A(I)esthetics

At a recent seminar that I attended, 10 young artists were honoured for their contribution to the arts. The auditorium buzzed with aspirational energy — raw, visceral and electric. The moderator posed meaningful questions and towards the end of the session, asked each artist, individually and collectively, who their role models were. An uneasy silence followed. The artists looked uncomfortable and hemmed and hawed, but no answer was forthcoming. Despite the moderator’s persistent prodding to name an institution, a teacher, a book, a performance that had ignited their passion, the question was met with dead silence and an eerie hush settled over the auditorium.

“Where are the icons when even Gods have feet of clay,” one artist murmured. I was stunned but understood the dilemma. Our faith in the pillars of society, government, judiciary, education, media and medicine has been battered by scepticism. Everything that we believed in is under the scanner. The musicians, actors and painters who occupied a cultural pedestal in the past now feel like relics in an era defined by cynicism. The very concept of a role model, once a beacon of emulation, seems anachronistic.

The traditional archetype of a role model, whose ideas and work ethics inspire, is today ruptured. What is the value of human struggle in perfecting a craft when algorithms deliver near-instant results? Where does human imagination stand at this intersection between the machine’s proficiency and artistic endeavour? In a world increasingly dominated by social media, fleeting images and instant gratification, the concept of a role model is eroded. Social media platforms like Instagram and X have stripped the enigma that surrounded the artists and made them accessible. Today, through various social platforms, everything is open, ‘warts and all’.

In 1962, when Ebrahim Alkazi became the director of the National School of Drama, modern Indian theatre was grappling to define its identity and ‘Indianness’. Alkazi didn’t set out to ‘revolutionise’ creativity or shift the national consensus; instead, he carved out a new space — a creative ecosystem where the artists could explore their identities through a dynamic blend of rational, historical and traditional approaches. His work established a boundary, an inside and outside, demonstrating how creativity thrives through an interplay between tradition and modernity. Alkazi challenged entrenched assumptions, reframing them with fresh perspectives. For my generation in the 1970s, he was a towering role model, a figure whose impact was both tangible and aspirational.

I belong to a generation that was shaped by human contact. The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has altered the landscape. It is not a question about AI being better or worse, it’s about how easy it is to churn out content. From poetry to painting, advanced generative models like Grok and ChatGPT can produce polished content in a few seconds. This immediacy makes you wonder what value human struggle has in perfecting a craft when the efficacy of the machine is instant and immediate. Does human imagination become redundant, irrelevant and indulgent in the face of the mighty machine? Man versus machine — who wins, who loses?

The 21st century, with its unprecedented connectivity and access to information, has paradoxically diluted the presence of such transformative role models. While technology has democratised access to inspiration, it has also fragmented it. Tools like large language models and generative and adversarial networks can produce music, art and literature with astonishing speed and fidelity. The image of a struggling artist who spends decades mastering the craft makes for an obsolete role model today.

This shift has profound implications. The absence of role models isn’t merely a cultural loss, but also a societal one. The traditional path that involved years of study and mentorship, suddenly feels devalued when you can press a button and the required results are achieved without the sweat and blood involved!

Think of Michelangelo staring at a block of marble for days, wishing to ‘free’ the image ‘imprisoned’ in the marble slab. Anecdotes of the artist sleeping with the marble slab, eating on it, conversing with it have no definitive historical evidence, but exist to show his passionate dedication towards his art. Such anecdotes add to the mythos of his genius. For us, as students of art history, the artistic struggle of Michealangelo was not only physical but also mental, emotional and existential.

With AI at one’s disposal, you type your vision as a command: “a painting that shows a dark forest, with rabbits gamboling on the grass”, and lo and behold, a generative model like Midjourney produces a visually-stunning painting in moments. The process is effortless, precise and devoid of human toil. Then you wonder where is the soul, the labour and the human touch in this creation. Can sterile competence be considered art? Can this AI-generated art replace real art?

I may be wrong and completely out of sync with the reality, but AI can never, in my mind, replace human creativity, as emotions, intentions and context are hard to replicate. It can mimic patterns of human creativity but it doesn’t contain the lived experience that creates art.

This brings me to a story about the arrival of the synthesiser in 1955. It could replicate every sound imaginable — from the birdsong to the laughter of children, to the timbre of a flute or a drum. A radical invention, the celebrations of its arrival resounded in the world of performance arts. But the euphoria was soon replaced by the sobering realisation that the synthesised flute lacked the grainy texture of wood; the digital drum missed the taut resonance of leather. The sounds were flawless, yet sterile, missing the ‘dust’ and ‘woodiness’ of a bamboo flute. It was, as the name suggests, a synthetic version of the original. The engineers tried to artificially create in the synthesisers the ‘dust’, the ‘grain’ and the ‘roughness of wood’, but a machine was a far cry from hand-crafted instruments.

I believe, though many may not agree, that it is absolutely impossible for the machine to replace human imagination. Is it possible for the machine to have that burst of creativity that sparks a sense of life that comes from lived experience? Can it aspire to be a role model? Does a machine struggle, choose and take an ethical position? Can a machine write poetry and make art that resonates with personal history? Does it hate or love?

Like a paint brush, AI is a tool that requires a human mind and heart to wield it, to manifest the vision of the artist, to reflect a sensibility and concern. Questions of AI becoming sentient, developing a consciousness or an inner life remain speculative. AI, despite its prowess, operates on algorithms, not on matters of the heart and soul.

— The writer is a Chandigarh-based theatre director

Arts