Make art that moves you (not AI slop)

The universe is trying to tell me something I'm sure

A lot of the creative people I speak to are feeling despondent because this is what too many of their former / potential clients are saying. It feels like a barrier they are continuously coming up against.

Now, I'm probably older than you and have been through a handful of digital revolutions – where the promise of new technology threatened to upend the world as we knew it.

Turns out print isn't dead and it wasn't video that killed the radio star

I concede AI is a much bigger deal. That said, in my brain wracking about technology, I still can't put down the idea that (much like Macs, and Photoshop before it) AI is JUST a tool.

Tools alone do not create masterpieces

Last week's blog about the creatives' antidote to AI came to me in a moment of inspiration whilst in the gym. It led me to discover the phrase 'human-made premium' – the perceived extra value that consumers are now seeking within content that is genuinely human-made.

In a delicious twist of irony the universe, via the AI-driven algorithms of social media, also introduced me to the work of Giuseppe Sanmartino.

Sanmartino was an 18th century Italian sculptor who (in his most famous piece, The Veiled Christ) would take his hammer and chisel to a single block of marble and (much like Michelangelo, centuries before him) turn it into something beyond words. Sanmartino's Veiled Christ is possibly better than Michelangelo's Pietà – the latter being a work of art in whose presence and beauty I have genuinely wept.

The seeming transparency of the marble lace, the delicacy of each crease... Both works are astonishing. Both make (made) art that moves you.

Both are human-made premium.

In my continued wracking, I reached out to marvellous marketing maverick Sally Day and asked her, "what can we do to celebrate and encourage the idea of human-made premium?"

How can we create a 'vaccination'...

...for creatives, to inoculate them from the noise and fear of A.I.?

I imagined something two-pronged:

1. A mindset conversation that resets the projected fear around technology and gives us confidence to embrace new tools and create real art

2. A constructive, creative piece that goes beyond mindset and puts actions into the theory (i.e we MAKE art)
   

Sally and I are overdue a conversation on all this BTW. I think there is some mileage in this, though (do you agree?).

Subject, consumer or citizen?

Last week, I attended the Creator Day conference in Dorset – 300 marketers and creatives exploring the bond of community and citizenship without the yoke of technology. A full-day agenda where A.I. was not intentionally mentioned once... can you imagine?

The brilliant Jon Alexander (author of 'Citizens') proposed that (globally) we are at a critical point in time. As the dominant consumerist systems of government and organisation begin to fail, there is an opportunity for the emergent system to thrive.

My take on his words – The challenge is whether this new system will subjectify humanity (using technology) or allow us to flourish (because of technology).

The answer is within our own hands. We either pick up the hammer and chisel to create works of wonder... works that inspire and delight... or we allow technology (and those behind it) to chip out ever-depreciating cookie cutter mall-art.

Make art that moves you

AI can't do it all. It can only do what we ask it to do. What if we ask it to do better? And in the nature of our questions, we remind our customers (our audience) that we have value (value worth paying for).

Better still, we remind ourselves that WE have value.

Mark Franklin is The Four Fears® Guy: a transformational mindset coach and speaker who works with creative people who want to close the gap between the business they have and the business they deserve.