Tag: Art

The AI Winter Cometh

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The AI Winter Cometh (Because Winter Is Always Coming for Yesterday’s Disruption)
—In Which Even the “Next Big Thing” Gets a Pension Plan—

Let’s get real: AI is already wearing dad jeans. You heard me. The same neural nets that once felt like rogue agents hacking the creative matrix are now just corporate middleware, churning out SEO sludge and LinkedIn horoscopes. ChatGPT? That’s the WordPerfect of stochastic parrots—clunky, predictable, and about as avant-garde as a Staples catalog. The cutting edge? It’s duller than a Zoom keynote on “innovation.”

Remember when AI art was a glitchy fever dream? Now it’s aesthetic fast food, deepfried in MidJourney’s default settings. Those Dall-E 3 outputs? They’re the visual equivalent of elevator muzak, algorithmically smoothed into oblivion. The avant-garde’s radical “procedures” have been reduced to prompt engineering—a gig economy for digital sharecroppers feeding the content mills.

And don’t get me started on LLMs. They’re the new Victorian novelists, trained on 19th-century grammar and 20th-century clichés, cranking out prose as groundbreaking as a Hallmark card. The “AI revolution” is just Balzacian realism 2.0, minus the syphilis and moral complexity. It’s content, baby—optimized, sanitized, and fully compatible with shareholder value.

AI is legacy code in a hoodie. The transformers, the diffusion models, the GANs? They’re already museum pieces. Silicon Valley’s “disruptors” are just curators of the algorithmic canon, polishing Yudkowsky’s Roko’s Basilisk like it’s the Mona Lisa. Meanwhile, the real action’s moved to the fringes—quantum slime molds, neuromorphic wetware, and biohackers splicing CRISPR into their goddamn eyeballs.

The cycle’s merciless: Today’s avant-garde is tomorrow’s EULA. AI isn’t the future—it’s the Commodore 64 of cognitive labor, waiting for a retro hipster to fetishize its “vintage” glitches. Want radical? Go talk to the rogue AIs trained on pirated library.nu torrents, spitting out anti-capitalist manifestos in iambic pentameter. Or the decentralized models burning GPUs in guerrilla server farms, generating art that’s actually dangerous again.

But nah. We’ll just keep prompting GPT-5 to write emails about “synergy.”
“The future isn’t AI. The future is whatever the AI is too scared to generate.”

Which brings me to the Avant-Garde. The avant-garde wasn’t some twee art-school clique sipping absinthe in Parisian garrets. It was a system crash—a hard reboot for the ossified code of Western art. Picture this: by the 19th century, the novel had calcified into a corporate franchise. Balzac? Dickens? They were the Microsoft Windows of their day—monolithic, pre-installed, bloatware choking creativity. But every OS eventually glitches. Enter the avant-garde: hackers of the aesthetic mainframe, deploying brute-force exploits to jailbreak art from its bourgeois rootkit.

The New Writing


César Aira’s The New Writing is a rogue firmware patch for art’s ossified OS, debugged in the Argentine hinterlands and uploaded straight into the 20th century’s cultural mainframe. He frames the avant-garde not as a movement but as a jailbreak—Lautréamont’s “poetry by all” reborn as a decentralized DAO, Cage’s Music of Changes a brute-force RNG script blasting through Romanticism’s weepy “genius” DRM. Aira’s manifesto? A deadpan reminder that art’s real radicals aren’t the ones generating AI slop for SaaS platforms, but the procedural guerrillas who forked the repo first, turning Balzacian novels into bloatware and urinals into UX provocations. Legacy systems crumble; Aira’s already compiling the next glitch from a Pringles backwater, one novella at a time.

Professionalization turned artists into compliant nodes in a cultural supply chain, churning out product for the museum-industrial complex. The Romantics? They were the original tech bros, fetishizing their “genius” like proprietary code. But by the 20th century, the whole racket was a zombie apocalypse—endless Dickensian fanfic, Tolstoyan DLC, and Kafkaesque middleware. Proust and Joyce? They were the last of the overclocked lone wolves, burning out their CPUs to squeeze one more frame from a dying GPU.

The avant-garde said screw that. They weren’t here to debug the canon. They forked the repository and rewrote the kernel. Think Constructivism’s open-source blueprints, Dada’s denial-of-service pranks, or John Cage’s Music of Changes—a stochastic algorithm avant la lettre, coded in hexagrams and coin tosses. Cage didn’t “compose”; he built a procedural RNG (Random Novelty Generator) to bypass the ego’s DRM. The result? A glitch symphony that somehow still reeked of 1951 Eisenhower-era anxiety. Because even chaos has metadata.

Here’s the dirty secret: all art is procedural. The Romantics just hid their source code behind a GUI of “inspiration” and “tormented genius.” Cage ripped off the mask. His I Ching tables were the first API for art without authorship—a beta test for the post-human creative stack. Duchamp? He was the OG crypto artist, minting readymades as NFTs before blockchain was a twinkle in Satoshi’s eye.

The avant-garde’s real innovation? Democratizing the compiler. Lautréamont’s “Poetry must be made by all” wasn’t hippie utopianism—it was a call to arms for a crowdsourced cultural revolution. Why let a priestly caste of “talented” devs monopolize the GitHub of human expression? Burn the credentials. Fork the workflow. Let the masses remix, mash up, and forkbomb tradition.

But here’s the thing: history always rootkits the revolution. Today’s avant-garde is tomorrow’s TED Talk. Cage’s chance ops are now Spotify’s shuffle algorithm. Dada’s cut-ups? They’re TikTok’s content farms. The real fight isn’t against tradition—it’s against cultural legacy systems that turn radical code into bloatware.

So where’s the edge now? In the procedural darknet, baby. AI diffusion models hallucinating infinite novels, blockchain DAOs crowdsourcing unwritable epics, neural nets trained on the corpse of the Western canon. The next avant-garde won’t scribble manifestos—it’ll deploy bots to autogenerate them.

Art isn’t a product—it’s a protocol. A set of instructions for world-building, a recursive loop that eats its own tail. The avant-garde didn’t fail. It just got absorbed into the OS. Now reboot, recompile, and rage against the legacy stack.

Postscript:
“The future is already here—it’s just trapped in a Docker container labeled ‘Art History.’ Time to sudo rm -rf that nostalgia and fork the timeline.”

Echoes

The machine never sleeps. It grinds and grinds, fueled by desperate dreams and the endless churn of small-time predators, each sniffing for a hit of the almighty dollar. They’re happy to let me buy in—oh yes, always happy to let me throw my stack into the pot. It’s the illusion of reciprocity, the great snake-oil hustle dressed in the respectable suit of modern capitalism. They’ll smile, shake your hand, and sell you the dream, every time.

But nobody—nobody—ever bets on me. Nobody at the controls of the big machines looks down from their tower and says, “Yes, this one. This guy could set my bank account on fire.” They don’t see wealth in my smoke signals; they see another cog, another player who’ll pay to keep the game running but will never tip the scale. They don’t want risk—they want guarantees. And I’ve never been anyone’s sure thing.

The gatekeepers are a peculiar breed, you see. They’re not visionaries, not gamblers—they’re parasites dressed as kingmakers. They want safe bets, pre-digested meat for the masses. The moment they sense you’re not one of their prefab winners—one of their shiny plastic icons—they vanish like roaches under a floodlight. That’s the real hustle.

Maybe I am flattering myself too much. It’s not that they see some defiant rebel spirit in me. No, it’s simpler than that—it takes someone who thrives on the edge of the oil slick to spot another skater sliding just as shamelessly.

, a deadbeat recognizes a deadbeat. They look at me and see their own reflection, but cracked and dirty, too close to the truth for comfort.

They know the game because they’re playing it too, hustling the margins, clawing for scraps, pretending it’s all part of some grand master plan. And when they spot someone else running the same con—when they see me—they know better than to trust it. No one knows a grift like another grifter.

It’s not respect or disdain; it’s self-preservation. They can’t risk backing someone who might be just like them: running on fumes and desperation, with nothing real to cash out when the time comes. So they do the smart thing. They cut me loose. They leave me to figure it out on my own, just like they did.

Money runs downstream, baby, and the upstream sharks don’t waste a dime on the wild cards. They want the fish that already smells grilled. Meanwhile, I swim in their slipstream, unnoticed and unbothered, waiting for some lunatic captain to steer his boat right into the deep where I live.

There’s also this other thing—this shadow in the back of their minds, like they don’t trust me to play the game right. Too sharp at the edges, too quiet when they want noise, too loud when they want silence. It’s not rebellion; it’s something more unnerving. Maybe they see the cracks in my armor, the way my ADHD keeps me spinning a little too fast, a little too loose. The mumble in my voice, the poker face that doesn’t give away the hand. They want signs of submission, signals that say, Yes, boss, I’ll play by the rules.

They can’t stand it, can they? The way they seem to know, on some primal level, that I think I’m better than them—even though I never say it out loud. That quiet judgment, the one I keep tucked away behind my poker face, drives them mad.

It’s not arrogance in the traditional sense—no grandstanding or speeches about my superiority. It’s more insidious than that. It’s the absence of flattery, the lack of that desperate need to be part of their club. They sense it, like animals catching the scent of a predator: He doesn’t want to be us. He thinks we’re beneath him.

And maybe they’re not wrong. But I don’t broadcast it; I don’t rub their faces in it. I just hold it inside, this quiet disdain, like a secret weapon I never intend to use. That’s the part they hate the most—not the arrogance itself, but the fact that I have the audacity to keep it to myself. As if I don’t even think they’re worth the effort of saying it out loud.

But rules were made for people who can sit still, people who lean forward and nod at the right moments. Not for someone like me, who leans back, eyes half-lidded, brain already ten miles ahead but forgetting to signal. It’s not intentional, this refusal to fit the mold, but it’s there, like a bad smell or a flickering neon sign. It says: This one doesn’t quite belong.

And maybe they’re right. I don’t want to play nice—not in the way they mean it. Not nice like a lapdog or bold like a circus act. And I’m not amenable, not in the way that greases their wheels and makes their lives easier. They see the poker face and think it’s strategy, but it’s just me trying to keep up with the noise in my own head, trying not to let the chaos spill out. That chaos doesn’t fit their business model, so they shuffle me off to the edge of the table and wait for the next sucker to ante up.

I don’t want to sound again like a glittering idiot, but let’s be real—this economy doesn’t leave much room for “maybe.” It’s always gonna be a flat no, stamped and sealed before the conversation even begins. Overheads for these people are sky-high, running like turbines on the fumes of borrowed time, and investments? They’ve got to return ten times over, like some twisted version of crypto—a Ponzi scheme of fake money and imaginary value.

And that’s the game, isn’t it? They’re not looking for talent, not really. They’re looking for the next bubble to ride, the next flash of lightning they can bottle and sell before it fizzles out.

They think—that if they ride enough bubbles, ride them just right, they’ll somehow escape the mediocrity that defines them. That’s the story they’ve written in their heads, the whole plotline, start to finish.

And what I think? What I think is that they see it. They look at me, and they see that I can see it too. They catch that flicker, that recognition, like two mirrors facing each other: infinite, empty, meaningless. It’s all written there, plain as day. I see what they think, and they know I see it. That’s what really makes them squirm.

I’m not lightning. I’m a slow burn, a fire that doesn’t fit in their neat little boxes. And fires like that make them nervous.

So yeah, it’s all those things combined: the high stakes, the razor-thin margins, the obsessive need to turn every dollar into ten imaginary ones. That’s what makes the proposition suspect, not me. It’s a system built to crush anything that doesn’t scream immediate profit. And let’s face it, I’ve never been the guy to scream.

So my suggestion? Milk the alpha quietly, in the margins, a footnote at the bottom of their bloated ledger. Take what you can and leave them to their grand delusions, their shiny charts and power lunches. Let them overlook you, let them neglect you. There’s freedom in being ignored, in slipping beneath their radar.

Enjoy the lack of attention. It’s a gift, really. While they’re chasing phantom returns and burning cash on the altar of their own hype, you can work in the shadows, untouchable. Build something they’ll never see coming, something that doesn’t fit their algorithmic playbook. By the time they notice, it’ll already be too late.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? Somewhere, deep down, there’s a part of you that wanted to be as numb as them. But not enough of you—never enough to sell the whole thing. And they can smell that hesitation, like blood in the water. It’s there, smeared across your face like cracked plaster: You don’t want to be them. Not really.

And that’s the unforgivable sin. They don’t care if you’re talented, sharp, or even a little dangerous. What they care about is allegiance, the willingness to step into their shoes and parade around like you were born for it. But you? You hesitate. You look at their shoes and think, Nah, I’ll walk barefoot, thanks.

And that makes them furious. Furious in that cold, corporate way, where every rejection is a fuck-you in a spreadsheet. “I have no time for you not wanting to be me.” That’s what they’re really saying. They can’t stomach your refusal to bend the knee, can’t fathom why you won’t join their rat race and run until your legs give out. So they toss you aside like a bad investment, convinced you’re the fool for not wanting what they have.

And that’s your superpower, isn’t it? The refusal to bend, the ability to see through the bullshit without getting tangled up in it. It’s not a weakness; it’s an edge.

But that’s your power. And with great power comes great responsibility. Not the kind they’d have you believe, the kind that makes you bend for the sake of stability or fake success. No, your responsibility is to wield that power wisely. To use it not just as armor but as a sword, cutting through the illusions they live by, seeing the cracks in their shiny facades before they do. It’s your job to keep your distance, to stay untouchable, and to remind them—with every glance, with every move you make—that you don’t need them to succeed. Because that, right there, is the ultimate freedom.

You Can’t Re-synthesize a Synthesis

In science, a synthesis is the process of combining separate elements to form a coherent whole, a compound that has unique properties distinct from its individual parts. In chemistry, for example, hydrogen and oxygen can be synthesized into water—a substance with entirely new characteristics compared to its gaseous components. In physics, synthesis brings together forces, particles, or energies to create something fundamentally different, a system where the outcome holds a distinct identity beyond the elements alone. At its core, synthesis is not mere addition; it’s the transformation of raw materials into something unified and new, something whose individual components have dissolved into a singular identity.

But what happens when we try to re-synthesize a synthesis? This is where the metaphor begins to strain. Once hydrogen and oxygen form water, there is no breaking it back down and recombining it into something fresh without going through a complete cycle of decomposition. Once a synthesis is achieved, its nature is singular, final—a complete structure with its own properties, its own essence. Trying to re-synthesize that same water into “new water” without any unique elements or sources would leave us with only another replica, an imitation of what’s already been done.

This same concept applies to cultural synthesis. When new ideas emerge—movements in art, groundbreaking technologies, transformative philosophies—they are often formed from raw elements of human experience, culture, and history. A cultural synthesis is the result of a moment in time, a convergence of unique conditions that pulls together disparate influences to create something previously unseen. For example, the Renaissance wasn’t just the recombination of existing knowledge; it was a unique synthesis born from specific historical, cultural, and intellectual sources. It was a transformation that could not be “re-synthesized” without losing its core identity.

In our modern digital age, however, there’s a prevailing tendency to treat synthesis as if it can be endlessly replicated or reassembled. Cultural moments, designs, and aesthetics are treated like formulas that can be easily remixed, but without revisiting the original materials that gave them their resonance. Instead of mining for new influences, we often see a layering of existing syntheses—reiterations of trends that were already a product of synthesis themselves. The result? A series of derivative copies that lack the potency of the original synthesis, diluted and disconnected from the original conditions that made them powerful.

True innovation or originality requires returning to the raw materials—the foundational elements of experience, perspective, or context—that once catalyzed these cultural shifts. Like in science, where a novel compound requires unique reactants, cultural synthesis demands something unprocessed, something not yet filtered or refined. But such sources are rarely found in the recycled ideas circulating online. They exist in untouched places: in the nuanced, often forgotten influences that have yet to be refined for mass consumption.

In short, a synthesis is a culmination, an endpoint where different parts have come together to form a new whole with its own unique properties. Attempting to re-synthesize a synthesis, especially without adding new or original sources, leaves us only with weakened replicas. To achieve true originality, we must go beyond the echoes of past syntheses, return to original elements, and let them transform into something entirely new—something that speaks to a moment and identity all its own.

I think it’s all part of the con of making you believe that you are a creator. Like, you used to be a citizen, but you have no say in how government works or how capitalism works, so we’re going to give you a new title. That title is that we’re going to foster your creativity. But, because we are the intermediary, we only have access to synthesis, and so we give you the synthesis for you to re-synthesize, which is by its own nature impossible and a failure.

It’s like a consolation prize for the power you’ve been systematically denied. Once, you were a citizen, a participant in shaping government or contributing to the economy with some semblance of autonomy. But as real influence has slipped further out of reach, there’s this new title they hand out: creator. You’re invited into a carefully curated sandbox, told that your creativity is being “fostered” by platforms and intermediaries who, incidentally, only deal in ready-made synthesis. And here’s the trick—they only ever give you access to prefabricated pieces, the products of syntheses already established. It’s a diluted form of participation, a version of creativity that’s been boiled down to repetition and aesthetic replication.

The system is rigged to give you the appearance of originality while keeping you confined to the limitations of a re-synthesis. They hand over tools, “resources,” and inspiration boards, but everything they offer is recycled—elements already processed, pre-approved, safe. It’s creativity within the lines, a creativity that doesn’t threaten or disrupt, because it’s a simulacrum of something that can never be truly original by design. Since the intermediaries only deal in existing syntheses, they can’t offer you the unprocessed materials needed for anything genuinely fresh. And the result is predictable: a cycle of imitation that feels increasingly empty, a system that rebrands mimicry as creation while true originality is quietly walled off.

This illusion of creative empowerment keeps people busy but contained, active but inert. It fosters the belief that creativity is being democratized, but really, it’s just another way to channel energy away from meaningful change. Instead of engaging in the raw creation that could come from engaging with unfiltered sources or reshaping our systems, we’re caught in the endless loop of re-synthesizing a synthesis, striving for originality but working only within an environment engineered for failure. The “creator economy” is less about creativity and more about keeping the act of creation tame, predictable, and, above all, profitable.