Things We Care About

In my last post, I questioned the claim that money is always better spent on experiences than things. I tried to show that for some people, especially those who are highly sensitive to aesthetic considerations, things may be particularly valuable. Such people may have good reason to spend money on things rather than experiences. Indeed, it may be the case that the experiences that they value most—playing an instrument, tending to a garden, chatting with friends, going on walks, playing tennis– are free (or nearly so). If all the best experiences in life are free, why not spend money on well-chosen material possessions that add beauty and interest to everyday life? In this post, I want to dig deeper into the things that we care about. I will explore some of the reasons why we may value and/or want to purchase things. These reasons can be divided into the following categories, with some overlap among them: (1) personal connection, (2) historicity, (3) rarity, (4) aesthetics, and (5) utility. Given that I touched upon categories (4) and (5) in my last post, I will focus my attention here on the other three categories: (1) personal connection, (2) historicity, and (3) rarity. By investigating what we care about and why, we can gain important insights into human nature and the psychology of individual human beings.

(1) Personal Connection

Some of the things that are most important to us have sentimental value in virtue of a connection to others or our own personal past. Items in this category may even share a physical or bodily connection with a person we care, or cared, about. Consider, for example, Bashō’s haiku (translated by David LaSpina) concerning the strands of his recently deceased mother’s hair. Following her death, his brother had placed the strands in a box to keep. Bashō, heartbroken and grieving over his mother’s death, is unsure whether he can bare to hold them in his hand:

should I take it in my hand,
it would melt from my hot tears—
like autumn frost
—Bashō

Seeing the body of a loved one after they have died can be a devastating and heartbreaking experience; we associate the mind—the person—with the body. Holding part of a loved one’s body—their physicality, their hair—would be painful for similar reasons. The actual parts of a loved one’s body can affect us deeply because of a personal connection. This also accounts for why many people show reverence for the ashes of their deceased loved ones; they are the only physical remains of someone who was deeply care for and loved.

To be sure, the parts of another’s body need not always bring us sadness. In other contexts, they may bring us comfort and even joy. Throughout different periods of history, lovers, and even friends, have exchanged locks of hair as a gesture of closeness or intimacy, particularly during times of separation. And many parents save a lock of their child’s hair following their first haircut. They may also collect their first set of teeth and cherish these items later in life.

We may value the physical parts of people beyond our kin as well. Following his death, the hair of Elvis Presley, collected over the years by his hairdresser, was sold to fans and collectors. And, as documented by in Descartes’s Bones, relic collectors removed parts of Descartes’s body– including his skull and right index finger—as it was transported from Sweden back to France for his burial. At the time of his death, Descartes was already quite famous, and many believed that he was a candidate for sainthood.

Thus far, I have discussed cases in which people value the very physicality of another person. But personal connection, as I understand it here, encompasses far more than this. It includes anything that we value because of a connection to another or our own personal past. For example, an engagement ring (connection to another person) may matter to a person not just because of its monetary value, if any, but because of the connection to the romantic partner or relationship. Even if the ring were replaced by a physically identical copy, or one of greater monetary value, it would not have the same personal meaning to its possessor and so not be as valuable overall. For many people, a ring of this kind has personal meaning and is, therefore, irreplaceable. The same may be true of a school ring (connection to personal past). The ring may have symbolic value and be connected with important memories from one’s earlier life.

We reflect upon the importance of such items when a family loses everything in a house fire or natural disaster—non-digital photographs, family heirlooms, baby books, children’s artwork, love letters, cards, and so much more. All these items have a connection to others we care about or to our own personal past.

We may also care about the physical structures themselves—those that house our things and our memories. When an elderly person can no longer live independently and must move into an assisted living facility, they generally do so with great sadness. They not only mourn the loss of their independence but also the loss of the physical structure itself—the loss of their home.

Some physical structures are meaningful for a collective or community—neighborhood restaurants, bars, schools, and so forth. When such structures are destroyed, locals often want to retrieve some piece of the remains as a memento—a way of holding on to the past. For example, after a popular and beloved dive bar in my hometown—the Old Pink—burned down, locals rushed to the scene to commemorate the structure. At the gathering, police officers had to hold people back who crossed restricted access lines to retrieve some piece of the building’s remains.

(2) Historicity

A second category of things that we care about are those with historical value. Now, in some cases, things in this category also have a personal connection to us, e.g., family heirlooms. In such cases, we would value the item for more than one reason—for both its historicity and personal connection. But, in other cases, we seem to value objects for their historicity or age alone.

Items in this category are valued because of their history, age, or connection with the past. Their value may be heightened if they are connected to important events in history, but this isn’t necessary. We may value an object in virtue of its connection to the past alone. Lovers and collectors of antiques fall into this category. For such people, an old item—a clock, a model car, a piece of furniture or clothing, etc.—may be more valuable than a new one. Interestingly, most, but not all, collectors of antiques specialize. They collect or are interested in antiques of a particular kind. When they visit an estate sale or antique store, they are on the hunt for a particular thing or class of things.

When I visit an estate sale or antique store, I am often on the lookout for interesting vintage jewelry. The fact that a piece of jewelry is old, and has a past, only adds to its value. Philosopher Carolyn Korsmeyer, who has written on the aesthetics of touch, and the importance of artefacts, can helps us account for such cases. She observes that when we come into contact with an old object or antique, it is though we are being transferred into an earlier time, i.e., we are encountering the past (61). Put somewhat differently, this little piece of the past—e.g., an antique ring— has survived and made its way into the present. 

When I place an antique ring on me finger, I am cognizant of the fact that someone earlier in time once wore the same ring on her finger. This flesh and blood person from the past had a rich and complicated life like the rest of us, and there is a story to be told about her and how she acquired it. Perhaps she purchased it for herself as a treat. Or maybe she spotted it in a shop and a doting lover surprised her with it on a special occasion. All this adds to the mystery, or as Korsmeyer might put it, the “aura” of the ring.

In addition to the story behind an antique, we may appreciate its aesthetic qualities. For example, in the case of a ring, we may appreciate its wear and art nouveau design. Importantly, as Korsmeyer observes, its genuineness (“being the real thing”) or authenticity may matter much to us here (3). In my own case, while perusing vintage jewelry online, I have come across pieces of revival jewelry—pieces of jewelry that imitate an earlier style but were created in the present. These pieces always seem too perfect, unsullied, and contrived; they lack the aesthetic qualities of an authentic antique. The fact that they are so numerous—in some cases mass-produced—also detracts from their value. (I will have more to say about this under ‘rarity’ below). Indeed, even an exact replica of a vintage piece of jewelry would seem to lack the value of the real thing. Again, genuineness matters.

Korsmeyer herself goes so far as to say that that genuineness contributes to the aesthetic value of an object. There is often a certain thrill that we experience when holding a genuine piece of antiquity in our hands (29). In her view, a convincing copy does not have the same aesthetic value as the original even if we can at present detect no difference between the two (35). Aesthetic judgments are not always based upon surface properties that are immediately perceivable (34).

(3) Rarity

We seem not to care about that what is rare for its own sake, but that which is desirable in some other way but also rare. This category overlaps with historicity since historical items are generally scarce or one-of-a-kind, and thus rare. But rarity contributes to the value of other things that we care about as well.

We may value extremely beautiful objects regardless of their rarity. But we may value them even more if they are rare. This seems to account for why we value and often pay top dollar for certain gemstones, e.g., rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. Most ordinary people are unable to distinguish between diamonds and cubic zirconia but would pay far more for the former than for the latter. This, at least in part, is due to the rarity of the diamond. Its market price, another contributing factor to our valuing it, is also strongly influenced by its rarity.

Considerations of scarcity can also help us account for the value of collectible items, such as baseball cards. A limited-edition card may be of great value because few of them were produced and are available. And sneakerheads will endure lines of tremendous length to acquire rare and exclusive sneakers, such as the latest limited-edition Air Jordan. Indeed, these are often bought and then resold online for enormous sums of money.

Scarcity also plays an important role in the art market. A limited-edition fine art print tends to be worth more than an open edition print (i.e., one for which there is no limit of copies made). And an original, one-of-a-kind work of art is worth more than a limited-edition print. To be sure, original works of art are often valued for aesthetic reasons and for their contribution to the art world/art history. Scarcity does not tell us the whole story, for even high-quality fine art prints cannot capture the unique beauty of an original oil painting. Compare, for example, a fine art print of a Vincent Van Gogh painting with an original; among other things, the print cannot capture the three-dimensional texture and movement for which Van Gogh’s work is known and admired. Oil paintings, like other works of art, are best viewed and admired in person. For these and other reasons, our appreciation of an original work of art may by far outstrip any interest that we have in a reproduction. When it comes to great art, we want the original—the real thing. Taking this notion to an extreme, Jesse Prinz asserts that “If the Mona Lisa burnt in a fire, we’d sooner visit the ashes than a perfect replica” (84).

We may also care about original works of art for reasons of personal connection (discussed earlier). It may matter a great deal to us that we are purchasing the work of an artist whom we know (if only virtually) and admire. There is something sentimental and almost romantic about purchasing something made by the hand of a living, breathing human artist. Just as the past is in some way transferred to the future through an ancient relic or antique, a piece of the artist is transferred to us through their original work, or so it may seem to us in some non-literal way. This also accounts for why a hand-written love letter may mean more to us than an email or text message. We value personal, physical connection, particularly when it is attached to someone we love, admire, or respect.

Relatedly, we may feel that by purchasing an original work of art, we are supporting an individual human being in their creative endeavors and/or the art world in general. By purchasing a work of art, we are making a statement about what matters to us – about what we hold up as having true social importance. And the thing that we acquire thereby, e.g., a work of art, may be the embodiment of this value stance.

(4) Conclusion

My intention in this post has not been to provide an exhaustive list of our reasons for caring about things. Instead, I have wanted to explore the terrain and call attention to some of the reasons why we value things or material objects. One of my goals has been to show that we often care about things for reasons that are not trivial, light-minded, or shallow. Some of the things that we care about are suffused with meaning and bound up with our identity. They may embody or represent some of the most important relationships and experiences of our lives.

Some philosophies of life encourage a kind of detachment from material possessions. We should be able to cast them aside and live a humble, minimalist life. While it is wise to avoid materialism, and the hedonic treadmill with which it often associated, it is important not to ignore the often-profound reasons we have for caring about the things that matter most to us. By examining what we care about and why, we can gain important insights into human nature and our own individual psychology.  

Postscript

While writing this post, I was somewhat uneasy about referring to parts of bodies as things. Are strands of hair things? What about fingernails? Body organs? It seems that our language is not designed to handle all cases in a sensitive and nuanced way. Rather, it refers to entire class of “things” with the same broad brush. When a person is alive, we may degrade them by regarding their body parts (particularly, aspects of their sexual anatomy) as mere ‘things.’ Philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Martha Nussbaum have had interesting and important things to say on the topic. Kant goes so far as to say that a person who cuts their hair and sells it may not be “altogether free from blame” (177).

Similar questions arise concerning the living beings of our natural environments. Humans are notorious for their objectification of animals, which Kant himself included in the class of mere things. Most of us would reject this categorization today, maintaining—at the very least—that our beloved pets are more than mere things. But what should we say of a fly, a mushroom, a maple tree, etc.?  Does the language of thinghood do them justice? Are they truly in the same category as keys, stamps, coffee mugs, etc.? These are questions to be explored more deeply at another time.

Sources

Basho. “Mother’s White Hair,” Trans. By La Spina, David. Waivio. https://www.waivio.com/@dbooster/mother-s-white-hair-haiku. Accessed 1 Sept. 025

“Elvis’ Hair Is Placed Up for Bid,” Columbia Daily Tribune, https://www.columbiatribune.com/story/news/2009/10/13/elvis-hair-is-placed-up/21572431007/. Accessed 1 Sept. 2025.

Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals. Edited by Mary Gregor, Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Korsmeyer, Carolyn. Things: In Touch with the Past. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Prinz, Jesse. (2014). “Emotion and aesthetic value” in E. Schellekens & P. Goldie (Eds.), The aesthetic mind: Philosophy and psychology, Oxford University Press (2014), 71-88.

Shorto, Russell. Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Reason and Faith. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009.

In Defense of Things: The Aesthetic Value of Material Objects

A commonly heard refrain about the good life, expressed by both ordinary folk and theorists alike, is that we should spend our money on experiences, not things. Given that this seems so obvious to many, it has the air of being a platitude or truism. We should live each day to the fullest, making the most of our non-working hours by doing things in the world, not by spending our hard-earned money on whatever material baubles and gadgets the capitalist machine manipulates us into wanting. While this is largely sage advice, it overlooks the genuine contribution that certain material possessions can make to our well-being. In what follows, I will explain why at least some things, particularly those that are appreciated for their aesthetic value, can make a positive contribution to a person’s well-being. I will also show that, by cultivating aesthetic mindfulness, we can extend our satisfaction with such items and guard against hedonic adaptation.

I. Material Purchases and the Experiential Advantage

Research in behavioral economics suggests that people derive more satisfaction by spending their discretionary money on experiences (concerts, vacations, etc.) rather than things. In the field, this phenomenon has been dubbed the experiential advantage (Jacob C. Lee et al. 1031). Over the years, various explanations have been offered for why this is so. Thomas Gilovich and Amit Kumar have argued that while material possessions can bring us some immediate pleasure, we adapt to them more readily than we do experiential purchases. That is, such objects are particularly vulnerable to what behavioral economists refer to as hedonic adaptation (“A Wonderful Life” 153-154). Hedonic adaptation refers to the well-documented process by which we grow accustomed to events or stimuli that elicit a positive or negative emotional response, thereby returning to our original level of happiness. For example, a new car may give its owner an initial thrill, but all-too-soon become familiar and unremarkable. It will cease to spark joy. Gilovich and Kumar observe that material purchases are particularly prone to this process. They provide us with an initial hit of pleasure but soon fade into the familiar background of our lives; we no longer notice or appreciate them as we once did.

In addition to this, Gilovich and Kumar claim that experiential purchases bring us more satisfaction than do material possessions because they are more closely tied to our identity, or sense of self, and are less prone to social comparisons with others (152). While we may be dissatisfied with our new car if a friend or acquaintance one-ups us with a better or newer model, we would likely not be less satisfied with our beach vacation if a friend or acquaintance out does us with a better or longer vacation. People also enjoy sharing their experiences with others more than they do their material possessions. As a result of this, desirable experiences tend to solidify social bonds more than material purchases do. Finally, they show that people tend to derive more pleasure from anticipating desirable experiences than they do desirable material possession (“To Do or Have” 1).

Now, it is important to note that much of this research is based upon survey data and self-reporting, i.e., asking people about how satisfied they are or were with various experiences. Given that people can misjudge their own happiness, and be influenced by how a question is framed, we may be somewhat skeptical of these findings. It is also the case, as Sasha Chapin has pointed out, that we don’t expect certain purchases to be particularly memorable or happiness-inducing at a single moment in time even though they provide us with considerable satisfaction in the long run. Chapin compares money spent on a lovely dinner at Chez Panisse with money spent on a nice pair of walking shoes. Clearly, the shoes will not provide us with a single, special memory in the way that the fancy restaurant meal will. But, as Chapin observes, they are not supposed to:

Shoes are supposed to offer a small but significant improvement to your life hundreds of times. They’re actually supposed to prevent the formation of memories, if they’re working properly – specifically, memories of sore feet or blisters.

Conceivably, this small but significant improvement of many sunny walks could dwarf the dinner in terms of overall enjoyment, but it certainly won’t be as memorable. Thus, the happiness granted by the shoes will be less apparent to the remembering self. Fortunately, though, the remembering self is not all there is to life. Most of life is lived in the unmemorable, in between moments: the kind of moments which well-chosen possessions (furniture, clothing, cooking equipment, nice soap) can improve.

After drawing this comparison, Chapin concludes that we should expect there to be a significant bias toward experiences when we are asked whether they make us happy. But we should not conclude from this that our responses reflect reality—that experiences really do make us happier than material possessions. Indeed, if the question were framed somewhat differently, and we were asked to reflect more fully upon the contributions that the shoes made to our happiness, we might choose the material possession (the shoes, in this case).

Other factors, such as social (economic) class, appear to influence one’s preference for experiential versus material purchases. Jacob C. Lee, Deborah L. Hall, and Wendy Wood show that whereas higher-class individuals reveal a preference for experiential purchases, lower-class individuals reveal a preference for material purchases. Given that they already have access to material and other resources, Lee et al. hypothesize that higher-class individuals can focus upon self-development, self-expression, and uniqueness. Lower-class individuals, in contrast, have fewer material goods and resources. As a result, they show more concern with the wise management of limited finances. They are made happier, or equally happy, by making material purchases than by making experiential purchases. Material purchases provide them with practical benefits and may retain their resale value (1031-1032).

The experiential advantage may also be affected by how materialistic a person happens to be. Not surprisingly, there is evidence that highly materialistic individuals derive less satisfaction from experiential purchases than non-materialistic individuals do. Indeed, some studies show that they are made equally happy by experiential and material purchases (J. W. Zhang, et al. 75). According to Jia Wei Zhang et al., this is because material buyers derive the same degree of identity expression through experiential and material purchases (78).

Research in behavioral economics aside, there seems to be a strong intuitive case for spending money on experiences versus things. We are often critical of those we judge to be materialistic, or unduly concerned with the accumulation of stuff. The priorities of such people seem to be in the wrong place. Instead of accumulating an abundance of worldly possessions, they should spend their time and money exploring the world and making new memories with family and friends. They should be living their lives, not wasting their hard-earned money on mass-produced junk. As minimalists since Henry David Thoreau have reminded us, we don’t buy things with money, but with hours of our lives [see note, 1]. Our time on Earth is limited and we ought not to waste it in the endless pursuit of material possessions. Indeed, one of the greatest regrets of the dying, as reported by long-time hospice nurse, Bonnie Ware, is having spent too much time at work and too little time with family and friends.

2. The Aesthetic Value of Material Possessions

While there is a strong case for prioritizing experiential over material purchases, there is much that it overlooks. In the first place, not everyone has an adventurous spirit and a desire to travel, go out, and explore; we are not all in search of experiences in the outer world. In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill observes that whereas some people are content with a lot of excitement and a little bit of tranquility, others are content with a lot of tranquility and very little excitement (13). The introvert, the recluse, and the bookworm may enjoy spending most of their time at home; home may be restorative and a source of joy. Being surrounded by their favorite things may bring such individuals immense satisfaction.

A plant lover may delight in tending to the many plants that bring beauty and fresh air to their home. Indeed, there is now evidence that caring for plants can bring with it several important mental and physical health benefits. And while caring for a plant is itself an activity, one that the plant lover enjoys, what often inspires a plant lover to buy a new plant is the sheer beauty of the plant itself, not any further utilitarian value that it might possess. Now, it might be objected here that plants are not mere things or material possessions; they are, instead, living beings. While this is true, we can think of them as things or material possessions for the purposes of this discussion insofar as they are bought and sold within the free market like other things or material possessions.

In addition to plants, people surround themselves with various other natural objects (with more obvious “thing” status) that bring them joy. The rock and mineral collector may pay for such things because their beautiful presence inspires happiness. The collector may feel happy and fulfilled by simply admiring nature’s astonishing creations. Indeed, the collector with a background in science, who understands the molecular structure of such objects, and how they are created, may stand in awe of them. They may have a deep and informed understanding of such objects that bolsters their aesthetic appreciation of them. If this is right, then there doesn’t seem to be anything hollow or frivolous about spending money on natural objects, such as rocks in minerals, that inspire awe or wonder. Indeed, we generally admire people who can appreciate the beauty of such natural objects.

We can find and appreciate the aesthetic value in non-natural objects as well. A collector of antique clocks may appreciate the artistry, design, and inner workings of the various examples in their collection. They may purchase, and come to cherish, a particular model that they have sought for many years. Like the rock and mineral collector, the antique clock afficionado may possess an intricate understanding of clocks—their mechanical structure, history, style, etc. This knowledge may enable them to notice and attend to the subtle details of the clocks in their collection, ultimately enhancing their aesthetic appreciation of them. And, of course, the history behind a given clock may imbue it with special meaning and significance.

It is also the case, as recognized in the field of behavioral economics, that many of the material objects that we buy enable us to participate in activities or enjoy them more fully; the boundary between things and experiences is sometimes fuzzy (Thomas Gilovich, et al., “A Wonderful Life” 153). For example, buying a tennis racquet may enable one to take lessons and meet up with a friend for a game. Still other purchases may contribute to our experiences in important but less obvious ways. Buying a new dress or suit for a special occasion, such as a wedding, may enhance one’s experience of the event. It may contribute to the event’s overall aesthetic quality, which may have been meticulously planned. Moreover, we have probably all had the experience of feeling underdressed or uncomfortable in our own clothes. Such feelings can make us self-conscious and distracted, thereby preventing us from being fully immersed in what we are doing. Wearing attractive, well-made clothing in which we feel comfortable can put our minds at ease and allow us to attend to the world around us and not to ourselves.

Similarly, a beautiful new set of handcrafted bowls may enhance and beautify one’s nightly dinners; they may be visually appealing and contribute to the aesthetic experience and ceremonial quality of the meal. If one were to invest in a set of bowls, perhaps commissioning a local artist to make them, then one could benefit from their use on a regular basis. Indeed, defenders of things, or material possessions, may point out here that such objects, unlike experiences, are permanent (or at least semi-permanent). Whereas vacations and concerts are temporary, the material possessions that we incorporate into our lives, if well-chosen, are lasting. A beloved coffee mug, for example, may bring one happiness every time that one use it for as long as it lasts, which could be years or a lifetime. The same may be true of the comfortable and stylish chair that one reclines in every night after dinner while reading a good book and enjoying a glass of wine, and the dark and artful cast iron pot that one steeps green tea leaves in after lunch. If we spend much our time at home, such objects may bring us immeasurable joy. Moreover, they may contribute to countless everyday aesthetic experiences that we otherwise wouldn’t enjoy, at least to the same extent. They can make the mundane appear special and suffuse our lives with an almost ceremonial quality and richness.

3. Everyday Aesthetics and Aesthetic Mindfulness

It is important to emphasize here that the objects that delight us in these ways are generally, although not always, well-chosen. I am not suggesting that we make mindless purchases and fill our homes—our lives— with clutter. Instead, I am claiming that purchasing high quality, well-chosen items can enhance our daily lives. We can, I think, find support for this view within the sub-field of aesthetics commonly referred to as everyday aesthetics. Proponents of everyday aesthetics, such as Yuriko Saito, call attention to the aesthetic value of everyday objects and experiences—objects and experiences whose aesthetic value has often been neglected. In Everyday Aesthetics, Saito explores the aesthetic value of food, gardening, the weather, the Japanese tea ceremony, and other experiences of everyday life. Others working in the field discuss the aesthetics of sport, perfume, personal grooming, and domestic scenes.     

Proponents of everyday aesthetics note that, to appreciate an object or experience aesthetically, we must approach it with what we might refer to as aesthetic mindfulness. If we do not attend to the object or experience in the right way, we may fail to have an aesthetic experience. Minimally, appreciating something aesthetically requires that we pay attention to it. To see why this is so, compare a person who does, and another who does not, have an aesthetic experience while walking through a beautiful park on a fall day. The first person, or the one who has an aesthetic experience, absorbs the experience fully, attending to the cool autumn air on their face, the crisp leaves crunching underfoot, and the colorful crimson and gold leaves that fill the trees. In contrast, the person who does not have an aesthetic experience walks hastily through the park wearing headphones, distracted by what she is listening to on her phone. Importantly, the two cases differ in terms of the attention given to various objects or aspects of the environment. If we attend to our everyday environments, and are open to aesthetic experiences, then material possessions, of a certain sort, can enhance our daily lives and contribute to our happiness.

To be sure, as behavioral economists have observed, we often do adapt to the material objects that once impressed and inspired us. What we once admired for its unique beauty, design, or functionality, often fades into the background of everyday life. But this is not always the case and there are steps that we can take to keep our appreciation of such things alive. Drawing, again, from the field of everyday aesthetics, we can learn to keep our appreciation of such objects alive by attending to their aesthetic properties. We can become aesthetically mindful of our surroundings, thereby rendering ourselves receptive to opportunities for aesthetic appreciation. In some ways, aesthetic mindfulness, as I have described it here, resembles the kind of mindfulness that is practiced by certain spiritual traditions, such as Buddhism. Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, believed that we can experience the world more fully by practicing mindfulness. In Peace Is Every Step, he illustrates how this is possible by describing the way that he and a group of children once enjoyed a basket of tangerines. He writes,

One day, I offered a number of children a basket filled with tangerines. The basket was passed around, and each child took one tangerine and put it in his or her palm. We each looked at our tangerine, and the children were invited to meditate on its origins. They saw not only their tangerine, but also its mother, the tangerine tree. With some guidance, they began to visualize the blossoms in the sunshine and in the rain. They saw petals falling down and the tiny fruit appear. The sunshine and the rain continued, and the tiny tangerine grew. Now someone has picked it, and the tangerine is here. After seeing this, each child was invited to peel the tangerine slowly, noticing the mist and the fragrance of the tangerine, and then bring it up to his or her mouth and have a mindful bite, in full awareness of the texture and taste of the fruit and the juice coming out. We ate slowly like that. (21-22)

After recounting this experience, he adds:

Each time you look at a tangerine, you can see deeply into it. You can see everything in the universe in one tangerine. When you peel it and smell it, it’s wonderful. You can take your time eating a tangerine and be very happy. (22)

As Naht Hanh observes, by practicing mindfulness, we can experience and appreciate a tangerine more fully. We can learn to attend to the properties of a tangerine that might otherwise go unnoticed and unappreciated. One important difference between mindfulness, in a general sense, and aesthetic mindfulness is that the latter is tied to the aesthetic point-of-view. Given its focus upon the aesthetic considerations, aesthetic mindfulness appears to be narrower in focus than the kind of mindfulness practiced within certain spiritual traditions, such as Buddhism. It is also not tied to the same set of theoretical or background beliefs as certain forms of spiritual mindfulness may be. Still, there is much overlap since most forms of mindfulness, such as the kind that Naht Hanh describes above, encourage us to attend more fully to the sensible properties of objects and the beauty of the world around us. 

In a somewhat different context, Alain de Botton and John Armstrong argue that aesthetic attention can help us ward off adaptation in our romantic relationships. They believe that we can hone our aesthetic attention by, among other things, attending to still life paintings of everyday objects. Doing this encourages us to see and appreciate the remarkable in ordinary aspects of our own lives. Édouard Manet, for example, created an extraordinarily beautiful painting of a humdrum bundle of asparagus. His “tender portrait” calls attention to the “quiet charm of this edible flowering perennial.” Through his delicate brushwork, and sensitive rendering, Manet taught us to appreciate the beauty of this ordinary vegetable. As de Botton and Armstrong observe, where “we would just see a plain stalk, Manet noted and recorded subtle individuality, the particular hue and tonal variation of each frond.” By looking at his painting, we can learn to appreciate the beauty of this ordinary vegetable to which most of us have grown accustomed.

What is more, we can extend this lesson to the romantic domain and learn to see our lovers, who may no longer spark desire in us, in a new light. They write:

To rescue a long-term relationship from complacency, we might learn to effect on our spouse much the same imaginative transformation that Manet performed on his vegetables. We should try to locate the good and the beautiful beneath the layers of habit and routine. We may so often have seen our partner pushing a buggy, crossly berating the electricity company or returning home defeated from the workplace that we have forgotten the dimension in him or her that remains adventurous, impetuous, cheeky, intelligent and, above all else, worthy of love. (124)

One takeaway from everyday aesthetics is that we are surrounded by potential aesthetic experiences, if only we are attuned to them. Moreover, we can use the practice of aesthetic mindfulness as a buffer against hedonic adaptation in our everyday lives (where this includes our romantic relationships). By approaching the world through the lens of aesthetic mindfulness, we can enhance and extend our experiences of pleasure.

IV. Aesthetic, Material Purchases: Limitations

To be sure, we do not need to own closets full of fancy, material possessions to have aesthetic experiences. Indeed, it is widely recognized within the field of aesthetics that it is at least possible to approach most things from an aesthetic perspective and find some aesthetic value in them. Still, certain objects may affect us more profoundly than others and be more likely to produce in us an aesthetic response. Thus, as I have tried to show here, buying certain, well-chosen material possessions can increase our well-being by enriching our aesthetic lives.

It is also the case that people differ in terms of the degree to which they appreciate the aesthetic domain. Some people appear to be more aesthetically sensitive than others. We should expect those who are particularly sensitive to aesthetic considerations to derive more happiness from aesthetically motivated, material purchases than those who are not. Individuals with a low level of aesthetic sensitivity may not seek out formal aesthetic experiences, such as visits to an art gallery or concert hall. But they may also be oblivious or indifferent to style or fashion, care little about the aesthetics of what they eat, and purchase furniture based upon functionality and comfort alone.

Additionally, it is possible that possessing too many material possessions—collecting too much stuff – may serve as an impediment to aesthetic appreciation, for then one’s home—one’s life—may become cluttered and disorganized. As Marie Kondo has noted, we often need to purge our houses of much that we own before the truly beautiful items can shine. We should keep what, in her words, “sparks joy” and get rid of the rest. When it comes to aesthetic, material purchases, less may sometimes be more; quality may trump quantity. From an aesthetic perspective, it may be preferable to buy a single, original oil painting from a favorite artist than multiple, mass-produced prints from a retail chain, or to purchase a single well-made, designer cashmere sweater than four or five cheaply made knock offs from a fast fashion outlet.

We should also bear in mind that a preoccupation with material possessions can crowd out other things in life that matter. Now, most of us are in no position to collect an endless collection of well-made aesthetically pleasing objects. But, even if we could, it would not be advisable to do so. The value of aesthetically pleasing purchases should be balanced against other things that we value. Surely much else matters in life apart from the possession and admiration of beautiful objects. Moreover, one needs to reserve time in one’s life for enjoying what one has. A beautiful new set of gulf clubs will not be of much use if one is too preoccupied with online shopping—with acquiring the next beautiful thing – to enjoy them. Relatedly, we must acknowledge that shopping can be addictive, or nearly so, depending upon who you ask. We should do what we can to prevent ourselves from getting stuck on the hedonic treadmill, to the extent that this is possible. Clearly some of us would benefit from a shopping detox. At such times, the cultivation and exercise of aesthetic mindfulness can allow us to appreciate what we already have and to attend to the beauty and charm of our everyday surroundings.

In conclusion, material possessions or things can make an important contribution to our happiness and a life well lived. A person who is appreciative of things—even desiring more of them—need not be shallow and unduly materialistic. Instead, they may be particularly sensitive to their aesthetic value. For some people, some of the time, the purchase of a material object may bring with it greater joy than a single, short-lived experience, especially when the object in question is integrated into their regular routine or rituals. While hedonic adaptation can diminish the amount of happiness that objects bring us over time, cultivating aesthetic mindfulness can help us guard against habituation and appreciate what we already have.

Notes

[1] Thoreau never said that “we don’t by things with money, but with hours of our lives,” although these words are often falsely attributed to him. They are, however, inspired by something that he did say in Walden. 

Works Cited

Chapin, Sasha. “Buying Experiences Probably Doesn’t Make You Happier than Buying Possessions.” Sasha’s Newsletter. https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/buying-experiences-probably-doesnt?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web. Accessed June 9, 2025.

De Botton, Alain and John Armstrong. Art as Therapy. Phaidon, 2013.

Mill, John Stuart Utilitarianism. Edited by George Sher. Hacket Publishing Company, 2002.

Gilovich, Thomas, et al. “A Wonderful Life: Experiential Consumption and the Pursuit of Happiness,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, vol. 25, no. 1, 2015, pp. 152-165.

Kondo, Marie. “6 Rules of Tidying.” KonMari. https://konmari.com/marie-kondo-rules-of-tidying-sparks-joy/?srsltid=AfmBOoqEsXe5_ZFuJ8WX_GZClIjZD0ThF0s3r7u6wFwG35-qUQBYfl_E#. Accessed June 9, 2025.

Kumar, Amit and Thomas Gilovich. “To Do or to Have, Now or Later? The Preferred Consumption Profiles of Material and Experiential Purchases,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2015, pp. 1-10.

Lee, Jacob C., Deborah  L. Hall, and Wendy Wood. “Experiential or Material Purchases? Social Class Determines Purchase Happiness. Psychological Science, vol. 29, no. 7, 2018,  pp. 1031-1039.

Nhat Hanh. Peace is Every Step. Edited by Arnold Kotler. Bantam Books, 1991.

Saito, Yuriko. Everyday Aesthetics. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Ware, Bonnie. “Regrets of the Dying.” Bonnie Ware. https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/. Accessed June 9, 2025.

Zhang, Jia Wei, Ryan T. Howell, Peter A Caprariello, and Darwin A Guevarra. “Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don’t: Material Buyers Are Not Happier from Material or Experiential Consumption. Journal of Research in Personality. Vol. 50, 2014, pp. 71-83.

Making My Celestial Mandala

About Mandalas

Even before I learned the word, I had an affinity for mandalas. There is something compelling about their symmetrical, circular composition and the complex patterns that they enclose. They are deeply satisfying to look at – almost entrancing. One could get lost in contemplating a mandala, following the intricacies of its design in a never-ending loop. The Greeks believed that the circle was the perfect shape; it represented the divine symmetry and balance in nature. This is because, among other things, the circle has infinite lines of symmetry, for any straight line drawn through its center will be a line of symmetry. Greek scholar Proclus called the circle “the first, simplest and most perfect form.” Perhaps their geometrical perfection, as circles, helps to explain why mandalas are so captivating and aesthetically pleasing.

Mandalas have played a role in various religious and spiritual traditions, such as Buddhism. In Buddhism, mandalas are complex representations of the universe that embody various aspects of Buddhist teachings. They are often used as tool or aid in the practice of meditation. Some Buddhist monks create astoundingly beautiful and intricate mandalas from sand only to destroy them once finished. The monks believe that the process of making and then destroying a sand mandala can teach us important lessons about the nature of existence. The practice is a reminder that everything in nature is fleeting and impermanent. The creative and destructive process is often performed publicly over many hours. The audience can watch the monks construct the mandala with painstaking care and attention only to sweep it all away once it is finished. Like a sand mandala, we, and everything that we construct—however impressive and grand—will ultimately turn to dust.  

Although the practice of making and destroying sand mandalas is rooted in an ancient spiritual tradition, it has the air of contemporary performance art. Each ritualistic movement is performed with care and precision. And the final gesture – the sweeping away of the elaborate work of art—is dramatic and shocking, while also suffused with meaning and symbolism.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst, is often credited with popularizing the creation and use of mandalas in the west. He studied mandalas– a subject which fascinated him – in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery outside Darjeeling India in 1938. He later incorporated these into his psychoanalytic practice with patients and into his own personal exploration of the unconscious. Jung encouraged his patients to make their own mandalas and believed that the symbols and patterns that they created arose from the unconscious mind. Jung believed that drawing mandalas could integrate psychological division, enhance psychological harmony, and reserve personal integrity. Today, and largely due to Jung’s influence, mandala drawing is widely used as a form of art therapy to promote individual expression and psychological healing.  

In recent years, mandalas have become a popular component of new age culture. They have also made their way into mainstream arts and crafts stores in the form of adult coloring books. While many people enjoy coloring mandalas for their own sake, others do so for the purpose of anxiety reduction. Indeed, there is some evidence that coloring mandalas does, in fact, reduce anxiety. While coloring in general may be effective in reducing anxiety, there is evidence that coloring mandalas is especially effective in doing so. One study, which was published in Art Therapy, showed that coloring mandalas for even twenty minutes significantly reduced anxiety levels. Moreover, it showed that coloring mandalas (along with other reasonably complex geometrical patterns) was more effective in reducing anxiety than was free-form coloring on a blank paper. According to the researchers, a likely explanation is that coloring mandalas requires focused attention that reduces inner dialogue and blocks negative thoughts and emotions.

Making My First Mandala

While coloring mandalas can be therapeutic and enjoyable, I knew that it would be more rewarding and challenging for me to design my own mandala. I liked the idea of creating a mandala that is in some way a reflection of myself—that incorporates symbols and imagery that is personally meaningful. While I didn’t create my mandala in an automatic, free drawing fashion, as Jung asked his patients to do, the process of making one’s own mandala seems to achieve psychological ends that mere coloring cannot. Ultimately, I hope to make multiple mandalas – mandalas made from various media that explore different themes. Perhaps each of these mandalas will reflect different aspects of myself – my interests, unconscious mind, visions of the world, etc. But I had to start somewhere.

I created my own—my first— mandala in oil paint on a cradled wooden panel. Before painting the surface, I carefully penciled in my drawing on the panel. I also taped the sides of the panel to keep them free from paint; this would allow me to stain the sides of the panel later, making it possible to display the mandala as is – without a frame. Since I could not draw anything close to a perfect circle freehand, I used a large compass to create the set of concentric circles that formed the skeleton of my design.

Preliminary Drawing of My Mandala

Creating and maintaining the circles of my design turned out to be the most difficult part of the process. I had a hard time finding a compass that would create circles large enough for my panel. The tool that I settled upon made large circles, but the graphite that it came with made thick lines. It was, therefore, difficult to create a clear boundary for the circles that it produced. (If anyone can recommend a better tool, please let me know in the comments.) And after I started painting, and lost my drawing, it was difficult to maintain the near-perfect circle with which I started. Unless I come across a solution to this problem, I might make smaller mandalas in the future, which are easier to manage with the compasses and templates that I can find. This time, I had to accept my limitations and live with an imperfect result.

In terms of my concept, I wanted to create a mandala that reflected some of the core (large-scale) components of the universe and our solar system. And so, at the center of the mandala I painted an eye, which is often used to represent the conscious mind. Circling around the eye, I have the eight planets of our solar system. Surrounding the planets, I have a circle of slender, orange triangles that represent the rays of the sun. I painted vines around the exterior part of the mandala to suggest life, growth, and nature on Earth. In each of the four corners of the panel, I painted a different animal. In the top right, there is a serpent, which represents evil; in the top left, there is a dove, which represents peace or goodness; in the bottom right, there is a crow, which represents intelligence; and, in the bottom left, there is an owl, which represents wisdom and is the symbol of philosophy. I liked the idea of putting consciousness at the center because it conveys the idea that it is woven through everything in the universe (as the panpsychists would have it). And, even if we reject this view, it is certainly the case that consciousness is at the center of our own personal universe in so far as it is what makes experience in general possible for us. Were it not for consciousness, there would nothing at all for us – no planets, trees, animals, etc. All these things exist for us through the conscious mind.

The entire mandala was painted using a limited blue-orange palette. I used a limited palette to create a sense of unity in my composition, and the blue-green palette seemed like the best choice.

The mandala that I created is different from most of my other artwork. While it was technically challenging, and sometimes frustrating, to make, it prompted me to think differently and expanded my artistic horizons. It also encouraged me to dig more deeply into the work and visual imagery of Carl Jung. (Importantly, he denied that what he created constituted art) While it would be hard to accept Jung’s psychological theories in their complete form, his work is intellectually, and even aesthetically, rich and interesting. Many of the themes that he explored – e.g., the unconscious, imagination, and dreams—are still of personal and scientific/philosophical interest today.

Why It's Better to Write a Bad Poem Than No Poem at All

Back in my 20s, I had a conversation with a friend about writing poetry. I was preoccupied with writing (unintentionally) bad poetry of my own and had asked whether he, an English PhD candidate, ever wrote poetry. He told me that he used to do so when he was younger but eventually gave it up, for he came to the realization that he was actually writing prose, not poetry, and not especially good prose at that. He decided that he didn’t have the talent for it and so abandoned his pursuit, dedicating himself to other endeavors. It occurred to me that if this friend—an English PhD candidate—thought that his own poetry was bad, then he would have found mine atrocious—laughable even. The principle underlying his thinking seemed to be that if you can’t do something reasonably well, then you shouldn’t do it at all. But what I implicitly heard—the message that I felt—was that the world was better off without bad poetry. This, of course, entailed that the world was better off without my own bad poetry, which made me feel a bit sad and deflated. After all, having no formal training in poetry (beyond the third grade), I didn’t really know what I was doing or what I was supposed to be doing.

At the time, I wasn’t particularly concerned about whether what I was writing constituted poetry or prose; I simply enjoyed the process of experimentation and getting some of my thoughts and ideas on to paper. Although I haven’t written a poem, or bad prose, in a long time, my friend didn’t deter me. (And I have since moved on to writing monotonous, rambling, arrhythmical, and disconnected songs for piano.) I am still a shameless champion of the view that it is better to write a bad poem than no poem at all. In what follows, I will explain my reasons for thinking so and hopefully provide you will some motivation to keep trucking along with your own creative pursuits, however embarrassing and mediocre they may be. 

The first reason (1) why it’s better to write a bad poem than no poem at all is that writing a good poem generally requires that you first write plenty of bad poems. With few, if any, exceptions, producing quality work in any creative domain requires considerable practice and many failed attempts. The recognition of this has prompted some creators to develop a practice of regular—sometimes daily—creative production. In this view, it’s important not to be too precious about one’s work. It’s more beneficial for an artist to paint, say, 20 small paintings in a year than one large painting that is intended to be a great. The idea is that you learn more from painting 20 small pieces than you do from painting one large piece; there are more opportunities for growth and progress in the former case than in the latter. Consider that we generally only see a small fraction of a great artist’s body of work—the success stories, the paintings that hang on museum walls, the works that are highly praised. However, if we were to look through their complete body of work, we would also see the abandoned canvases and failed or unexceptional results. The great works of most artists are generally preceded by countless hours of practice and experimentation. Alas, most of us cannot skip the grueling practice and experimentation stage of an art form and jump right to the timeless masterpiece stage.

To appreciate the force of this point, consider a real-life example drawn from a photography classroom. On the first day of class, Jerry Uelsmann (University of Florida), divided his film photography class into two groups. He told the first group, the quantity group, that they would be graded on how many photographs they produced; one “hundred photos would rate an A, ninety photos a B, eighty photos a C, and so on.” He told the second group, the quality group, that they would be graded on the quality or excellence of their work, and that they only had to submit a single photograph. To get an A, the photograph had to be nearly perfect. At the end of the semester, what Uelsmann discovered to his surprise was that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. Whereas the quality group spent most of their time speculating about how to produce the perfect photograph, the quantity group produced hundreds of photographs, experimenting with lighting, composition, darkroom techniques, etc. along the way [https://jamesclear.com/repetitions]. * While it would be a mistake to draw any firm conclusions from a single piece of anecdotal evidence, this case is helpful in illustrating how a creative practice can contribute to the improvement of one’s skills and creative output.

The second reason (2) for plodding along with your mediocre creative pursuits is that we gain a host of psychological benefits from engaging in creative work. And most of these benefits do not depend upon the quality of the work itself. It’s the process, not the final product, that matters. For one thing, we know that it can be deeply cathartic to get something out of oneself in the form of a song, poem, or painting. Pent up feelings of frustration, sadness, or fear can be isolating and debilitating; they often prompt us to withdraw from others and become prisoners of our minds’ interiors. Releasing them through acts of creative expression is often liberating and can lighten a burdensome cognitive-emotional load. Engaging in creative work, such as drawing, can also induce a relaxed and mindful state, thereby quieting an overactive central nervous system. Indeed, author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practices, Sharon Salzberg, believes that making art can itself be a form of meditation (Your Brain on Art).

Thirdly (3), a work of art is a way of becoming oneself or of finding out who one is. We are often passive participants of life. And we rarely have time to pause and make something in a free and open space. We are hampered by habit and bogged down by the drudgery of daily life. But when we engage in creative activity, we give a kind of physical reality to what is within us. And through the process of doing this, we often discover something about who we are. To be sure, as the existentialists would have it, we define ourselves through all our actions, not just the creative ones or those identified as art. However, works of art, which are created in a space of freedom and openness, often have their source in our deeper nature. A musician might write a song that reflects their sense of style, aesthetic sensibility, emotional state, personal history, or cognitive stance toward their inner experience or the external world. Upon listening to it, they will often see something of their own self in it—something that grew out of their subjective experience or the neglected wellsprings of their own minds.

This is one of the reasons why making art of any kind can be so rewarding. Author Kurt Vonnegut captured this insight in a well-known letter that he wrote to a classroom of students. In 2006, students of a New York City English teacher, Ms. Lockwood, asked her students to write to their favorite author and persuade them to visit the school. Vonnegut was the only author to respond to the students. Although he did not visit the school, he responded in a letter with advice about how to live a fulfilling life. He instructed them to practice “any art—music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage—no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.” As Vonnegut notes here, there is a certain thrill associated with creating—with giving birth, as it were—to something unique that grows out of oneself. Doing this can be tremendously uplifting, even if the final product isn’t any good. Vonnegut encourages the students not to worry about the quality of the result. Later in the letter, as homework for that evening, he instructs the students to write, and then destroy, a six-line rhyming poem. Even though the poems will be destroyed, their creators will be “gloriously rewarded,” for their souls will have grown.

Relatedly, contemplating our own works of art can provide us with a kind of personal insight or self-understanding. We often take our art to reflect something important about who we are; in some cases, it explores feelings, thoughts, or experiences that had not previously been expressed. To be sure, this contemplation can take place at various stages of the creative process. It may take place at the very beginning of the process when we first consider what we will create, throughout the process as we try to adjust the work according to our creative vision, or at the end as we assess what we have created. When we reflect upon our creation, at any point in the process, we may become consciously aware of what is going on within us.

Moving now beyond personal benefits, (5) you might move or affect someone with your art, even if it’s not particularly good. Personally, I have felt that a work of art was not a complete failure if it affected even one person (where this includes random strangers on the Internet). Some art theorists (defenders of the expression theory of art, in its various forms) believe that the function, or sine qua non, of works of art is to express feelings or ideas with others. While I don’t believe that works of art must do this, clearly many of them do, and we often create works of art for this purpose. These works of art—these acts of expression—often move others who can relate to them. Indeed, in some cases, our own acts of creative self-discovery can assist others in their attempts at self-understanding. And so, even if your art affects just one person, you can feel satisfied that it was not created in vain.

Finally, (6) the world is more colorful, varied, and interesting when everyone—not just an elite group of experts or geniuses—makes art. In my view, few experiences are more uplifting and inspirational than walking through a children’s art show or watching a group of young students perform in a play or orchestra concert. Although the work or performance may be imperfect, there is a freshness, authenticity, and beauty in what is produced. On such occasions, we find ourselves in the presence of something fragile and deeply human. And just as we take the life of each human being to be precious and valuable, so also should we look upon their art – which is the unique voice of a vulnerable, sensitive, and statistically improbable creature—as something special that matters. We should be open and receptive to its significance and, at times, elusive or recalcitrant beauty.

Writer and clergyman, Henry van Dyke, urged us to use what talents we possess, for “the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang the best.” Van Dyke, who encourages here a kind of democratization of art, recognized that we all have a song to contribute to the great and varied forest of human creation. You do not need the voice or lung capacity of Adele or Luciano Pavarotti to sing; you can be a Bob Dylan or Tom Waits.

To sum up, for reasons of self and world, you should continue with your creative endeavors. Even if your work is trite, uninspiring, dull, jarring, or lacking in technical skill, you should produce it anyway; there is much to gain in the present moment and throughout a lifetime from a creative practice. The process itself—the journey—can be deeply meaningful and enriching. As a creator, you should worry less about the quality of each individual piece and focus instead about cultivating a creative practice. The world is more varied, colorful, and interesting with your art in it. And you, as its creator, will live a more joyful and fulfilling life by exercising your God-like ability to create something new that reflects the world and yourself.

*This case is cited by James Clear on his blog and in his book, Atomic Habits, but originally appears in Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orlan

Artificial Intelligence Invades the Artworld, Part (5): Is the Use of AI Reference Material Deceptive or Inauthentic?

Image: Always Drowning

Julie Kirsch via DALLE-2

The use of artificial technology is presenting artists with new creative possibilities. As I explained in my last post, some artists now make art using AI art generators alone, whereas others incorporate AI-generated images into their artistic process, using the image as a sketch or reference photo to work from. The technology raises several philosophical questions, some of which I have already explored in earlier posts. In this post, I want to consider whether using AI in the art making process is a form of cheating or inauthenticity. In answering this question, I will compare the use of an AI art generator with the use of reference materials, including photographs and the work of other artists. Ultimately, I will show that even if the use of an AI generator is not a form of cheating, it may amount to a kind of misrepresentation of one’s abilities. Still, even this claim may lose force as AI becomes increasingly popular and our assumptions about creative work change. If we no longer assume that artists conceive of their work on their own, then they won’t mislead us by integrating AI into their artmaking process.

Let us begin with a thought experiment. Tabitha is an artist who lives and works in NYC. She is trying to finish a series of paintings for her first solo show that will take place three months from now. Money is tight and she is struggling to pay down her student loan from art school. She shares a small studio with two other artists in Brooklyn, Alice and Damien. Of the three artists, Alice is the star. She is in perpetual motion and her mind is always brimming with brilliant new ideas. One day, while taking a coffee break in the studio, Tabitha pages through one of Alice’s many sketchbooks. She comes across one drawing that is particularly striking—an expressive female figure that is swimming toward the bottom of a dark pool of water. The image resonates with Tabitha, and she decided to use it for her own purposes. Without wasting any time, Tabitha pulls out her phone and takes a quick photo of the drawing. She is confident that this soon-to-be painting will save her show and help her cover the studio rental fee. Alice has so many sketchbooks—so many ideas—that she will never suspect Tabitha of using one of her sketches. And, anyway, how could Alice ever prove that Tabitha did not come up with the image on her own?

Is there anything wrong with Tabitha’s use of Alice’s idea? We might find Tabitha’s use of Alice’s drawing problematic for several reasons. In the first place, most people would accuse Tabitha of stealing Alice’s idea; it is a fairly uncontroversial example of intellectual or artistic theft. And we may view this act of stealing as morally problematic because, among other things, Tabitha may benefit in various ways from Alice’s inventiveness. If Tabitha uses Alice’s idea and presents it to the public first, then she will receive the praise and accolades that should have been bestowed upon Alice. She is robbing Alice of this good. Even if praise and accolades are not forthcoming, we may nevertheless believe that artists own the ideas or artworks that they produce. If Tabitha wanted to use Alice’s idea in her own work, then she should have requested permission to do so. And Alice, for her part, is always at liberty to disallow this use of her creative work.

Now let us revise this thought experiment slightly and replace Alice with an AI art generator. Accordingly, let us suppose that Tabitha is again preparing for an art show while struggling to pay down her student loan for art school. This time, however, she finds her inspiration in an AI art generator, and not in the sketch book of Alice. She plugs a string of search terms into, say, DALLE-2 and is provided with the image that will serve as the skeleton of her painting. How does this case, the Tabitha-DALLE-2 case, differ from the Tabitha-Alice case just considered? Importantly, in this case, Tabitha is not using the idea of another artist who owns their own work. And so, we cannot accuse her of intellectual theft. Putting aside worries of scraping, or the often morally problematic way in which AI databases are formed, she does not appear to be harming another person. However, she is using the work of a machine, an AI, as the basis of her finished painting. It might seem, therefore, that her work is not entirely her own.

When we praise an artist for their work, we are often praising them for their inventiveness. Someone, a prospective art buyer, say, may admire Tabitha’s painting, not for its technical qualities, but for its apparent inventiveness—for the imagination that conceived of the piece. If Tabitha derived her idea from an AI, then an art buyer’s praise of her may seem misplaced. Her imagination did not conceive of the piece; rather, the AI did. Many of us take works of art to be valuable insofar as they express something special and unique about the artist. They grow out of the artist’s mind or imagination, as it were; they are products of the artist’s creative genius. An art buyer may be less impressed by a work of art if they discovered that it was conceived of by an AI. Relatedly, it might seem as though Tabitha is guilty of a kind of misrepresentation or inauthenticity by creating a work of art based upon an AI’s “idea.”

A defender of Tabitha might respond here by pointing out that not all works of art come from the imagination and we admire more in a work of art than just its imaginative quality. We admire plenty of representational painters who paint still lifes, landscapes, and portraits from life. When painting from life, a painter may exercise great skill in deciding what to paint and how to paint it, carefully controlling the light and composition. And after decisions about lighting and composition are made, and the painting process begins, they may exercise expertise in terms of accuracy, brushwork, texture, etc. It is also common for artists to paint the same subject matter from photographs. While it is arguably more difficult to paint from life (insofar as it involves translating something in three dimensions onto a two-dimensional surface), we nevertheless appreciate works of art created from photographs. Indeed, most of the time, the artist is not simply trying to copy what they see in the photograph, but to interpret it and create a more beautiful and interesting version of it in their work. There is still much for the artist to do. If all this is true, then using an AI-generated reference image may seem to be no different from using a run-of-the mill photographic reference image. (To be sure, concerns about cheating and inauthenticity arise if an artist is using another person’s photographs without their permission. Even though an artist may not simply copy a photograph in their painting, they must nevertheless request the owner’s permission to use the photograph.)

A defender of Tabitha (in the Tabitha-DALLE-2 case) may also point out that, although she did not conceive of the idea entirely on her own, she guided the process by way of the search terms she chose. When a person uses an AI-art-generator, they must have some idea of what they—in cooperation with the AI—would like to create. For some artists, using an AI generator is akin to sketching – a way of exploring different ways of handling an initial idea. And, of course, Tabitha also created the final piece—painted the final image—based upon the “sketch” that DALLE-2 provided her with. Even if her work is largely derivative, she must have a certain set of skills and abilities to do even this.

I pointed out in an earlier post that we admire different forms of art for different reasons. We should bear this in mind in this context as well. What we admire in representational art – a landscape, still life, or portrait—may be different from what we admire in a work of the imagination. Often what we admire in the work of imagination is the concept or idea—the inventiveness of the artist in dreaming up an image. To be sure, we may admire much else in the piece as well, including its believability and execution, but the concept or idea may be given greater weight. If a lover of Salvador Dali’s art discovered that not he, but an AI, conceived of The Persistence of Memory, they would likely think differently of it (and him), even if he is the one who translated the idea into paint. And if this fan of Dali discovered that many or most of his works were not conceived of by him, they would likely revise their overall assessment of him as an artist. They would probably also feel duped.

Now, an artist whose work appears to be the product of their own imagination does not explicitly say as much to the viewer. Instead, the viewer makes this inference on the basis of what they see—the apparent inventiveness in the image itself. What the viewer knows about the artworld, and the context surrounding the artist, also informs this assumption. We might, therefore, doubt that an artist is guilty of any kind of misrepresentation since they, other things being equal, make no claims about the art’s origin. They are simply in the business of making art. In this view, they would only be guilty of misrepresentation if they denied, when asked, that they had an AI collaborator, or if they claimed that they conceived of the work wholly on their own.

Still, as the world changes, and AI becomes more integrated into the artmaking process, it is possible that viewers of art will no longer make this assumption. Perhaps, at some future time, we will pause to consider whether a human artist conceived of a piece on their own or with the help of an AI collaborator. We will not immediately assume that the artist dreamt up their work independently in the private chamber of their imagination. Instead, we may be inclined to ask questions about the artist and their creative practice—about whether they used any technology, including AI, in the production of their work. But we cannot always expect honest and forthcoming answers. In many spheres, AI makes deception and trickery easier than ever. And like a teacher who fails to spot an essay created using AI in the classroom, consumers of art may be fooled by a crafty artist who conceals their sources and true art-making process.

Artificial Intelligence Invades the Artworld, Part (4): A New Creative Tool for Artists?

Image: A Place for Tomorrow

Julie Kirsch via DALLE-2

In my last post, I considered whether AI art generators, like DALLE-2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, pose an existential threat to artists and other creative professionals. I argued that they do, and my treatment of new AI art-making technology was largely negative. But as is the case with most new forms of technology, its consequences are not all bad. In this post, I shift gears and look at positive ways in which artists are embracing this technology and incorporating it into their creative practice. Drawing from the extended mind theory in the philosophy of mind, I also explore the possibility that human beings may be merging with artificial intelligence and other forms of technology.

            As someone who already enjoys making pictures, I find DALLE-2, the art generator that I have experimented with, to be a lot of fun to use. It has an entertaining, game-like quality and involves an element of the unexpected. While you can influence the imagery that the generator produces by way of text prompts, you cannot control it in the way that you can an oil painting or graphite drawing. Sometimes you are disappointed by what it produces, but at other times you are delighted and inspired by its “inventiveness.” The challenge is to tame what is not completely under your control by mastering the language of text prompts. Through its use, which is now widespread, this technology has brought joy to countless people who would not otherwise be in the image-making business. It’s not difficult to appreciate the technology’s appeal. As Kevin Kelly explains, people are attracted to it simply because they like to look at pretty pictures: 

“Like flames in a campfire, the light patterns are mesmerizing. They never repeat themselves; they surprise, again and again. They depict scenes no one has witnessed before or can even imagine, and they are expertly composed. It’s a similar pleasure to exploring a video game world, or paging through an art book. There is a real beauty to their creativity, and we stare much in the way we might appreciate a great art show or museum. In fact, viewing a parade of generated images is very much like visiting a personal museum—but in this case, the walls are full of art we ask for (“Picture Limitless Creativity at Your Fingertips”).”

— Kevin Kelly

In this way, the technology has ushered in a kind of democratization of image-making. People who would be too intimidated, insecure, or just plain lazy to pick up a pencil or paintbrush can use DALLE-2 and other AI art generators to produce images that are unique and responsive to their feelings, experiences, and preference.

           Many professional artists have embraced developments in artificial intelligence in various forms as well. Artist Refik Anadol, for example, has integrated machine learning and data visualization methods into his technically and aesthetically impressive data paintings. His piece, Coral, is the product of over 100 million coral images of raw data. The artwork is the visualization of this data on a 40 by 40-inch screen—various forms of coral continuously ebb and flow into others (PBS). He created this piece, which was displayed at the World Economic Forum 2023, for the purpose of raising awareness about climate change. Unlike the casual DALLE-2 user, Anadol did not simply plug in a few descriptive text prompts into an art generator. Instead, he and the team of experts working in his studio (including computer and data scientists, engineers, researchers, and designers) collected the data themselves and translated it into the final piece using programs that they created and trained. Compiling the dataset alone was a years-long project (PBS/Refki Anadol). It is also worth noting Anadol and his team only use “ethically sourced” data that they themselves collect; that is, they do not “scrape” or steal images from other artists on the Internet when compiling their datasets (PBS). As Anadol sees it, his data paintings involve a collaboration between the human artist and the machine. In his view, the integration of AI into the artworld as a “beautiful movement” that brings art, science, and technology together; it is something that we should embrace since we are “getting closer to machines every single day.”

             Anadol is not alone in sourcing his own images for his projects. Artist Sougwen Chung, who is also interested in human-machine interactions, designed and built her own AI robots to serve as art-making collaborators. Her early robots, all “Dougs” for “Drawing Operations Unit, Generation (followed by a number)” (Kaufman), were all trained on about 20 years of her own drawings. A more recent Doug, Doug 4, is connected to her via brain-wave data. Chung’s robots do not simply copy her drawings but offer new interpretations of her style in response to the dataset that they have been fed. In collaborating on a new painting, the robot responds to Chung, and Chung to the robot. They often do this in front of a live audience as performance art, the finished works selling for more than $131,000 (Kaufman).

            Chung’s upbringing involved a synthesis of art and technology; her mother was a computer programmer and her father an opera singer. She played the violin and piano as a child and started coding and building websites in grade school (Kaufman). Chung is interested in exploring the interactions between smart technology and human beings. She does not subscribe to the various dystopian AI narratives that we often hear and is always looking for new ways to push her art and technology projects forward (Kaufman). She welcomes the technology and believes that interactions with AI devices, such as robots, provide us with new possibilities for creativity (TED).

            Like Anadol and Chung, some high-profile artists embrace artificial intelligence in a way that goes beyond the causal use of mainstream AI generators like DALLE-2. Indeed, they are researchers as much as they are artists; often working with teams of experts, their technological accomplishments are as impressive as their artistic ones. But less tech savvy artists are also finding ways to integrate the new technology into their practice. For some artists, AI art generators, like DALLE-2, play a role in brainstorming or working through an idea. If an artist is not sure how to approach a piece, they can play around with it in an AI art generator. If an artist is interested in painting, say, a train crossing over a foggy river, they can plug these words into DALLE-2 (as text prompts) and see what it produces. In this way, the generator provides artists with materials to work with – “ideas” to explore in the creative process. The images that it produces may play the role that sketches or reference photos traditionally do in refining an idea or preparing for a new piece.

            More dramatically, some theorists may take artists to be merging with the new AI technology that they have adopted, particularly if the artists in question consistently use a generator in their creative process. In the philosophy of mind, the extended mind thesis claims that the mind can extend beyond the skull to include external objects, such as smart phones and notepads, which play a regular role in our mental processing. In this view, associated with the work of Andy Clark and David Chalmers, a person’s iPhone becomes part of their mind when they offload memories, and thereby cognitive tasks, to it; in such cases, the iPhone plays a role in their mental processing that used to be played by the brain. While I do not take this view literally, I think that it provides us with a helpful way of thinking about the contribution that technology makes to our mental lives. Artists are “merging” with technology insofar as they are offloading imaginative tasks to AI art generators.

             To appreciate the force of this point, compare how an AI generated image is produced with how a traditional artist’s sketch is produced. An artist who is formulating an idea for a painting may create a series of preliminary sketches. In these sketches, the artist may play around with value, texture, composition, and so forth. But importantly, the artist is the creative agent who produces and conceives of these sketches; the artist dreams them up in their imagination. In comparison, when an artist uses an AI art generator, the AI art generator is the one that “makes the magic happen,” as I put it in an earlier post, and produces the imagery in response to text prompts. In this way, the AI art generator is stepping in for the human imagination and producing an image, or series of images, in response to text prompts.

If we give this a positive spin, then we may view this technology as providing artists with new possibilities for creativity, as Chung might put it. We can integrate machines into our creative process by offloading some of the imaginative work to them. We may even expand our imaginative capacities by doing this, for the machine may prompt us to take our initial idea in a new and unexpected direction. After reviewing the images that an AI art generator produces, an artist may revise their preliminary drawing and then set about working on the final piece. In this scenario, what the AI art generator produces is not the finished work, but new reference material from which to work. And given how common it is for artists to work from reference materials, this use of AI is nothing new or alarming.

It is possible that, in the future, technology like this will take the form of a neural implant, in which case the extended mind thesis will become even more compelling. Our own carbon-based brains will begin to mingle more closely with silicon-based implants. Neural implants already do exist to assist human beings in various ways. Incredibly, in 2022, Ujwal Chaudhary et al. reported that they had trained a man with CLIS (completely locked-in syndrome) to communicate via a neural implant simply by thinking. Their study showed that it is possible for someone who is completely paralyzed to communicate by using “brain-based volitional communication” (1). This technology will undoubtedly improve and expand in the years to come.

In my next AI post, I take up the issue of cheating and authenticity in art. We have already seen that AI art generators are beginning to play a role in the creative process of many artists. The use of this technology raises questions about what constitutes cheating in the art making process. In grappling with this issue, I will compare the way that an artist might use an AI art generator with the ways in which they use other tools and resources, such as reference images and Photoshop.

Works Cited:  

Chaudhary, U., Vlachos, I., Zimmermann, J.B. et al. “Spelling Interface Using Intracortical Signals in a Completely Locked-in Patient Enabled via Auditory Neurofeedback training.” Nat Commun 13, 1236 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28859-8

Chung, Sougwen. “Why I Draw with Robots.” TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/sougwen_chung_why_i_draw_with_robots?language=en. Accessed July 2, 2023.

Kaufman, Sarah L. “Artist Sougwen Chung Wanted Collaborators. So She Designed and Built Her Own AI Robots.” Washington Post. Nov. 5, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/05/ai-artificial-intelligence-art-sougwen-chung/. Accessed July 2, 2023.

Kelly, Kevin. “Picture Limitless Creativity at Your Fingertips.” Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/picture-limitless-creativity-ai-image-generators/. November 17, 2022. Accessed June 24, 2023.

“Use of Artificial Intelligence Generates Questions about the Future of Art,” PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/use-of-artificial-intelligence-generates-questions-about-the-future-of-art. May 2, 2023. Accessed June 24, 2023.

Artificial Intelligence Invades the Artworld, Part 3: An Existential Threat to Artists?

Image: Deflated

Julie Kirsch via DALLE-2 

Many of us are full of uncertainty, if not doom and gloom, in response to developments in artificial intelligence. We fear that technology, like ChatGPT, will undermine higher education and eliminate jobs for journalists, grant writers, and computer programmers. Moreover, as this technology improves and expands, it could pose an even greater threat to our economy and way of life. Those working in the arts are not immune to these threats. We often think of the arts as involving all that is uniquely human—deep and complex emotions, creative or original compositions, and the expression of own inner experiences. But AI art generators like DALLE-2, have prompted many of us to wonder whether even this near sacred aspect of human life will be overtaken by AI. As captain of team doom and gloom myself, I do not take these fears to be groundless or exaggerated. In what follows, I will look at how the AI revolution may play out and adversely affect artists and other creative professionals in the near and distant future.

Let me begin by stating the obvious: what we are seeing is just the beginning of the AI revolution. We are currently interacting with an early version of the technology. We should expect that subsequent versions will be far superior to what we see now. In my last post, I commented upon the current limitations of the technology and the sometimes-cartoonish quality of the images that it produces. Future iterations of the technology will undoubtedly address these limitations, producing increasingly impressive and nuanced imagery.

As the technology improves, it will likely become increasingly popular with ordinary folk as well as those in the business sector. In some respects, this may appear to be a good thing – a boon for small business owners who might not have the funds to hire a graphic designer. But as businesses of various stripes view the use of the technology as another cost-cutting measure—a way to lower expenses and increase profits—jobs for graphic designers will disappear. And, for similar reasons, jobs for photographers, illustrators, etc., will also disappear. Why would a corporation hire a graphic designer when they can use an AI art generator for little to no cost? Why would a publishing company hire an illustrator when they can create their own illustrations by plugging text prompts into a free or inexpensive app?

To be sure, it is possible that those making business decisions of this sort will be motivated by the goodness of their hearts to do the right thing and support struggling artists, but this seems unlikely. That’s not how corporations operate. Heck, that’s not even how most ordinary people operate. We gleefully buy environmentally destructive clothing from underpaid, ill-treated workers because it’s less expensive than clothing made from organic cotton by appropriately paid workers who are treated with decency. And it’s common for the person on the street to purchase a mass-produced piece of artwork from TJ Maxx or Target because they do not want to dole out the cash for an original work of art by a living artist (even if they can afford to do so). Moreover, they buy the mass-produced wall decor knowing that a professional artist’s livelihood depends upon their ability to sell their work. There are, of course, countless exceptions, but we must not have unrealistic expectations of our fellow humans (and of ourselves).

All of this seems especially problematic when we consider that AI art generators are trained upon the original works of art that are fed to them by artists and creative professionals that are struggling to hang on. After the AI learns the style of a certain illustrator, it becomes possible for it to produce a new work in that style, thereby rendering the living, breathing artist otiose. This has prompted some creative professionals to ban together in opposition to this technology. Led by writer and illustrator, Molly Crabapple, a group of artists, writers, and cultural luminaries published an open letter, urging companies to boycott the use of AI-generated images (Lawson-Tancred). The letter describes AI art as vampirical, “feasting on past generations of artwork even as it sucks the lifeblood from living artists” (Center for Artistic Inquiry and Reporting). It argues that the use of AI-generated images will boost the profits of our wealthy corporate overlords while making it nearly impossible for professional human illustrators to survive. Unless we intervene, only a small group of elite artists will remain in business, selling their work “as a kind of luxury status symbol.”

Importantly, the letter asks us to consider what this will mean for our culture—for humanity—and not just for the professional creatives that eliminates. It warns that, unless we intervene, the technology will “impoverish our visual culture.” We, as consumers, “will be trained to accept this art-looking art, but the ingenuity, the personal vision, the individual sensibility, the humanity will be missing” (Center for Artistic Inquiry and Reporting).

I don’t take the letter to be alarmist, or the claims to be an exaggeration, especially since AI-generated illustrations are already in print. The only point about which I would quibble is the claim that AI-generated art would lack “wit.” Some AI art can indeed be quite “clever.” And as forms of artificial intelligence become increasingly sophisticated and humanlike, we may be more willing to use terms like “wit” to describe its inventions. But this raises philosophical questions that, while important, are beyond the scope of this post. (I will perhaps take them up another time.) The letter is right, of course, in claiming that imagery produced by an AI will lack a personal vision or individual sensibility. What many of us love and cherish in a work of art—an illustration, drawing, painting, or photograph—is just this. While an AI art generator may rapidly produce illustrations that resemble Crabapple’s, it may matter a great deal to me that I have the real thing—that Crabapple’s brain produced it.

Many of us value works of art, not just because of their surface value or qualities, but because of their connection to real, flesh and blood human beings. This may in part be because we love and cherish human beings themselves; we are concerned and fascinated by them. While we may be intrigued by paintings that resemble Van Gogh’s, or by paintings that he might have created, we care more about the paintings that he actually did create with his own body and mind—paintings connected to his own life story, heart, and hand. This also accounts for why some of us want, or would love, to own original paintings by artists whom we admire. While art buyers may in some cases want an artist’s original work for reasons of status, or because they admire the shear physicality of the piece (brushwork, texture, luminosity, etc.), in other cases they may want the original for reasons that are almost sentimental or romantic. We may value an original work of art because, like an ancient relic or a lover’s lock of hair, it is a precious part of a one-of-a-kind, statistically improbable, flesh and blood life.  

Each time that we trade what is beautiful, meaningful, and hard for what is hollow, cheap, and expedient, the world becomes a little bit less good. When we send a convenient text message in place of a hand-written thank you letter, we deprive the world of something special—something of greater value. When corporations replace human illustrators with AIs, thereby rendering human illustrators extinct, they change the structure and substance of the world. They make it less good.

I am not suggesting here that human beings would cease to be creative if AIs replaced all creative professionals. Human beings would continue to be creative and imaginative. However, when creative and imaginative human beings cannot devote themselves to their craft or calling in the way that a professional can, their ability to produce works of high quality is impaired.  When would-be illustrators work 50 hours per week to pay their bills, only finding time to create on Sundays between 2 and 4pm, their ability to produce works of quality is significantly diminished. There is no time left at the end of the week, or at the end of a life, to hone one’s skills, master a craft, or cultivate a creative vision.

Now, fears have long existed that machines will overtake human beings and leave us destitute and unemployed. The rejoinder has always been that as certain jobs are eliminated, others (often better and more fulfilling ones) are created. But it would, I think, be foolish to accept this as an a priori truth. In the past, this may have been true because jobs that required uniquely human talents and abilities always survived. But recent advances in AI suggest that jobs that require skills that many of us take to be quintessentially human, may be taken over by AIs. And after that happens, what is left?

In keeping with doom and gloom spirit of this post, I would like to end with one final existential fear. After AI art generators improve, and can do what we do with astonishing speed and skill, what will we make of ourselves and our own lives? When they can write poetry, paint portraits (with robotic arms, perhaps), and compose symphonies in a way that seems to dwarf our own accomplishments, will we come to see our lives as futile? Will we no longer bother to create and share our visions and longings with each other in the form of art? Will we be overcome by a sense of despair and meaninglessness? I suppose that there will be new drugs on the market to treat us for that.

I can say, though, that when I started to take piano lessons at the age of 45, it was not so that I could be the next Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Martha Argerich. Instead, I decided to take up the piano because I wanted to learn more about music, explore a new form of personal expression, and cultivate a different potential. Similarly, many people play chess knowing that there is a computer out there that can beat them – that they will never outsmart an AI. We don’t have to be the best at something to find it worth doing. And while we are here on Earth, we must do something. I nevertheless fear that, should AI surpass us in nearly every respect, many of us will find life to be futile and meaningless; we just won’t bother to do what AI can do better and faster. (To be sure, another possibility is that we ourselves will merge with AI in ways that Ray Kurzweil envisions, becoming cognitively enhanced superhumans.)

If AI surpasses us in art, music, and poetry, perhaps we will find comfort in our shared finitude and fragility. We will have compassion for each other, and want to connect with each other, not because we are all the best at what we do, but because we are given a hard lot, and each have a unique perspective on how we manage the ordeal.

Readers of this blog can expect my next post to be more optimistic than this one! I want to look at some of the ways that artists are embracing developments in AI and incorporating them into their art-making practice.

Works Cited:

Lawson-Tancred, Jo. “Molly Crabapple Has Posted an Open Letter by 1,000 Cultural Luminaries Urging Publishers to Restrict the Use of ‘Vampirical’ A.I.-Generated Images.” Artnet News. May 3, 2023. Accessed June 23, 2023.

“Restrict AI Illustration from Publishing: An Open Letter,” Center for Artistic Inquiry and Reporting, May 2, 2023. Accessed June 24, 2023.

Artificial Intelligence Invades the Artworld, Part 2: Who Is the Artist?

Image: Let the Children Play

Julie Kirsch via DALLE-2

Let us assume for the sake of argument that AI-generated imagery is art. If this is true, who is the artist? The AI generator or the person who uses the AI generator? Neither? Both? Let us explore this question by considering a thought experiment. Amy fashions herself an artist but often finds herself lacking in imagination and inventiveness. She has tried to cultivate her creative powers in various ways—even experimenting with marijuana and psilocybin—but finds herself sadly uninspired. In comparison with Amy, Amy’s younger brother, Felix, is wildly creative and imaginative. Although he creates artwork for fun, it is not his true passion. He is pursuing a career as a science researcher and has no interest in making his own artwork public. He also loves his sister dearly and would do almost anything to help her. Amy would like to submit a piece to an upcoming show and competition for emerging artists but is struggling to come up with something that is unique and technically impressive. She asks Felix if he might help her develop a piece for the show.

They meet over a series of days, Amy presenting Felix with a set of word prompts, and Felix translating these into imagery. Amy asks Felix to create something about “nostalgia,” “childhood,” and “friendship.” Felix created a pen sketch of two young friends walking away from each other with one of the friends, as an older person, looking upon the scene with a slightly melancholic expression. “That’s perfect… you just hit the nail on the head…. Now paint this in cool but muted watercolors and I will be all set. Thank you! You knew just how to put on to paper what I was struggling to say!” Amy submits the piece to a local art competition and wins first place. This helps her budding art career tremendously. She continues to pursue her dreams as an artist with Felix by her side, giving visual expression to her idea prompts.

How does Amy’s use of Felix resemble an artist’s use of an AI art generator? It might be argued that Amy’s use of Felix is different from an artist’s use of an AI art generator insofar as Felix is human and AI art generators are not. While this is undoubtedly the case, we might wonder what, if anything, hangs on Felix’s humanness. There might be moral, social, and even legal issues that surround Amy’s use of Felix, but in both cases the agent as artist is using the “intelligence,” or “creativity,” of something (or someone) external to her for the purpose of producing a work of art that is inspired by word prompts. My suspicion is that many of us would say that Felix, not Amy, created the work of art that she submitted to the art competition. And if, in the Amy-Felix case, we want to say that Felix is the artist who created the painting that he made, then why should we not also say that the AI art generator is the artist, or partial creator, of the art that it produces via its machine learning algorithms?

One problem with claiming that AI art generators are artists or creators is that AI generators are not even agents with mental states, goals, desires, and so forth. We generally reserve the term “artist” for agents. We can, of course, imagine a revised version of this case in which Felix is not a human brother but an intelligent robot with mental states. In this version of the case, we might be more prepared to say that that the AI is an artist. So, perhaps we should think of AI art generators in their current manifestation as quasi-artists or partial creators of the work that they generate. Alternatively, we might devise a new term to encapsulate the causal role that they play (qua non-agents) in the production of artwork through interactions with a user. Putting these issues aside, the Amy-Felix thought experiment shows that Amy’s role in creating a work of art is different from, and arguably more limited than, Van Gogh’s was, for example, in painting The Starry Night. Even if the AI art generator is not an agent or artist, it nevertheless contributes causally to a significant portion of the finished work.

If we make this move, then what should we say about photographers? Are photographers mere partial authors of the work that they create? And is the camera best understood as a quasi-artist? When we compare a Frida Kahlo self-portrait with, say, one of Cindy Sherman’s untitled film stills, I think that we do recognize an important difference between the two. In the case of photography, the camera, like the AI art generator, makes an important causal contribution to the finished work. Still, there is much left for the photographer to do. While the camera may be an astute observer, it is lacking in creativity and imagination, among other cognitive abilities. The photographer not only conceives of the piece, but also controls the lighting, composition, and so forth. The user of an AI art generator, it seems, does less of what the photographer does. After the user enters word prompts into the AI art generator, the AI art generator takes over –makes the magic happen—and produces its results, i.e., a set of images.

Of course, it is even more jarring for us to refer to a camera as a quasi-artist than it is for us to refer to an AI art generator as one. Perhaps as our tools become more human-like—more intelligent and creative—we are more inclined to think of them as agents, authors, artists, or creators. In comparison with AI art generators, cameras may seem “dumb” and unsophisticated. If, in the future, we have the ability to use intelligent robots to create art – robots whose imagery producing powers are accompanied by mental states like our own – then we might be more willing to grant them author, artist, or creator status.

None of this is to deny that users play an important role in creating the images produced by AI art generators. I thought that it would be wise, in writing this series of posts, to give the technology a try for myself. I began with Midjourney, which is attached to Discord, but could not tolerate the interface or figure out how to get started or even where to go from the Discord landing page. (This is perhaps because I am old, impatient, and not very tech savvy.) I found DALLE-2 to be comparatively straightforward and easy to use. However, having researched award-winning works of AI generated art for these blog posts, I was astonished to see how awful my own AI artworks were in comparison. I find Jason Allen’s Théâtre D'opéra Spatial to be truly beautiful and inspiring; it contains multiple figures, a highly detailed composition, and dramatic lighting. The images that I produced via DALLE-2 (which accompany these blog posts) were not of the same caliber. I found that the figures that DALLE-2 generated often had blurry and contorted faces. (See, for example, the faces of the children in the image accompanying this post.) And the images had a tacky and almost cartoonish quality about them. Digital artists who use DALLE-2 and other AI art generators, often edit and improve the images on Photoshop. As a non-digital artist myself, I did not have the ability to do this.

After playing around with DALLE-2 for even a few minutes, I realized that one could be better or worse at producing images by understanding which prompts to use. And so, to be a really great AI artist, one would nevertheless need to possess right set of skills and abilities.

One upshot of this discussion is that different forms of art require different skills and abilities. One could be an excellent oil painter but a terrible photographer; one could be an expert charcoal artist, but a mediocre AI artist. And thus, for many purposes, it may be wise to keep the categories of art separate. For example, it may not be fair, or in our in the best interests of the artworld, to allow AI artists to compete for prizes or recognition with photographers. While there may be a place for AI art in the world, it may not be in the same competitions and shows as photographers. This is nothing new. Many art competitions are limited to a single medium and have strict submission requirements. For example, a watercolor competition may refuse to accept or consider watercolor paintings that are “impure” insofar as they contain colored pencil or gouache.

It also follows from this discussion that, even if AI generated images are art, the artists who created them may not be especially talented, skilled, and praiseworthy. Again, this is nothing new. We might embrace Fountain as a work of art without thinking that it took much talent or skill to produce. After all, Duchamp didn’t construct the urinal himself; he simply flipped it over and signed it. Similarly, a person might hastily splash some colorful paint on a canvas and call it art. They may be right that it is art even if it is not great art – even if it took virtually no talent to produce.

To sum things up, AI art leaves a significant amount of the art making process in the hands of the AI art generator. If an artist simply uses an AI art generator, and does nothing more to alter the image, then the AI is responsible for making almost all the magic happen, as I put it. For this reason, it would be wise to keep AI art separate from non-AI art for at least certain purposes. In my next post, I will consider whether the existence of AI art poses an existential threat to artists and creative professionals.

Someone to Keep Our Children Safe

I conceived of this piece, "Someone to Keep Our Children Safe," with a broken heart while mourning all the beautiful lives lost during the Uvalde school shooting. During the news coverage, I saw funerals with little white crosses decorated with colorful flowers for the deceased children. I integrated this imagery into my painting.

I imagined a loving and peaceful mother figure who could hold all the babies in her arms and keep them safe. I felt that - as a mother and human being - I/we let these children down, especially after reading transcripts of their pleas for help.

My heart continues to break for everyone affected by the shooting and gun violence in this country and throughout the world. I wish that I could have kept you safe that day Makenna Lee Elrod, Layla Salazar, Maranda Mathis, Nevaeh Bravo, Jose Manuel Flores Jr., Xavier Lopez, Tess Marie Mata, Rojelio Torres, Eliahna "Ellie" Amyah Garcia, Eliahna A. Torres, Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, Jackie Cazares, Uziyah Garcia, Jayce Carmelo Luevanos, Maite Yuleana Rodriguez, Jailah Nicole Silguero, Irma Garcia, Eva Mireles, Amerie Jo Garza, Alexandria "Lexi" Aniyah Rubio, Alithia Ramirez.

I send you my love and commitment to try to make this world a better and more peaceful place

Oil on 24 by 30 inch canavs

Available

Why I Stopped Painting After I Cleaned My Dining Room

I know what you are thinking, “Well, that’s a stupid reason to stop painting.” What can I say? We start and stop doing all kinds of things for any number of stupid reasons. But that’s part of what it means to be human, and the sooner we recognize this, the better. In some cases, we can use this insight—knowledge of our own irrationality—to hack our lives and gain better control over the decisions we make.

The truth is that I really didn’t stop painting altogether. It was more of a pause after painting consistently for some time. Not only was I on a roll with my painting, but I was making progress with my fledgling videography. I had everything set up at my dining room table and was ready to go at any moment. I could sit down at the table, with all my supplies in front of me, and turn my camera on. Bam! Time to paint and record. I enjoyed making videos because it gave me an opportunity to reflect upon, and learn from, my own painting process. And it was rewarding to view (in a time lapse recording) a painting session that lasted several hours unfold in a matter of minutes. Finally, I could put it all to music. I was new and not very good at making art videos. But I didn’t care; I was working toward my own personal goals and found it more enjoyable than I thought it would be. It was fun to teach this decaying dog brain new tricks.

I don’t have a proper studio at home. (Do I have a proper anything at home?) When I paint at home, it’s always in my basement or at the dining room table. When I am painting large, I do so in the basement. But, alas, the basement is the basement. In the winter, it gets very cold, and in the summer, it can be hot. It’s also messy down there and my easel is surrounded by weights, workout equipment, cleaning supplies, and shoes. And let’s not forget that all kinds of scary and loathsome creatures are lurking down there, including silverfish, slugs, and spiders. Finally, it’s dark and has poor ventilation due to the glass block windows that were installed when I move in. While the glass block windows keep the home invaders away, it seems like a safety violation to be trapped down there with no way out. What if there were a fire? Or an Anthrax attack? And so, when I can, I prefer to paint upstairs at the dining room table. It’s on the first floor with lots of natural light. I’m right next to the kitchen should I need snack or tea. Finally, it’s temperature controlled and far prettier than the basement.

However, painting at the dining room table also has its drawbacks. For one thing, while it’s playing the role of “art studio,” it cannot serve its function as a “dining” table. And it’s here that we confront the dilemma that I want to discuss in the rest of this post. Anyone who makes art at a dining room or kitchen table will be familiar with this one: If you paint at a dining table, you can either (1) set everything up before painting only to put it away when you are done, or you can (2) leave it there so that it’s always ready to go. While both systems are imperfect, I will now explain why I have resigned myself to the latter, (2).

Let’s start with (2): leave everything there so that it’s ready to go whenever you want to paint. What’s the problem here? Well, you basically lose your table. If there is another table in the house, this might not be an issue. In my own case, I have a small kitchen table that I can use for daily, informal, family meals. However, it is small and not suitable for guests. Therefore, if I can only use the small table, I cannot entertain. I cannot even have my parents over for dinner, which I like to do quite often. Even modest gatherings become impossible. The second problem with (2) is that, with art supplies and video equipment scattered all over the dining room, my house looks like a total disaster. It adds a level of chaos to the living space.

However, (1) is even more problematic. First of all, it is so much work. This is especially true if you want to record your session, for this entails rounding up all your supplies and setting up all the recording equipment. If you are retired, a full-time artist, or a person of leisure, this might not be a huge inconvenience. However, if you work and/or have children, you may only have short windows of time for creative activity. As someone who works a lot, and has two children, this is the case with me. Having everything always set up in one space is critical for my creative process. If I am unable to do this, I will be significantly less likely to create, for I simply won’t have the time. However, if everything is all set up in one place, then you can create even when you do not have a large window of time. Indeed, if you’re painting, and your palette is already set up, you can walk by, sit down for 20 minutes, and make a few adjustments to a problem area that you suddenly notice. You obviously won’t be doing this if a brief painting session requires setting things up from scratch every single time.

This brings me to the pause that I experienced in my painting/art making. In May, I had to do my annual share of entertaining that would involve the use of my dining room table. This meant that I would have to clear out and put away everything in my makeshift studio: lighting, phone stand, paints, pencils, etc. After doing this, my house really did look great! It was orderly and as close as it gets to spotless for a few days; it made me feel clear-minded and calm. But, as a result, I lost a lot of my painting momentum. I wasn’t creating as much. As I write this, I still haven’t fully reassembled my painting and recording setup. Admittedly, this is also due to the fact that I was finishing a book that needed to be completed by the end of the summer and started piano lessons. Nevertheless, having everything disassembled in my creative space, i.e., the dining room, really interfered with creative output. With so many other things going on, I really needed painting to be easy for me.

In my own experience, developing a regular art-making routine requires access to a space that is all set up. If I have to set everything up, and put it all away, before and after every session, then I just won’t create very much. Sad but true. This is in part because I have a crazy, busy life and am overwhelmed with responsibilities. But I think that most people—at least most adults—have lives like this. Alas, this is one of three reasons that I included in my earlier post about why people become less creative with age. So, my advice to people whose situation resembles my own is to find a place where you can set up a permanent, or semipermanent, makeshift studio—a corner, a table, etc. Just leave everything out so that it’s easy to create whenever you have even a short window of time. If you are simply drawing with, say, a pencil, an easier solution might be to keep all your supplies in a storage container that you can take out and put away as needed. This wouldn’t be much of a deterrent to engaging in creative work.

Recently, in the fields of psychology and scientifically based self-help, there has been a great deal of interest in habit. James Clear, for example, published a hugely popular book, Atomic Habits, on this theme. In trying to achieve goals, or bring about changes in one’s life, he recommends that one try to implement small, unambitious, or “atomic” habits. This, I think is good advice. In my own case, when I had a space set up for painting, I was able to paint frequently. I then fell into a routine or habit of regular creativity. This kind of thing tends to gain traction and momentum as it goes. It gets easier. You don’t have to think about your new activity,; you just do it. We get locked into a habit and then inertia takes hold.

When I cleaned up my dining room table in May, and put everything away, it really slowed down my creative output. But the experience alerted me to a few important facts: (1) that developing good habits (exercising, writing, practicing the piano, etc.) is enormously helpful in achieving one’s goals, (2) that it is very easy not to do hard and inconvenient things, and (3) that arranging one’s life and space to make hard things easier works.

Life is full of ordinary struggles. They are real. Most of us do not have the time and resources necessary to make our goals easily achievable. And so, we must accept tradeoffs and compromises. In my own case, I live in a pigsty of a house that will probably always be messy and dirty so that I have time to create. In fact, given my own lifestyle, having a big, fancy studio somewhere outside the house would probably not even help much. I work and have children, so taking off to spend hours in such a space would not really be an option. Therefore, like the rest of us, I need to cut myself some slack and do the best that I can. For me, this involves making the most of the short windows of creative time that I do have. It could be 45 minutes after dinner, and hour before my kids wake up, etc.

To make this possible, I need to engage in a bit of what economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein refer to as “choice architecture.” (See Nudge.). Thaler and Sunstein are largely interested in arrangements that make it easier for others to make good choices. For example, they advise companies to change the default rule that applies to enrollment in 401K (retirement) plans from an opt out to an opt in rule for the sake of their employees own financial best interests. The opt in rule would automatically enroll the employee in the plan, thereby committing them to make a certain monthly contribution. Typically, such plans will match a certain portion of an employee’s contribution; in such cases, it is generally in an employee’s long-term best interests to contribute to the plan at least as much as the company will match. Thus, if the company will match any contribution up to, say, 4%, then the employ should contribute at least 4% to plan. Now, if an an employee nevertheless prefers to opt out, which will generally be add odds with his or her own best interests, he or she can still do so. But since the default rule has changed, and opting out requires a bit of work, it becomes the harder option. As result, opt in (or automatic enrollment) plans result in greater employee retirement savings than do opt out plans (which require that employees sign up to make a monthly contribution). Employees benefit from compound interest, or what Albert Einstein purportedly referred to as “the eighth wonder of the world.” This, again, demonstrates the power of inertia; it takes a great deal of effort for anything, or anyone, to make us swerve from our paths.

One of the takeaways here is that, by manipulating ourselves in various ways, we can make it easier to do hard things. In the case of creative production, we can organize our spaces so that it is easier to draw or paint. Importantly, we can, and often do, exercise this kind of control over other aspects of our lives as well. It is notoriously hard to eat healthily and resist tempting snacks (e.g., potato chips) and desserts (e.g., ice cream). Aware of our own weakness, we might make healthy eating easier, and take control our space, by not bringing such temptations into the house in the first place, or, as we sometimes did in my childhood home, lock them up in a safe. Similarly, knowing that it is hard to exercise in the morning before work, especially if it requires the unbearably onerous task of getting changed, we might fall asleep in our workout clothing so that we are less likely to back out when we wake up.

Doing the things that we love—the things that bring meaning to our lives—often becomes more challenging when we age. In my own case, my living circumstances, and the structure of my busy life, make it hard to create. But I want to create. It is hard but rewarding. And, importantly, I care more about making art than I do about having a clean and orderly house. In fact, like many people, I care more about most things than I do about having a clean and orderly house. Alas, life is depressingly short. (Sorry, Seneca, we will have to agree to disagree here.) We often become increasingly aware of this as we age. Life is fleeting. There are so many things to do and explore—so many versions of ourselves to become— before our time is up. Having a messy dining room table, and often living in a state of chaos, is far from ideal. But it is one of the ways in which I make it easier for myself to do something that I find hard but rewarding: making consistent creative production part of my everyday life.

What strategies do you employ to make it easier for you to be creative?

The Creativity Mindset

It is not uncommon for a scientific or mathematical discovery to occur at an unexpected moment. We often refer to occasions on which this happens as “Eureka moments,” after the Greek polymath, Archimedes, who purportedly figured out how to calculate volume and density while in the bath. After this flash of insight, he repeatedly exclaimed “Eureka” while running naked through the streets of Syracuse. Similarly, Sir Isaac Newton is thought to have discovered gravity after an apple serendipitously fell upon his head (although there is reason to doubt the full truth of both stories). If only all discoveries befell us in such a seemingly effortless and convenient fashion (minus the head trauma, of course). But, in both cases, the discoveries in question likely came far less easily than might at first glance be imagined. After all, it is doubtful that the experience of bathing, or having an apple clonk me (or any other non-expert) on the head, would occasion any mathematical or scientific breakthroughs. Indeed, given my luck, the latter would only set me up for early onset dementia! Importantly, the discoveries of both Archimedes and Newton were preceded by considerable study and investigation. Their prior experiences and theoretical pursuits established the cognitive backdrop that made their sudden insights possible.

In addition to having the requisite knowledge or understanding to process their discoveries, both Newton and Archimedes had the right mindset for discovery. Their minds were mulling over their respective problems and maintained an openness to a solution. Interesting, Barbara Oakley, the researcher on how to learn mathematics whom I mentioned in my earlier post (“Three Reasons Why Creativity Decreases with Age”), instructs students to step away from a problem that they are struggling with instead of beating their heads against a door in frustration. Sometimes we are better able to solve a problem when we walk away from it, thereby creating some cognitive distance between the problem and ourselves. Still, even though we as conscious beings are not thinking about the problem, our minds are often doing so at an unconscious or sub-personal level. At such times, a solution might befall us when we least expect it. Like Archimedes and Newton, struggling math students have a problem on their minds and are very much open to its solution. We could say that they have the proper mindset for a sudden solution to befall them as they take a break and make themselves a snack or coffee. And, again, this is because they are preoccupied with the problem, if only at some unconscious level.

In 1619, as a young man traveling with the Dutch States Army, René Descartes had three famous dreams that influenced his vocation and philosophical thinking. We can be nearly certain that Descartes would not have had these dreams, and interpreted them as he did, had he not been well-versed in the sciences. Similarly, August Kekulé is thought to have discovered the ring structure of benzene after dreaming of a snake eating its own tail. His dream, like Descartes’, was precipitated by his own scientific preoccupations. Aware that dreaming can, as in these instances, be an occasion for profound insight, some scientists urge us to intentionally invoke a problem that we are struggling with before falling asleep; we can, in this way, invite a dream-induced solution upon ourselves—multitasking at its best! Deidre Barrett, author of The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists and Athletes Use Dreams for Creative Problem Solving—and How You Can, Too believes that we may have an increased ability to solve problems in dreams because our thinking is more creative. And this, she explains, is due to the fact that “the prefrontal lobes that control censorship are, on average, much less active during dreams.” By approaching sleep with the right thoughts, or state of mind, we too can exercise some indirect control over our dreaming lives. Crucially, though, we cannot expect to arrive at any brilliant conclusions to problems with which we are not preoccupied. These kinds of discoveries require the proper cognitive backdrop and mindset.

How does all this apply to creativity? Well, in the first place, science and mathematics both involve creativity and imaginative thinking. Given how these subjects are sometimes taught in grade school (at least in my Generation X experience), it is no wonder that we sometimes think of these fields as being completely devoid of creativity. Secondly, and more importantly for our purposes, creative thinking in the arts also benefits from having the right mindset, i.e., a creative mindset. Just as toiling over a mathematical puzzle may prompt a welcome but unanticipated insight, so also does a preoccupation with artistic creation prompt weird and wonderful ideas in the arts. Creativity involves a certain openness to the unbidden.

Sometimes those who do not create complain that they have no sudden flashes of creativity and wonder why. I think that the answer, in part, is that creative production is not on their minds in the way that it might be on the mind of an artist or creator. When one is in the habit of creating, or is determined to engage in creative work, one opens the mental floodgates to creative thinking. In my own life, there have been long stretches of time wherein I was not engaged in visually creative work. I won’t say that my life lacked creativity altogether; it is just that I was not visually creative. I was somewhat creative as a graduate student, but my creativity was directed at philosophical or intellectual problems. But I have noticed that, when I make a place for visual creativity in my life, I open myself up to an array of ideas that would otherwise never have existed.  

Think about it this way. When you are looking to buy a house, especially in a seller’s market, you will have lots of house-related thoughts. You will notice “for sale” signs that you would otherwise drive right by. When I was looking for a house, I remember thinking about things like ceiling height, house square footage, light fixtures, backyard fencing, etc. This makes sense. When you are looking for a house, thoughts of this kind become a priority. You want to find a house that satisfies your needs and preferences while also being within your budget. After my hunt for a house ended, my engagement with the world thankfully changed; “for sale” signs and open houses were no longer salient. They faded from my field of consciousness.

During times when I am visually creative and am active in the process of making works of art, ideas pop into my mind. I could be washing dishes, driving to work, or making dinner when a visual image suddenly appears to me like a gift from the creativity gods. (Experiences like this make it easy to understand how the ancient Greeks took this idea seriously, positing the existence of the Muses.) And then I might experience a certain degree of restlessness or anxiety until I can get it out. Making art can in this way can be cathartic. But I am sure that such ideas would not pop int my mind if I were not already in a creative space that was receptive to them. Just as all kinds of work gets done below the hood when you are trying to solve a mathematical problem, all kinds of work gets done below the hood when you have an established creative practice—a preoccupation with creating. Now, to be sure, this conclusion is not the result of any empirical data. It is nevertheless compatible with much human experience, including my own, and seems almost obvious.

Aristotle believed that we can exercise some control over our character by way of the activities that we engage in. We can become charitable, brave, or kind by engaging in charitable, brave, or kind activities. How you spend your time, or the habits that you develop, influences who you become. There is some truth to this, as is demonstrated by work in the field of brain plasticity. What we habitually do leaves physical traces in the structure of the brain. As Norman Doidge has shown, watching pornography, playing an instrument, and driving a taxicab, can lead to physical change in the brain, often resulting in behavioral changes as well. This also applies to habitual thinking. Studying logic, for example, can help us think more logically, or at least alert us to various logical traps and missteps in ourselves and others. (Unsurprisingly, we are humorously better at detecting the fallacious reasoning of others than of ourselves.) And developing a creative practice, or the habit of creating, can set us up for creative thoughts. 

So, if you don’t have creative ideas, a first step is to ask yourself whether your mind is open to creativity. Do you approach the world with an openness to creativity (in the domain in which you desire to create)? If you are not occupying a creative space, then creative ideas may not befall you. Again, this might seem platitudinous, but people often claim not to have any creative ideas without immersing themselves in the business of creativity.

To be sure, I am not saying that we all have the same capacity for creative thinking. Just as we do not all have the same genetic aptitude for mathematics or philosophy, we do not all have the same genetic prerequisites for creating music, poetry, or visual art. But there is nevertheless much that we can do with what we do have. And, as Aristotle and many others have recognized, we cannot expect to improve much in any area of life without the right kind of practice. We should not write ourselves off without first trying to cultivate a creative mindset in our domain of choice.

In future posts, I hope to talk more about how to cultivate creative habits.

Three Reasons Why Creativity Decreases with Age

Few experiences thrill me more than a walk through an elementary school art show. Children are astonishingly—enviously—creative. Moreover, their creativity appears effortless and automatic. Wild and unanticipated combinations of shapes, colors, animals, and people come together beneath their uninhibited hands. Pablo Picasso famously said that we are all born artists. Assuredly, he did not mean that we all exit the womb with the ability to paint like Leonardo da Vinci. Instead, he was making a point about our natural creativity. As children, we all, to a greater or lesser degree, seem to have the imagination and will to create. And yet, as Picasso also recognized, many of us lose the artist within somewhere along the way. Why is this? In this post, I want to explore three considerations that likely play some role in the loss or reduction of creativity that tends to come with age: (1) a stronger sense of self, (2) a loss of brain plasticity, and (3) a lack of boredom and free time.  

            As we age, we develop (1) a stronger sense of self. We become increasingly self-conscious of our actions and how we appear to others. During and after adolescence, we are influenced by peer groups and social forces. Some of these changes contribute to our capacity to act morally. We become aware of how we appear in the eyes of other people, and whether they approve or disapprove of what we are doing. This prompts us to stay in line and monitor our own behaviors. The inner critic looms large here. At the same time, it becomes more difficult to create freely and automatically. As we create, the inner critic tells us what we are doing is stupid, silly, talentless, etc. Even worse, other people may in fact tell us as much to our face or on the Internet. Recalling a harsh judgment from the past, our creative inner child may stop in his or her tracks and retreat, too self-conscious to create.

            It is likely that (2) a loss of brain plasticity also contributes to a decrease in creativity as we age. Our brains are most plastic when they are young; among other things, this allows us to learn the language in which we are immersed with very little effort. As we age, our brains become less plastic, and for good reason. We need certain important lessons (e.g., don’t play with fire) and skills (e.g., this is how to ride a bicycle) to be deeply embedded in our brains so that we can survive and thrive. As Alison Gopnik has demonstrated, childhood play is a way of testing hypotheses and learning about the world; it makes a crucial contribution to child development and knowledge acquisition. By reducing or eliminating play in elementary schools, we may unwittingly harm our children. The young and plastic brain is exploring the world through play; it readily engages in fantasy and make-believe. I want to go beyond the empirical evidence (that I have seen, at least) and suggest that creating art also involves play, fantasy, and make-believe. And thus, our artwork may become less imaginative as we age because our brains have become more rigid and fixed. The adult brain has a more difficult time moving beyond what has been confirmed by the world and its own set of experiences.

            Finally, (3) most adults lack boredom and free time. Sadly, adulting does not always involve “art class.” Indeed, many adults do not even have “play time.” We often become so overwhelmed by the busy-ness and stress of life that we experience a time deficiency, or what J. B. MacKinnon has coined, “time famine”. We may work all day and then come home to a house that needs to be cleaned, children that need to be fed, and a lawn that needs to be mowed. When we finally have a moment to ourselves at the end of the day, we may simply zone out by scrolling through social media or turning on the television (or what artist Luis Scafiti has called “the dumb box”).

On more than one occasion, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman has written on the importance of mind wandering for creativity. When we are constantly on the move, with our minds focused upon set cognitive tasks, we may be unable to experience the openness, rest, and boredom that allow for creativity. Relatedly, Barbara Oakley, whose research focuses upon how to learn math, has said that a mind that struggles with focused attention may be better able to imagine and create because there is cognitive space open between thoughts for all kinds of fruitful associations to break through. By demanding constant and uninterrupted attention, our habits, schedules, and way of life may be inimical to a life of creativity and imagination. We lack the time and cognitive space to let our creativity unfurl.

In a future post, I hope to talk about strategies for overcoming some of these challenges.  

The Ape Problem of Consciousness

Philosopher David Chalmers is famous for distinguishing between easy problems of consciousness and the hard problem of consciousness. Easy problems of consciousness are those that can be explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms and, as such, pose no serious or insurmountable challenges to scientific investigation. An example of an easy problem of consciousness would be trying to explain how the brain can gain access to its own internal states. In contrast, the hard problem of consciousness involves trying to explain the subjective or experiential nature of consciousness – the fact that there is something it is like to be conscious (as Thomas Nagel put it). In this painting, a bonobo holds a copy of Chalmers’ The Nature of Consciousness. The painting asks us to consider how an ape, whose cognitive capacities were shaped by evolution, can hope to learn anything about the nature of consciousness. After all, evolution is “blind,” (Richard Dawkins) and apes, like other animals, are the result of random mutations that have contributed to their survival and reproduction. Should we expect the brains of apes to uncover the nature of reality and solved solve deep metaphysical puzzles? Of course, we too are apes, and a similar origin story can be told about our brains.

Oil on canvas board

Available for purchase on Etsy

$400 (includes shipping in the USA)

Painting the Lamp Maker's Studio

The Lamp Maker’s Studio

I first stepped inside L. Tschopp, 10830 Main St. in Clarence, several years ago to have a lamp repaired. The owner, Larry Tschopp, told me that my lamp was not worth the expense of the repair, but I went ahead with it anyway. I loved the lamp as it had personal value to me, regardless of its market value. In my eyes, it was irreplaceable. I always thought that one of my children would break it, but it was me. I am the guilty one. I knocked it over while casually tossing a folded blanket into the corner. The lamp is a dark bronze angel holding a tulip-shaped glass shade. Upon crashing into my sunroom floor, one of the five curved petals of the tulip shattered. Tschopp created a custom piece of curved glass to replace it. The repair was worth every penny. If anything, I felt that Tschopp undercharged me for the work that had to be done. I was profoundly grateful for both his skill and willingness to help me.  

Tschopp is a truly talented artist and craftsperson. Some of his own whimsical creations, custom-made lamps and works of stained glass, are on display in the shop. In addition to creating and repairing lamps and stained glass, he does bronze work and metal repair. Tschopp generally does not sell his lamps because, as we artists know, it is hard to charge customers for the time, skill, and effort that goes into the construction of a handmade product, in this case, a one-of-a-kind stained-glass lamp.

Tschopp has a background in fine art. He went to art school years ago but got into stained glass after finding himself unemployed. He bought 10830 Main St. in 1989. Previously, it had been an Odd Fellows’ Lounge. Supposedly, the group had a secret meeting room upstairs. It is believed that, to join the organization, prospective members had to enact skits from the Bible—skits that are only known by the Odd Fellows. The costumes in the back of his studio, such as Roman Soldier costumes, were used for these enactments. There is also a stage on the ground floor. (The stage and costumes are visible in my painting.) The Odd Fellows would serve the community in various ways and held skating parties in the building for children.

Tschopp told me that the market for stained glass has changed over the years. At its height, Tiffany employed hundreds of employees that produced handmade lamps. Sadly, most Americans are now used to paying very little money for mass produced goods. Alas, the lamps that we buy today, even those to which we may be sentimentally attached, are generally produced in this way.

My painting, The Lamp Maker’s Studio, was inspired by my visit to L. Tschopp, 10830 Main St. It is the kind of place that one encounters in a dream. Upon entering the building, I was struck by the colors, the light, the costumes, and all that there was, and is, to see. I loved the layers and history of the place. I admired the fact that, upon taking over the building, Tschopp retained so much of its previous life. He could have rented a dumpster and thrown everything into the trash just as all-too-many insensible new building owners paint over beautiful hardwood doors and brick exteriors. Fortunately, he did not. As a result, when walking into his studio, we enter a dream, or a series of dreams. We breathe the past in the present. Our experience of the world is rendered richer and more complex than it otherwise would be.

I took several photographs during my initial visit and returned to take some more and to talk to the shop owner and lamp maker, Larry Tschopp. In consultation with my brilliant painting instructor, Joan Horn, and fellow students and artists, I strayed somewhat from the photograph that served as my primary reference. I brought down the dark mural along the back wall to make the angels at the altar, my focal point, stand out. I replaced a drab and uninteresting lamp in the left-hand corner with a more beautiful one that I spotted elsewhere in the shop. I eliminated or deemphasized (through my use of color, value, degree of detail, etc.) certain objects in the room that did not contribute to my objectives for the painting.

The final piece is oil paint on 18 by 18 on cradled wood panel.  

Available

$800 unframed

Just How You Like It

Just How You Like It

Just before painting this piece, I was exploring the literature on anxiety, depression, and antidepressant use, especially among women. In some respects, taking a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI (like Prozac or Paxil), might seem to be empowering. In Listening to Prozac, Peter Kramer writes of women who claimed to have become more assertive, self-assured, and confident after starting an SSRI, like Prozac. A woman who was previously timid or apprehensive might, after starting Prozac, gain the confidence necessary to request a raise or promotion. Or a woman who was highly sensitive and emotional might, on Prozac, be indifferent and unemotional enough to walk away from a toxic or unfulfilling relationship. Indeed, as Kramer reports, many women (and people in general) on Prozac come to view their earlier selves as diseased, and not as their true selves.

Others (some writers, philosophers, etc.) were more cautious and concerned about widespread antidepressant use. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that, between 2015 and 2018, 13.2% of adults 18 and over were using antidepressant medication – 17.7% of women and 8.4% of men. In a provocative article written in The New York Times, Julie Holland argues that many women who do not need to take an antidepressant are pressured (or perhaps socialized) into doing so as a way of conforming to a masculine emotional style. In her view, society has pathologized women’s natural variation in mood and emotional state. While she does not deny that some people have a legitimate need for an antidepressant, and benefit from taking one, she fears that these drugs are being overprescribed, and that many normal experiences and feelings are being medicated away. In the article, and in her book on the same theme, she mentions that many women on SSRIs are unable to cry. It occurred to one woman that her SSRI use was becoming a problem when she failed to cry in response to her own mother’s death. More recently, in Dopamine Nation, Anna Lembke expresses concern about the widespread use of antidepressants and our inability to experience the full range of emotional states while taking them.

Just How You Like It was inspired by this theme. The suspiciously happy 1950s-style housewife, donning a polka dotted apron, serves her brain on a platter to her spouse and family just how they like it. To be sure, the title, and the image itself, are sarcastic or biting in tone. To hand over one’s brain, or mind, to another amounts to a kind of self-annihilation. The act performed with a gleeful smile conceals a certain degree of contempt or resentment. In our relationships, and in society generally, we are encouraged to change or revise ourselves—through medication, clothing, cosmetic procedures, exercise, etc.— to accommodate the needs of others. This is not always an unfair or unreasonable request. It is often the case that we really ought to work on ourselves – to become kinder, gentler, more thoughtful, less selfish. But at times society, or those around us, can push too hard to make us what we are not, or to pathologize what is a normal variation in humanity.

Sources:

Holland, Julie, M.D. “Medicating Women’s Feelings,” The New York Times, Mar. 9, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/opinion/sunday/medicating-womens-feelings.html

Holland, Julie, M.D. Moody Bitches: The Truth about the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having, and What’s Really Making You Crazy. New York, Penguin Press, 2015.

Kramer, Peter D. Listening to Prozac: The Landmark Book about Antidepressants and the Remaking of the Self. New York, Penguin Press, 1997.

Lembke, Anna, M.D. Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. New York, Dutton, 2021.

"Sailing Toward Annihilation"

There are numerous interesting and intriguing brains on display at the University of Buffalo’s Brain Museum, and I highly recommend a guided tour of the museum to anyone in the Western New York area. But the brain that had the most profound effect upon me was undoubtedly that of a person who had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. This brain (which I will hereafter refer to as the “Alzheimer’s brain”), is visibly ravaged by the disease. Anyone who knows someone who has suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, or who has spent time in the memory impaired unit of a nursing home, knows just how devastating the disease can be at a personal level. In the early stages of the disease, memories begin to fade but loved ones are still recognized. However, as the disease progresses, loved ones are forgotten and the patient—the person—is lost altogether. I recall visiting my late grandmother in a nursing home towards the end of her life and mourning the loss of her person. I had a difficult time identifying her among a group of residents seated together in wheelchairs in front of a television, she had so visibly changed. Not only did she fail to recognize me (that had happened long ago), but she was unable to function—to use language, to communicate, to advocate for herself. She was alive, but her person—her mind— had long since vanished. And her suffering was, and had been, profound.

Around the time when I had visited the brain museum, I read a fascinating and moving article, “The Lost Mariner,” published by Oliver Sacks in The New York Review. The article told the story of a man, Jimmie R., one of Sacks’ patients, who had suffered from a form of amnesia (due to Korsakoff Syndrome) that kept him trapped in the past. After meeting with Jimmie R., Sacks wrote in his notes, “He is, as it were, isolated in a single moment of being, with a moat or lacuna of forgetting all round him…. He is man without a past (or future), stuck in a constantly changing, meaningless moment.” The title of Sacks’ article was inspired by Jimmie R., who, after being drafted in 1943, served in the navy. (Incidentally, “The Lost Mariner,” is now also a beautiful, short film by Tess Martin inspired by Sack’s article.)

Reading the article, I was reminded of my own late grandfather who had served in the Merchant Marine during WW2 and had suffered from dementia towards the end of his life. Like Jimmie R., my grandfather had been trapped in a moment, disconnected from his loved ones and earlier experiences. Without our memories, who are we? Sacks, who was poignantly aware of this, begins his article with Luis Buñuel’s reflection:

“You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all…. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing…. (I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that can erase an entire life, as it did my mother’s….)”

When looking at the Alzheimer’s brain, I could see gulfs, valleys—rivers—where healthy brain tissue had been eaten away by the disease. To my amazement and horror, the physical Alzheimer’s brain closely corresponded with the personal or experiential Alzheimer’s mind; a memory that had disappeared was tissue that had been eaten away. When looking at this brain, I could “see” (with my mind’s eye) a lost and lonely sailor, like my late grandfather, unknowingly sailing towards annihilation.

I dedicate this piece to my late grandmother and grandfather, whom I love and miss, and patients and families everywhere who have suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.