To quote 1980's sci-fi dystopia Blake's Seven - your first mistake is to trust the powerful

If you are a British person of a certain age and have certain set of interests, then you will know what or who Blake’s Seven was. If you are none of those things, then I’ll give you a very quick break down - it was a piece of proto-dystopian Sci-Fi which, despite being hampered by an insanely small budget, which meant that every alien planet the cast visited was the same chalk quarry in Bedfordshire, was oddly prescient. Largely scripted by writers involved in Doctor Who, it was a far darker vision; a human space empire ruled over by a female dictator, Severlan, who foreshadowed her Earthly counterpart Mrs Thatcher by a year, and a magnificent seven of rebels and criminals who, during an escape from a shuttle taking them to a penal colony, come across the most powerful spaceship in the universe, and proceed to try and take down the Empire, overthrowing colonial overLords and getting fleeting glimpses of a mysterious power beyond the power, all while bickering like a Big Brother House in space.

Like all Sci-fi, it was really about the world now, or in the early 1980’s, and although there are some slightly dated attitudes expressed at time, it was forward looking in the way speculative fiction can be. The quote above comes from everyone’s favorite character, Kerr Avon, who was the dark anti-hero of the group next to their leader Blake - ‘That was always your first mistake, trusting the powerful.’

I reference this as it came to my mind during yet another internet wrangle with tech bro’s about AI art, prompted by this post on a Facebook group.

It is a wonderful leap of imagination to suggest that AI art is somehow empowering people previously cast down by the evil art establishment, not because there isn’t an evil art establishment keeping the doors firmly closed where they can, but because the answer is not to replace one evil empire with another.

His assertion that disabled people are now able to create solely due to AI art, is wrong on so many levels, not least because it completely misses the mark when it comes to why one might make art - it believes the lie that the point of art is the end product.

I am firmly of the belief, and unlike other expressions of faith it’s one I’ve proved over and over again, that anyone can create art with their hands, feet or otherwise, and that it’s the way we teach art or try and facilitate this, is wrong. I could go on for a million blogs about this, but my main point here is this:

I teach a class on doodle art, which I do not because people want to learn how to doodle, as if there was some council of doodling who will give you a certification to prove you can do it - but because the act of doodling allows humans to build confidence and fluidity in their hand-eye-brain relationship, without judgment - if it’s a doodle, no one can tell you that you are wrong, not least the negative voice in your head. Added to this, it’s an incredibly relaxing and mindful pursuit, one which I find far more useful than things like meditation, it allows me to slip away from the real world and get to a trance like state with a quiet mind in moments, without pressure or anxiety.

Added to that, I have learners who struggle with chronic pain, and they find that doodling really helps them when the painkillers and the rest or becoming tired - they allow them to distance themselves from the pain and push it into the background for a while - and you don’t get that by tapping a few words into an app.

My main point here through it, AI art is a media which is predicated on having access to technology, and if you’re trying to trumpet it as a vessel for the poor, you really are no making sense.

To use AI you need to have access to a smartphone, tablet or laptop, with the power to run these things and the ability to keep them safe from theft or paying off debt. You need power to charge them, you need someone to allow you access to that power, and you need someone not to judge you for spending your time on those devices, when surely you should be looking for work?

This is a biro drawing on paper, by Art Senic jnr. You can usually find biros for free (why not steal one from the bank or the job center next time you’re having to prove why you should be allowed to survive?) and you can use any kind of paper to draw on with it, such as the inside of a cereal box. If you look closely at the drawing, it’s a lot of scribbles layered on top of each other until it builds areas of darkness, which become shadow and tone, but the closer you get you can see it’s just a doodle, right?

To create this art, it took time and it took work, but during that time and work, I would go out on a limb and say that the artist wasn’t worrying so much about their problems, and their heart rate slowed a bit and their body calmed a bit. It cost almost nothing in money terms, and no billionaires took their cut, no lithium was mined in exploitation conditions to bring it into life, and no giant servers boiled their way through carbon emissions.

Added to that, have you seen anything like this before? Unlike the glossy surface of ranks of tedious AI images, which have all the interest and diversity of a production line of fondant fancies, you can almost feel the energy and texture of pen over paper, you can almost share in the sensation of how those lines came to life.

And sure, we need to liberate so much from the establishment to bring diverse voices to the fore, but those voices don’t need help to make art, just to get that art seen and valued, and that’s not going to change swapping one set of over privileged gatekeepers for another.

I can’t yet give you a link to my doodle classes, as the next year’s not quite out yet, but if you book mark this page you too can give it a go!

If you’d like to come and see my art, which has been built on the back of doodle, you can see me at the Old Chelsea Town Hall, July 12/13/14 at the Untitled Artist’s Fair.

And I’ll also be at the Hold Gallery, as part of an exhibition for Queer Artists in August, if that’s more on your radar!