The Value of Making, in the face of AI
As Artificial Intelligence develops, we are having more and more conversations about how technology is changing the ways we work, think and learn. Sometimes, these conversations turn towards which jobs AI might replace, or how entire industries could be transformed. Creative industries are grappling with how to embrace (but not succumb) to AI and the tools it provides.
At Artbox, our work sits somewhat outside this disruption because so much of what we do is fundamentally human. We offer the support and resources to make physical art. We create a safe and joyful space for friendships to develop, ideas to be explored and for learning to take place.
The art-making and connection that happens at Artbox feels increasingly valuable in a society where so much learning, working and connecting happens through screens and technology.
At Artbox we explore materials with our hands. We learn by doing, experimenting and feeling things out. We create images and objects that exist in the room with us.
Making something is a conversation between the artist and the material. It is also an intuitive learning process of learning. Through working with a material, we gradually understand how the material looks and behaves, on its own and with other materials. Understanding how to manipulate a material and what its boundaries are is best achieved by experiencing the boundaries, and creating the changes. The artworks made at Artbox are ever-changing, being added to, simplified, painted over, or stitched into - an ongoing conversation with the physical world and its properties.
This process of making and using our senses and intuition to develop material literacy is deeply human. Whatever AI becomes capable of producing, it cannot make the physical experience of encountering materials on our behalf.
One of our artists, David, has a phrase that he says frequently when he is about to start an artwork or when he’s encouraging someone else to get started. He says, “make a mark” and “ you want me to make a mark?” or “make a mark then!”. There is something to be said (anthropologists have already studied this extensively) for the human instinct to ‘make a mark’ that signifies a presence, a change, a moment, and that remains as evidence in the world. Mark making in prehistoric caves somehow led to painting at Artbox. And perhaps, as more of the world becomes digital, there is renewed value in doing exactly that. So, in the face of AI, we will continue doing what we do: supporting artists to experiment, to connect, to work with their hands - and to make their mark.
