# CreativeSoul = REAL_INTELLIGENCE + HUMAN_LEARNING

By [ REAL_INTELLIGENCE + HUMAN_LEARNING](https://paragraph.com/@real-intelligence-human-learning) · 2023-03-14

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Artistic vision—one of the most cherished abilities of our species—has been challenged by a mode of creating oriented around hyper-efficiency, yet lacking in _Creative Soul_. This development has since accelerated through the increasing adoption and application of various generative artificial intelligence technologies. In response, various challenges to this regime have included important—yet distilled—conversations amongst artists and others attempting to challenge the dynamics of the art market. However, these discourses often function just the same as the work they criticize. What we lack, therefore, is an _attention_ to the potential futures of art making, and an _intention_ to maintain Creative Soul in art.

REAL\_INTELLIGENCE + HUMAN\_ LEARNING (RIHL) is the name of the creative purpose vehicle created to cultivate that which we consider the most meaningful element of art: Creative Soul. Known to Walter Benjamin as the _aura_ and to Susan Sontag as the _erotic_, it is the aesthetic quality (in the ancient Greek sense) at risk in the current trajectory of art. Through the following critical analysis, RIHL purports Creative Soul rests beneath Susan Sontag’s notion of ancient and modern interpretive modes, as revealed by Slavoj Žižek’s conception of essence. Arising from this notion of Creative Soul comes RIHL’s first creative endeavor, _WE ARE HUMAN._ The project seeks to appreciate and reflect our collective creativity and ingenuity through a series of portraits created using a novel image-making method called _deanimation_—a process whereby static artworks are crafted through the use of animated visual sequences. In effect, it is an experimental mechanism that enables the expansion of creative output, guided by the artistic vision of a human rather than a machine—a principle core to the RIHL ethos as we strive to preserve Creative Soul in art through our society’s technological expansion.

Nevertheless, the trajectory which RIHL cautions against aims at a slick mode of production, attempting to satisfy our need for art with a facade of _art-looking_ objects–destined for nothing more than hopeless speculation within a mercurial art market. Late historian Melvin Kranzberg presaged this development in his 1985 lecture titled, “Technology and History: Kranzberg’s Laws”; stating that “Technology is neither good, nor bad; nor is it neutral”.¹ Kranzberg elaborates:

> _By that I mean technology's interaction with the social ecology is such that technical developments frequently have environmental, social, and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices and practices themselves, and the same technology can have quite different results when introduced into different contexts or under different circumstances.¹_

Every tool, which can be material or conceptual, magnifies an individual’s creative potential. However, a tool which itself becomes the creator misses the awe of creation itself: to convert energy despite the inertia of stasis. As artists, we convert creative energy into objects, ideas, or behaviors, despite the simplicity of not creating anything at all. There remains an inherent risk in this undertaking, which delineates creation from mere production—a soulless or soul snatching activity. RIHL understands technology is central to human existence, and so technology runs rife in our creative endeavors. Hence, RIHL employs both digital and analog artistic processes to heighten, yet preserve, individual creativity. Kranzberg’s salient lesson on the unintentional consequences of technological developments rings true as ever when we see the untempered careless use of artificial intelligence in art, too often oriented toward pumping out a hustler’s second thought. Nonetheless, our aim is to support the development of human artistic tradition through the purposeful use of technology directed by Creative Soul.

**The Second “There”**

Susan Sontag’s pivotal 1966 essay “Against Interpretation” professes a salient criticism relating to the current state of art, and beneath her writing rests the essence of Creative Soul. The subject of Sontag’s essay concentrates on the experience, theory, and purpose of art in a culture fixated on reducing art to its content. Sontag argues that the value of art is the power of its form. The form of the work makes the viewer, reader, or watcher nervous. This power of art can be tamed by the act of interpretation: reducing an artwork to the content it depicts. This method of viewing artwork, Sontag argues, began in late classical antiquity when scientific enlightenment dismantled the legitimacy of myth, and individuals interpreted once-considered factual stories as allegories. She writes:

> _The interpreter, without erasing or rewriting the text, is altering it. But he can’t admit to doing this. He claims to be only making it intelligible, by disclosing its true meaning. However far the interpreters alter the text…, they must claim to be reading off a sense that is already there.²_

Sontag then stages her criticism of modern interpretation by explaining interpretation as a form of ideology:

> _The old style of interpretation was insistent, but respectful; it erected another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs “behind” the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one.²_

In both ancient and modern periods, Sontag considers interpretation to come out of a text alone, as if an arbitrary meaning traveled through a one-way street to an arbitrary interpreter. Hence, this oversight points to the substance of Creative Soul found hidden within these interpretations. Moreover, Sontag posits the interpreter must be “reading off a sense that is already there.”² However, she has only spotted one “there”—the text.

The second “there” is one’s subjective disposition, composed of sociological context and personal psychology. Furthermore, interpretation is not a mere facade installed over falsified content; rather it arises with a genuine truth already in thyself. Slavoj Žižek develops this point in his seminal work _Sublime Object of Ideology_ by proving a reversal of the order of belief and identity. He claims individuals do not identify with an ideology because they believe in its ideas, but because they already identify with the ideology.³ This subjective space of the individual identity is crucial to forming an interpretation and catalyzing Creative Soul.

Thus, out of a Sontagian appreciation of form arises our claim that Creative Soul itself is a part of an artwork, as revealed by Žižek’s notion of the essential. He states “(the series of distorted, partial reflections of the true meaning of the text) _is already internal to this ‘essence’ itself_.”³ In short, a work of art, in its original state, holds within its essence an entire series of interpretations, allowing the interpreter to receive the unique opportunity to ponder and feel the multidimensional facets of an artwork. This essence of a work of art and one’s subjective perception together form a rich landscape of possibility, producing a certain quality of emotional and intellectual responses from individuals witnessing the art.

**Depth of Creative Soul**

Creative Soul is a broad, yet intuitive term that characterizes certain ineffable qualities which we, as humans, value in art. The emotional and psychological stimulation one receives from an artwork stems from the landscape of potential within the character of the piece itself. However, in our 21st century technocracy, the most common function of art has shifted from provoking rich thought and emotion to becoming an arbitrary filler of the creative lack in our technological “progress’'—a transition which threatens the core of Creative Soul and weakens the aura of art.

Walter Benjamin describes the aura of art in his momentous  essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'', as the uniqueness of an artwork, something that is “inseparable from its being embedded in the fabric of tradition.”⁴ He supports this assertion by proffering a vigilant argument for how mechanical reproduction (e.g. printing posters of paintings) threatens the aura of the artwork, and along with it, its historical testimony. Written in 1935, Benjamin’s bold hypothesis carried with it essential logical deductions about artworks and their reproduction within a mass culture society. But nearly fifty years later, Sidney Tillim correctly asserts in his 1983 _Artforum_ article originally titled “Benjamin Rediscovered: The Work of Art After the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'', that no such aura diminished after the reproduction of unique works⁵—as is clear by the auction prices of some of the most reproduced paintings.⁶ Douglas Davis further expands in his 1995 journal article, “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (an Evolving Thesis: 1991-1995),”:

> _There is no longer a clear conceptual distinction between original and reproduction in virtually any medium. These two states, one pure and original, the other imitative and impure, are now fictions. Images, sounds, and words are received, deconstructed, rearranged, and restored wherever they are seen, heard, and stored. What has happened to the aura surrounding the original work of art, so prized by generations of collectors and critics? Digitalization transfers this aura to the individuated copy. Artist and viewer perform together. The dead replica and the living, authentic original are merging, like lovers entwined in mutual ecstasy.⁷_

Therefore, mechanical reproduction was not far enough removed from “the fabric of tradition”⁴ to dismiss the aura within a work of art.

Where tradition refers to the passage of customs between generations of people, the legitimate threat to the aura of artwork is artificial intelligence. Examples of this threat include the various deep learning text-to-image models, which shift the balance of exercising creative vision from humans toward machines. Even if one finds the images spit out by these models intriguing, what is of interest is not the image itself, but the appearance of an image absent a human creator. We find it awe striking to question: how could this machine have regurgitated what I thought? Or we wonder: what could these images represent or inspire in us? These sentiments do not reflect interest in the work itself—only in our own imaginations.

As pattern seeking, meaning finding, profundity addicts, we find an interest in everything we look at; these continual encounters can operate like a one-sided conversation with a counterfeit creation—or we can find meaning across a two-way conversation between ourselves and an artwork. In all artworks—unique or reproduced—there is depth. While not spatial, it represents the amount of space one may dwell in an artwork. It is a hallway between our mind and the artwork itself—a hallway with a duration, like a set of waves that swells from the space between Earth’s moon and water.

**Back to Lane-Keep Assist**

To the extent we experience the world of art through a hyper-intellectual lens, the purity of the subconscious interplay between the art and observer becomes tarnished. As our collective intellect continues to dominate the realm of emotion, we lose the ability to engage with art in an innocent, curious manner. This absence of balance strips us of the most sacred moments we experience when engaging art with an unfiltered perspective. As Sontag states:

> _Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.²_

It is reasonable to wonder whether from this hefty labor of interpretation came the desire for easy-to-make, easy-to-see art…so how did we respond? We designed automatic driving cars. Furthermore, the ease with which automobile engineers can develop cars that stay in highway lanes and execute maneuvers of moderate complexity has resulted in several aggressive projections regarding the rollout of fully autonomous vehicles.⁸ However, the nuanced problems that make up the final pieces of the autonomous vehicle puzzle require a disproportionate amount of both human effort _and_ computational resources. Thus, it is the reason why we still need human drivers to monitor, correct, and complete the journeys in even the most advanced autonomous automobiles. Nevertheless, while the automated production of art suffers from the same dependence on human effort, creativity itself is more than the mere sum of applied patterns and strokes. RIHL considers this assertion a fundamental risk generative artificial intelligence models pose toward the cultivation of human artistic vision.

While vehicles may someday operate with full autonomy in every situation that humans encounter, and artificial intelligence may eventually produce works that appear to have the same degree of Creative Soul present in the most compelling human art, that day has yet to arrive. However, just as technology can increase the safety and efficiency of vehicular navigation, it can also help to bolster authentic creative output. Therefore, RIHL’s philosophical attitude toward the purpose of technology in art creation centers on engaging with tools—digital or otherwise—in order to facilitate human creative vision, rather than replace it. The technology and processes we employ assist us in creating art; it is our lane-keep assist—fundamental artistic decisions are still made by us, the drivers.

**./CreativeSoul.rihl**

REAL\_INTELLIGENCE + HUMAN\_LEARNING supports the continuance of human development throughout the realms of creativity, emotion, technology, and intellect—these four spheres meet as equals in the practice we call art, marking their importance in preserving the integrity of humanity’s artistic tradition. We have made it our intention to use the time, technologies and philosophies necessary to craft a suite of artistic productions which aim to celebrate human artistic vision. Altogether, we value the West African heritage of our creative directors, PAPADU PAPADU and Delphis. And in another sense, we identify our roots in the tradition of Fluxus for their contribution to the elevation of process itself as a subject in art. Nevertheless, our recognition of the value of creative experimentation places RIHL’s artistic productions at the nexus between tradition and innovation. However, fine art is only the basis of our practice. We consider creative output to extend across the broadest reaches of humanity—from popular media and music, to work and ordinary life. It is within all these aspects that RIHL believes we ought to cherish and maintain the spirit of Creative Soul.

**Notes**

1.  Melvin Kranzberg, “Technology and History: ‘Kranzberg’s Laws,’” _Technology and Culture_ 27, no. 3 (July 1986): 544.
    
2.  Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation,” in _Against Interpretation and Other Essays_, 1966.
    
3.  Slavoj Zizek, _The Sublime Object of Ideology_ (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Adfo Books, 2009).
    
4.  Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, trans. J.A. Underwood (Penguin UK, 2008).
    
5.  Sidney Tillim, "Benjamin Reconsidered: The Work of Art After the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Artforum 21, no. 9 (May 1983). Note, there is a slight discrepancy regarding the original title. According to Tillim’s article in Artforum 22, no. 2 (October 1983), the original title _was_ "Benjamin Reconsidered: The Work of Art After the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." However, in a later essay he wrote in 1992 for the exhibition titled “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Representation” at the Suzanne Lemberg Usdan Gallery at Bennington College, he indicates the original title was “Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art After the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Nevertheless, there were no titles included for any of the feature articles in the Artforum (May 1983) special issue.
    
6.  Justin Kamp, “The 10 Most Expensive Artworks Sold in 2022,” _Artsy_, December 2022.
    
7.  Douglas Davis, “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (An Evolving Thesis: 1991-1995),” _Leonardo_ 28, no. 5 (1995): 381.
    
8.  Todd Littman, “Autonomous Vehicle Implementation Predictions: Implications for Transport Planning” (Victoria, BC: Victoria Transport Policy Institute, November 6, 2022).

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*Originally published on [ REAL_INTELLIGENCE + HUMAN_LEARNING](https://paragraph.com/@real-intelligence-human-learning/creativesoul-real-intelligence-human-learning)*