A.I. AND THE FETISHIZATION OF IDEASAnd herein lies the problem with the sudden surge and interest in artificial intelligence. AI-generated creativity isn’t creativity. It is all hat, no cowboy: all idea, no execution. It in fact relies on the obsession with, and fetishization of, THE IDEA. It’s the core of every get-rich-quick scheme, the basis of every lazy entrepreneur who thinks he has the Next Big Thing, the core of every author or artist or creator who is a “visionary” who has all the vision but none of the ability to execute upon that vision. Hell, it’s the thing every writer has heard from some jabroni who tells you, “I got this great idea, you write it, we’ll split the money 50/50, boom.” It is the belief that The Idea is of equal or greater importance than the effort it takes to make That Idea a reality.
Remember when iPhone apps were new, and tons of people thought they’d be rich if they just got a programmer to “punch it up on the computer” because they had a genius idea? They didn’t realize that “punching it up” was more important to how software works than the idea.
The same goes for art. The making of the art is more important than the concept. You, like, Gustav Holst, could also say, there should be a symphony in which each movement embodies the vibe of each planet in the solar system. Mars is aggressive, Neptune is mysterious, etc. But you could not come up with a symphony that with the same nature and power because it does matter how you “punch it up.”
Even when the idea seems really strong, the actual making of the art is way more important. What if a record exec came up with the concept of these guys from the projects in Staten Island who imagined it as Shaolin and connected kung-fu movie concepts to street life and rapped about it? Pretty strong idea, right?
So what if that exec just hired some guys to make an album to implement that idea, boy band style? We could even suppose that the rappers they hired were really good, like Kool G Rap, Guru, and Snoop Dogg. Would that album be 36 Chambers?
No. It might be interesting, but it wouldn’t have the heart or the depth because who makes something and how it is made defines the work first and foremost. The idea is just the first of a million decisions that go into a work.