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Text about text art

Category: Text based art

  • Eternal life: a fate worse than death

    text based art - eternal life fate worse than death

    Text-based artwork concerning eternal life.

    Text questioning the desirability of eternal life.

    Most religions have a position on eternal life. In fact it’s at the core of most religions. It’s basically seen as a good thing.

    Eternal life would be fine if it involved spending eternity in a state of bliss, but that sounds like a bit of a long shot to me. Why would you be rewarded with an eternity of bliss as a reward for having to endure a mere seventy or eighty years on earth?

    The concept of living an eternal life on an earthy plane – basically living forever – hardly bears thinking about. Forever is a very long time, and things would start to get really boring before you were even half way through. You’d be bored to death, except that you wouldn’t die. On top of that, during eternity you would experience every possible misfortune that you could possibly have the misfortune of experiencing.

  • The problem with idealism and ideal worlds

    text art - ideal world

    The problem with idealism and ideal worlds

    The problem with thinking that you’ve cracked it when it comes to imagining what the ideal world would be like is that your ideal world probably isn’t the same as my ideal world. Is Donald Trump’s ideal world the same as your ideal world? Maybe not. Or maybe.

    The thing about ideal worlds is that they tend to be thought up by idealists, and idealists tend not to like the messiness that’s inevitable in life (which is why they are idealists, seeking a smooth, frictionless perfection). That’s why I’ve given up idealism and now embrace the messiness. It’s much more relaxing.

  • Semiotics and the relationship between questions and answers

    text based art on questions and answers

    Text-based art

    The relationship between questions and answers

    This piece of text-based art is an attempt to visualise the relationship between questions and answers, specifically the way in which the answers to questions are often dependent on the way that the question is put.

    To give a simple example, the question “Was Picasso a great artist?” may elicit a different answer to the question “Do you agree that Picasso was a great artist?”. It’s all in the framing of the question. The structure of the question dictates the structure of the answer. It marshals people into different ways of thinking about the subject.

    Some questions, such as “Does God exist?” or “Why do we exist?”, generate the need for answers even though it may be argued by some that these questions needn’t be asked in the first place on the philosophical principal that “Whatever is, is.”.

    It’s all semiotics to me.

  • Text-based art: being opinionated

    text ased art on truth and opinions

    Text-based art

    Don’t let the truth get in the way of your opinions

    This piece of text based art is a statement concerning truth and opinions, and the way that they are often unrelated. People often hold opinions in total defiance of the truth. Everybody does it.

    We sift the truth so that we only notice the bits of it that conform with the way we want things to be. People tend to hold views based on what they want to believe, and what they want to believe is generally based on their personality, not on evidence.

  • Text-based art: Dreams and Reality

    Text based art: dreams and reality

    Text-based art

    The only thing standing between you and your dreams is reality

    This piece of text-based art is an aphorism about the dangers of assuming that your dreams will come true regardless of the inconvenience of the fact that the real world may have other ideas.

    It’s meant as a bit of a corrective to the excesses of aspirational slogans such as ‘You can be whatever you want to be’ and ‘Be your best self’, which I think tend to set people up for a fall.

  • We Are Stardust

    test-based art, we are stardust

    If someone tells you “We are stardust”

    Tell them “That’s moonshine”

    The words of this piece are meant as a humorous corrective to the usual implication of the phrase “We are stardust”.

    Although the phrase “We are stardust” is actually true, in that most of the elements that compose our bodies were created in nuclear reactions inside stars, it is often given a metaphysical spin that implies that we as humans are special beings imbued with some form of cosmic consciousness or special metaphysical connection to the universe.

    Well, we do have a connection to the universe in that we are part of it. But then again, everything else is part of the universe too. That’s the definition of what the universe is.

    So remember, it’s not just us who are made of stardust: that nasty smelly thing you trod in yesterday is made of stardust too.

  • Text-based art: Lessons have been learned

    text based art - lessons have been learned

    Text-based art.

    Lessons have been learned – or have they?

    Whenever I hear a spokesperson apologising for the consequences of ineptitude by says “Lessons have been learned” I shake my head in resignation.

    In this example of my text-based art the response to the statement “Lessons have been learned” is basically that we never learn and we’ll keep making the same mistakes.

    Obviously in each individual case in which someone says “lessons have been learned” there will be a few superficial lessons learnt, but at a deeper level the inevitability of things going wrong again is painfully obvious.

    I think it’s partly the fact that the statement is used as an attempted get-out that jars with me.

  • Strong woman good, strongman bad

    Text based art. Strong woman good, strongman bad.

    Strong woman good, strongman bad

    A play on the difference in meaning between ‘strong woman’ (i.e. a strong woman) and strongman (i.e. a dictator or tyrant).

  • AI devalues art

    AI generated art will devalue art appreciation

    The use of artificial intelligence to generate art will devalue all art

    The ease with which artworks can be generated by AI will undermine art

    AI hasn’t been around long, so it hasn’t reached its full potential yet, but it’s already capable of turning out works of art of a passable standard. All it needs are a few prompts and away it goes.

    AI generated art is already very prominent on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, almost to the point where it’s easy to make the assumption that any work of art on the platforms is the product of AI rather than of the human hand.

    The ease with which a generative AI image or video can be produced, simply by inputting a few prompt words and phrases, means that AI generated work is usually artistically barren, being nothing more than elaborate pastiche. This has the knock on effect of devaluing all art and of undermining the creative process by which an artist struggles to create a work.

  • AI reality check

    text based art about AI and fake reality

    On the internet, what is real and what is AI generated fakery?

    Images on social media are becoming more and more dominated by AI generated images.

    I now see photos where I don’t know whether they are real of fake. This undermines the authority of genuine photographs.

    AI images are so easy to create that in the future they may completely drown out and overwhelm genuine images.

    At the moment I see AI generated photographs and videos on social media such as Instagram and Facebook that people in the comments section seem to take as being genuine. In future the situation will be flipped and people will assume that all photographs are AI generated fakery and that NO photographs are genuine. This devaluing of the status of the photographic image has grave implications for society.