The magic of artistic toil
Witch Hat Atelier, The Incredibles, art's purpose, and AI
Honestly, I’d aspired to write more coming into this year. I couldn’t do it. It felt too cumbersome, my brain too clouded. The output was wrong. It didn’t flow, the copy was staccato, it was polka dotted, pixilated, discombobulated. I distracted myself with other tasks instead of putting proverbial pen to paper.
That’s changed recently. I’m in a bit of a zone, a mini-renaissance, if I had to be honest. I’ve found a world that I want to explore, scenarios I wish to pursue, and stories I want to follow. Some of this newfound productivity is due to better habits, specifically finding time each night to jot down what inspires me. Nightly journaling has also opened up my mind, helping me to stop overanalyzing everything I put onto paper and just…expressing.
It’s been nice. Who knows - maybe the work will be readable someday. Honestly, that doesn’t matter to me right now.
What matters, to me, is the toil. The toil is the point, and without toil, art cannot exist.
One of my favorite recent manga is Witch Hat Atelier1, which is the tale of a magical school that, in its world, recontextualizes spells from being shot out by wands into ornate glyphs. These glyphs must include runes and keystones arranged into complicated patterns. Only with this artistry can the magic take root and let flow.
I love the concept of having to manipulate physical space in order to create magic. The language of the glyphs is how one becomes more adept at casting spells. Artistry, honed through practice, is reflected through capability in the real world. Is it a bit more cumbersome than pointing a wand and muttering a magic phrase (or, perhaps, maneuvering it in a cursory swish and flick motion)? Sure. But that delay creates intention. It makes the payoff matter. It makes the spell unique and fully owned.
Those who create real art know that the process is the point. Creating output with no toil dilutes the purpose for it in the first place. Art is magical, which is why those in tech wish to conquer it.
As someone who works in tech, I’m inundated with claims and conversation around AI every single day. I think there are uses of AI that make sense to me, in terms of eliminating derivative tasks that work in service for humanity to exert themselves and take human actions. I’m not a fan of AI art for the simple reason that what it creates is soulless. It is output with no process. It is a machine, not magic.
There are times when I wish that I could just type a prompt in an AI service and, ta da, great American story created. However, the more I think about it, the more I know this will never happen. Human ingenuity is how brilliant turns of phrase come to pass. It’s how plot twists can be dreamed up. It’s how real, resonant work can be made. All of that is made because people can feel. People can get excited. People can cry, and dream, and care about characters and their relationships. AI can replicate the human creative process, but it cannot find the same soul.
Every time I think about AI, I also go back to the end of The Incredibles, when Syndrome’s plan is laid bare. He says that he will give every single person in the world the technology to achieve parity with superheroes - capping it all off with the famous phrase - “If everyone is super, no one will be.”
In Syndrome’s world, everyone may be super with gadgets and gizmos (and, hopefully, a limited amount of capes.) However, if those people haven’t gone through the internal struggle, their output will not be satisfactory. AI may be able to spit out millions of yassified anime avatar faces, deformed hands, and weird zoom-in facial scenes, but it cannot create real, new, art. AI art is, at its core, macaroni pictures. It’s a mosaic where every stone therein is the same color, shape, and shade.
There are times in every person’s life where they feel like they have the idea, the article, the content piece that when it blows up will make them wildly successful. Then, inevitably, it underwhelms. You go back to the dredgery of your old job. You feel unseen.
The thing about art, though, is the fact that you created it, that it exists, is enough. You bore your soul in your work and made something wholly by you and through you. I’m learning in my slightly older age - that’s fine. You’re probably not going to be the next Phoebe Waller-Bridge or Taika Waititi or NK Jemsin, and that’s OK. Popularity and adulation would be hypothetically nice but, honestly, AI art isn’t going to ever be popular (other than among the worst people to talk to at a party) anyway. You’re still creating, and that is enough - and it means that you have a magical power that millions of others are trying, behind the scenes, to manipulate and possess. Basically, you ARE the protagonist they are trying to antagonize.
Sometimes, art comes in drips and drops. Sometimes, it geysers. Right now, I’m gushing ideas and writing them down as quickly as I can - and I know, as I toil and iterate and spitball and edit, this is wizardry those who create “AI art” would kill to possess.