Beyond Calculation—Art as Risk
How is art different from the products of mathematical operations? Christiane Haid shows why images generated by AI cannot be compared to creative works produced by human beings. Art is unique because the creative process includes boundary experiences, risk, and grace.
Rapid technological development, the effects of digitalization, and the widespread claim that artificial intelligence can create “art” call for a clarification of what is to be understood by the idea of art. To examine this question more closely, we will take a look at the creative process of the artist. If there is no visible difference between an image painted by an artist and an object calculated from the data of human-made works of art, then the categories of what can be described as art in the sense of an individual’s creative achievement must be redefined.
The Creative Process
The outstanding Renaissance artist, sculptor, and painter Michelangelo (1475–1564) summarized his experience of the creative process with a cycle of poems in the volume Rime [Rhymes] as a personal testimony in words. Rainer Maria Rilke translated them into German [in 1921. Robert Southey and William Wordsworth first published selections in English in 1806, and Joseph Tusiani published the complete corpus in 1961]:
”Patiently trying through long years of strife,
Only when close to death,
Can an artist succeed in giving life,
On a hard marble block, to that sweet face
Whose beauty has been living in his mind;
For one can only find
Beauty when it is late, and one is dying.
So, even nature, trying,
From age to age, from face to other face,
To reach the best of beauty in your eyes,
Must now be old, like me, and close to death.
That is why terror, mixed with beauty, feeds
So strangely my desire:
I cannot think, or tell, what hurts or helps
Me more, after I gaze upon your face, —
The end of nature or this happiness [and grace].”1
Years of practice and frequent failures are the starting point for a masterpiece that the sculptor wrests from the material at the brink of death. It’s an almost violent process that challenges the artist’s forces to shape the material to the utmost. Only at the brink of death, or one could also say at the threshold, can the artist achieve such a unique feat that a work of significance is created. This level of artistry requires, as Michelangelo writes, a lifetime of work; it is like the summit of a mountain, which at the same time brings one close to the sky and thereby to the end of life.
A second thought implicitly addresses the question of how nature could inspire such a feat by the artist. It’s the driving force within the artist that allows the divine nature of the human being to manifest itself in the finished work. Here we hear the voice of the Renaissance Man, still connected to the forces of nature and the divine in a completely different way.
The process of creation is propelled through fear in order to achieve the longed-for goal of the ideal of beauty—it is a struggle on the brink of the abyss, between the end of the world and the redeeming grace and happiness of fulfillment. Whether something comes into being and succeeds is not within the power of the creator. Their own efforts are met, as it were, by something from the other side, something like “grace,” over which they have no control.
This text is an excerpt from an article published in the (online exclusive) Goetheanum Weekly. You can read the full article on the website. If you are not yet a subscriber, you can get to know the Goetheanum Weekly for 1 CHF./€.