The Best of May

A few days ago my phone alerted me that my 'Best of May' was ready. I know what it is: it's Google's Gallery trying to sell me prints of my photos, grouped into moments that the algorithm thinks are worth framing. They're not good memories, but they're neither horrible, they're just pictures you take because you can and they're there to be forgotten. I think of the algorithm, I think of its development into a neural network, into AI. I know little about the tool, although I try to understand the different generation models and possible uses, I realise that following its exponential growth is futile and frustrating. I have understood that its application in the scientific and medical fields excites me, while I don't know what to make of its application in the human fields: whether it is necessary and whether the doors it opens are less than those it closes. In any case, I know that it is epochal and must be known.

Knowing the art world I know many will try this with great enthusiasm, but here is a first warning. This is not an object to be seduced by and then abandoned, like the NFT or any of the other sad nonsense of recent years. Here we are talking about a non-human presence that will evolve autonomously, and to reduce its power to the phrase 'it's just an algorithm' is one of the most dangerous things we can do, for it risks turning research into the pick that gives it the domestic confidence it should not have access.

We have already filled our homes with Orwellian devices with which we happily share our lives, and we smile at the videos of Boston Dynamic's robots knowing that they will soon serve sadder purposes. At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, it would be nice to avoid giving these presences even super-intelligence.

Anyway, back to us; Sara was telling me about this new project with Laura. In a way that I don't quite understand, they were turning images into scores, into a narrative musical form. Their images were also taken in the same situation as the 'Best of May' that I mentioned earlier and their narrative is based on the same personal experience. I mentioned that the same thing will soon be done automatically by an AI, because it will have to prioritise the generation of narratives if it is to be economically supported by the marketing that will pay for it. We googled it and, not surprisingly, the service was almost ready. So we used some models to turn images into narratives, then music, then acting.

So these two pieces come straight to our 'Best of May'. In both we did as little as possible, leaving intact the commercial fast-talking, the unbearable car-epic enthusiasm in one, while asking for a little less emphasis in the second, which we found this unexpected existential bitterness not less repulsive.

The idea is to see how this narrative machine can be ruined, how much more of the natural intelligence can survive in this way and to stimulate reflection on such monstruosities before it is too late. I don't know about you, but May is probably my favourite month, it's always been synonymous with resistance, and I'd like to go back and see the best of it myself, if I have to.