instead of taking a commission.Finnish your projects. Nothing is more disheartening than a drawer full of sketches and project outlines that never came to fruition.Have a life. Visit artistical events, read books, go out with friends, have a close relation (and take care of it).Avoid losing too much time on the internet’s rabbit holes (especially the fakebook). That only leads to self-incrimination in the lines of “again I’ve got nothing done”). Have a blog but only write on it when you have something meaningful to communicate about (and not because you MUST produce a weekly post or the google algorithm will start to ignore your blog). Read other people’s posts: they can be a mayor source of inspiration.Exercise.Avoid substance abuse. It doesn’t make something coming out of me that wasn’t inside me to begin with.  Some artists claim that their creativity only flows when they’re on something. In my opinion, it makes me sloppy, alienates other people, and is a deathtrap.Money and fame have been the downfall of as many talented artists as did poverty and marginalization.

These are my 10 personal commandments that keep me going as an artist.

Maybe some among you want to share what keeps them sane as an artist?

So you want to be Rich and Famous. Seriously?

Let’s start with the hard part of this post; if your only motivation to become rich and famous is to be able to do whatever you want and never have to be stressed again, you’ll have to adjust. Rich and famous people are generally more stressed than the average person.

What you’re dealing with every day mentally, physically, and emotionally is minor compared to what the Selena Lopez and Bill Gates of this world have to endure on a daily base. Those people can do whatever they want and they will still be filthy rich and world famous. But their reputation is everything in this world. They are their name, and their name stands for what they’ve done and who they are.

Those with a large amount of money and power usually have some sort of business or network they run. One little mistake could cause a 50% decrease in sales, engagement, and cause some of the top employees to stop caring or even quit. When you’re working for someone else your income is solid and most often unchanged depending on the sales and performance of the company. As the company owner, your income per month is constantly up and down because of how well your company is doing, and different expenses. Plenty of business owners are in business for many years before seeing a bit of profit; ask Elon Musk.

The stress and anxiety they are experiencing is 10 times of what what you are experiencing. Luckily they are the people who are able to handle it. Next time you find yourself saying “I want to be rich” or “I want to be world famous”. Remember the question really should be “Do I have what it takes to handle the weight these people have on them?”.

These people were built to handle large amounts of stress. It fuels their fire and allows them to keep going. People with a lot of money to their name really find large amounts of stress when they don’t have enough work to do. That’s the nature of becoming one of these people. You stress when you have too much to do, but they stress when they have too little to do.

If you value your privacy, becoming famous and even rich may not be for you. Really famous people can not go to their favorite pub or grocery store without a paparazzi line forming outside. It can be extremely debilitating and detrimental to one’s life. There’s also stalkers and people monitoring your every move. Your kids and family could be in danger.

Fame can really make or break you. Obviously, with enough money to afford any amount of cocaine, weed, heroin, there is almost nothing keeping you from becoming an addict. Some celebrities feel that drugs are their only option to numb their pain. The temptation is insane.

Of course, there are also incredible benefits to having a lot of money, power, and fame. This post ‘s aim is to make it easier to understand why fame & fortune is not easy to manage. Most people can’t handle it. Think about the numerous lotery winners who ended up worse then before after they cashed in their prize and wasted it all. And the few who didn’ t have usually strained relations with family and friends who expect a generous hand out every now and then.

The celebrities, businessman, and entertainers who appear to have it all are not exempt from everyday issues and problems that we too experience. There are many difficulties that fame & fortune can bring. There are some people with fame & fortune that wish they didn’t have it anymore.

Make Russia Great Again

This painting (acrylic on canvas 32′ x 18 ‘ by Shaharee Vyaas) features the Russian president Vladimir Putin as the Big Pacificator who set as goal to denazify Ukrain at all cost and to send its indoctrinated population to reeducation camps in Russia so they can be made aware of their false believes and realize that there exists no future for their country if they persist in their misguided ideology. For their zionist fascist leaders there remains one Final Solution: extermination. Only then there will be peace.

Gravity Warrior

The gravitational pull of the earth and the challenge to resist it have long inspired artists. Like the Greek vases depicting Sisyphus’s endless quest to push his boulder up a hill and the Whirlwind Lovers in Dante’s Inferno, images that portray the defiance of gravity or submission to it permeate the artistic world.
The concept of gravity shielding is a common concept in science fiction literature, especially for space travel. One of the first and best-known examples is the fictional gravity shielding substance “Cavorite” that appears in H. G. Wells’ classic 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon. Wells was promptly criticized for using it by Jules Verne.
Roger Ward Babson (July 6, 1875 – March 5, 1967) was an American entrepreneur, economist, and business theorist in the first half of the 20th century who declared war to gravity in an essay titled Gravity – Our Enemy Number One. In 1948 he established The Gravity Research Foundation, an organization dedicated to find ways to implement gravitational shielding.
Gravity is most accurately described by the general theory of relativity (proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915), which describes gravity not as a force, but as the curvature of spacetime, caused by the uneven distribution of mass, and causing masses to move along geodesic lines. The most extreme example of this curvature of spacetime is a black hole, from which nothing—not even light—can escape once past the black hole’s event horizon
In general relativity, gravitational fields represent the curvature of spacetime. General relativity states that being in a region of curved space is equivalent to accelerating up the gradient of the field. By Newton’s second law, this will cause an object to experience a fictitious force if it is held still with respect to the field. Therefore, a person will feel himself pulled down by the force of gravity while standing still on the Earth’s surface. In general, the gravitational fields predicted by general relativity differ in their effects only slightly from those predicted by classical mechanics.
Gravity Warrior (acrylic on canvas 40′ x 20′) examines gravity and levity symbolically, metaphorically, and expressively by creating new ways to represent visually the human struggle with gravity. Fighting with gravity as a force, is a way to attack the stability of form. As human civilization is bound to extend beyond the planet, its culture will be altered by the conditions of the new environment. This painting examines the ways in which human perception have been influenced by the “gravity constant” and explores the multiple resting points on the infinite perceptual possibilities attainable in the space environment.

Trying to Understand

Trying to Understand (acrylic on canvas 30′ x 20′) is a painting that wants to invite you to approach the surrounding reality from a higher level to find its meaning and purpose, and to base your believes and actions upon those insights.

The following paragraph is a citation from “Dust Tracks on a Road”, the (controversial) 1942 autobiography of the black American writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.

“Prayer seems to be a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws. The ever-sleepless sea in its bed, crying out “how long?” to Time; million-formed and never motionless flame; the contemplation of these two aspects alone, affords me sufficient food for ten spans of my expected lifetime. It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such. However, I would not, by word or deed, attempt to deprive another of the consolation it affords. It is simply not for me. Somebody else may have my rapturous glance at the archangels. The springing of the yellow line of the morning out of the misty deep of dawn is glory enough for me. I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is the matter, ever-changing, ever-moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? The wide belt of the universe does not need finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance”.

Art, Conceptualism, and the Universe.

Until very recently I hated conceptualism. Till I came across a piece written by Eric Wayne, an artist and art critic who wrote an article called “Why People Hate Contemporary/Conceptual Art”. It shifted my perception of conceptualism into a higher gear.

In conceptualism, the idea or concept behind the work became more important than the actual technical skill or aesthetic. Conceptualists use whichever materials and forms that are most appropriate to get their ideas across.

Eric still sees conceptualism as an art form, but by reading his analysis of the phenomenon I came to differ with him on the subject. Conceptualism and art relate to each other as philosophy with cosmology. While the first one ponders the question of HOW we should think, the second one proposes a vision concerning WHAT we should think about.

Why am I one of the few people saying this?

To quote Eric: “Part of the reason is it’s not welcome news in the art world, as it threatens the importance we place on revolutionary art acts within a given narrative of the progression of art history. People’s livelihoods depend on this belief NOT being countered. Additionally, critics benefit from an environment in which conceptualism is agreed upon as superseding traditional visual art. The tools of the critic are ideas, and the core of conceptualism consists of ideas. It became a game of ideas negotiated by critics, which gives them a purpose and power. Critics and theory are needed just to assess the art. Contemporary art criticism is in part a belief system, and an institutionalized one at that, which panders to the proverbial 1%, who are the only ones who can buy a Koons’ Balloon Dog. The buyers reciprocally have an influence on what is sold, and thus what is taken seriously”.

Conceptualism is like a religion confirmed Damien Hirst while proclaiming himself to its high priest when he launched himself into the NFT market.

The painting “Art, Conceptualism, and Universe” (Acrylic on canvas 24´ x 36′) has the Oedipidal relation between conceptualism and art as a subject. Anouchka Grose, a British-Australian Lacanian psychoanalyst and writer, summarized the Oedipus complex as following “You have to stop trying to be everything for your primary carer and get on with being something for the rest of the world”.

Just as the first philosophers started as cosmologists, the first conceptualists were artists. Just as philosophers are not anymore pretending to be cosmologists, conceptualists must stop pretending they´re artists. Only then there will be peace between artists and conceptualists.

What subject interests people more and how much they want to pay for it are personal decisions. Just don´t sell the public a book about philosophy while telling them it’s one about cosmology. Producing art is not the same as presenting an idea of art.

Chased by Time

According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naïve perception of its flow doesn’t correspond to physical reality. … He posits that reality is just a complex network of events onto which we project sequences of past, present, and future. It is also possible to stop time. All you need to do is travel at light speed, which is deemed impossible by the current state of our understanding of the Universe.
Cyclical time, naturally enough, emphasizes repetition and is very much influenced by the cycles apparent in the natural world. … In many cultures, these kinds of cyclical patterns are infinitely repeatable and part of a recurring overall cycle of time. Time is cyclic. It moves on linear scale from one state to another and from the last state it recycles back. The periodicity of history is based on the repetition or recurrence of social processes.
The cyclic theory of the universe is a radical alternative to the standard big bang/inflationary scenario that offers a new approach by stating that our universe, and by extension our whole reality, is the product of a cyclical process. This theory states that the observable universe lies on a brane separated by a small gap along an extra dimension from a second brane. The cyclic model proposes that the big bang is a collision between branes that occurs at regular intervals. The theory is based on three underlying notions:
(1) the big bang is not the beginning of space and time, but rather a transition from an earlier phase of evolution;
(2) big bangs occurred periodically in the past and continue periodically into the future; and,
(3) the key events that shaped the large scale structure of the universe occurred during a phase of slow contraction before the big bang.

The painting “Chased by Time” (acrylic on canvas 30′ x 40´) expresses our ambivalent relation with the dimension time. Time is a force that drives us forward like a shepherd who drives his cattle towards other pastures while at the end of the road you only have the slaughterhouse. The difference between us and the unsuspicious cattle is that we know that at the end of the road there is the slaughterhouse, so we linger as long as posible. But time is driving us merciless forwards.

Assimilation.

This painting has the tension field between individuality and cultural assimilation for subject. While it´s a generally accepted fact that progress of civilization is a process of assimilation, one must conclude that inevitably there is going to exist a tension field between progress and multiculturalism.
The best example that comes to mind to illustrate this comes from the Star Trek series and is called The Borg. The Borg are cybernetic organisms (cyborgs) linked in a hive mind called “the Collective”. The Borg co-opt the technology and knowledge of other alien species to the Collective through the process of “assimilation”: forcibly transforming individual beings into “drones” by injecting nanoprobes into their bodies and surgically augmenting them with cybernetic components. The Borg’s ultimate goal is “achieving perfection”.
When it comes to the progress of civilization, “achieving perfection” would probably be on top of the list. Lots of social projects exist where people have been experimenting with utopian ideas to create a perfect community. There are socialist, capitalist, monarchical, democratic, anarchist, ecological, feminist, patriarchal, egalitarian, hierarchical, racist, left-wing, right-wing, reformist, free love, nuclear family, extended family, gay, lesbian and many more utopias [ Naturism, Nude Christians, …] Utopianism, some argue, is essential for the improvement of the human condition. But if used wrongly, it becomes dangerous. Utopia has an inherent contradictory nature here.
After assimilation by The Borg, a drone’s race and gender become “irrelevant”. Does that ring a bell with someone? The strange thing is most liberal thinking people also promote cultural diversity, but simultaneously want to reject from these cultures all aspects that conflict with race or gender equality.
It is a puzzle that is difficult to resolve. It´s clear that the Western culture is at this instance the dominating civilization model and that other cultures have absorbed enormous portions of its realizations, but sadly enough also a big amount of the flaws that are inherent to this worldview.
The fast food, the secondary orality through TV addiction, the waste of natural resources, an economic system that dangerously depends upon continuous growth, a democratic political system that is dominated by a couple of self-serving clans, … just to name a couple of them.
Civilization is a circular process and at this instance it moves towards a recalibration where different cultures start to question openly the superiority of the Western cultural model over their own (upgraded) traditional values.

These issues lay at the foundation of the painting “Assimilation” (acrylic on canvas 30′ x 30′). At the center of the painting you find a cube, which is my version of The Borg, a metaphysical mechanism that assimilates the different cultures towards “perfection”. This cube is surrounded by a circle dominated by Lord Yama, the Hindu god of Death and Justice, the ultimate assimilator. The next ring represents the wheel of change that symbolizes the circular and multicultural aspect of the civilization process. At the fringes of the painting I’ve depicted some aspects of the current evolution of civilization. I´ve also used the metaphor of the cyclotron to put forward how technology is one of the driving forces of assimilation, together with the spreading of the fast food concept and the expansion of the internet.