Chepertom

The RUG series evolves in Ghent, a city known for its textile legacy, which started the industrial revolution 🧵

A long one but appreciate you getting a tea and settling in. Last night on our @objktlabs residency call we were talking with @BorisEldagsen and @postanika and had an extremely interesting conversation about where artists are going to end up with AI. Are you going to use it as an equal collaborator, genuinely working alongside it as a creative partner? Are you going to use it separately, running in the background while you work elsewhere, almost like it's doing its own thing while you do yours? Are you going to reject it completely? Or are you just going to use it as a way of connecting the dots, figuring out who you are as an artist, understanding your own practice better, using it almost as a research or reflection tool rather than a making tool? All of those feel like valid places to end up. I just know where I'm headed personally. But before I get into that there's something that keeps coming up for me in these conversations that I don't think gets enough consideration in the AI debate. And that's the individual experience of creativity. As in what making actually feels like for a specific person or creative. My wife is a photographer. I've sat and watched her shoot and edit and there is absolutely no way she isn't in a flow state when she's doing it. That's where her creativity lives. That's her place. Yet for me it's completely different, and I've only really started to understand why recently. About a year ago I found out about Aphantasia and that I have it. No visual imagination. When I close my eyes there's nothing there, just verbal noise, very loud very constant often negative noise. I spent a while not really believing it applied to me, kind of rejecting it refusing to believe I have it especially as i’ve had many ‘dudes you don’t have it how can you with what you make’ chats with friends and artists. But I've sat with it a lot now over a long period, used meditation to really investigate it, and I've started to understand how much it's shaped everything about how I work and how I feel when I work. For me it's about something more specific than discovery. When I'm making, really making, hands on screen, marks appearing, it's like my mind has this constant stream of noise, and the act of creating is how I filter it. I catch what I can from that stream and pull it into something I can control, a kind of reservoir, and then it flows out of me visually onto the page. That's the experience. That's what I'm doing when I'm working. And I can't get that from AI. Not because AI doesn't offer its own kind of back and forth, its own kind of discovery. I'm sure for some people that collaboration feels very alive. But for me the filtering is the work. The catching of thought is the work. That moment where the noise collapses into one stream and something comes through, that's the most human I feel and most creatively at home. That's the place I'm trying to get to every time I sit down to make something. And I haven't found a way of getting there through a prompt. But that is MY personal experience. That's not a universal statement about AI and creativity. My wife gets into that state through photography. Others obviously get there through prompting, especially if they're not someone who's generally been a visual maker and AI is suddenly opening something up for them. There's no reason that can't be real. We just don't talk about that spectrum enough. We debate AI in these huge broad strokes about what art is and what making is and we skip the question of what making actually feels like for an individual person. So I don't use AI for making my images. That's just where I am. But that doesn't make me anti-AI. I'm genuinely obsessed with forward thinking technology, I find all of it interesting. I'm just being honest about where it fits for me (now) And then there's the argument. Well you use tools, so isn't AI just a tool? Why is it any different? I used to think that. I genuinely did. But I don't anymore. A tool is a hammer. A chisel. A paintbrush. A pencil. Those things that extend you. AI is not a tool. AI is a factory. An everything factory. And we can't compete with a factory, in fact throughout history every human endeavour to compete with the factory has unravelled. What i’m actually looking for in the making is a certain kind of feeling, a certain kind of small scale truth I guess. The personal touch, the me’ness in things. We talked about where all of this is going more broadly. And one of the directions that came up is this idea of fully personalised experiences. The Netflix example where eventually you just say make me a show that's Bridgerton meets My Little Pony and you get exactly that and you watch it that evening. And I don't disagree that we're heading there. I just think when we actually get there there's going to be a hard rejection. Because I love talking about films with my friends. I love talking about TV shows. That conversation you have afterwards, debating it, picking it apart, that's one of my favourite parts of experiencing something. Art is the same. What happens to that when there's no shared experience left? When everyone's watching their own version of everything? All pushed into our tiny little box separate from each other. And what happens to art when the line between viewer and artist blurs so completely that everyone's making their own art exactly how they want it? Will people even need art from artists anymore? I think there'll always be the people who want the intellectual dimension that art brings, who need that thing of encountering someone else's vision. But the world likes pop music. That's why it's called pop music. It's just human nature to eventually settle into what's easy and personal and made just for you. To just become one with the slop. A few years ago I made a piece called 4 Player Split Screen. It was about how much shared experience has just quietly disappeared. And I don't think people stopped wanting those things. I think technology and profit pushed us away from them. Going to the video store. Buying a record and bringing it home. Four players on one screen. All of these things that used to be these shared social rituals just got eroded, not because people didn't want them, but because the economics and the technology pushed in a different direction. And around that time I started talking about what I coined the Return to Video Store Theory. Which is basically just this belief that when everything gets personalised to the point where there's no shared experience left, people are going to remember what they're missing. And there'll be a breaking point. A hard rejection. And we'll find ourselves going back. Back to the video store, back to the record shop, back to the dark room. Because those things matter to people. They just don't always know that until they're gone. So where does that leave us as artists right now? I think the most important thing is authenticity. The me-ness of what i'm making, that's what matters and that's what no factory can replicate. I've been trying to be honest and authentic throughout my whole artist career and I do believe that's the thing that protects you. Not the style, not the platform, not the tools. The you-ness of it. And for me personally I'm at a turning point, with my explorations and ideas. I've built OMGiDRAWEDIt around a very specific thing, maximalist, illustrative, digital painting, and that's been my world. But I have so many ideas that exist outside of that to complete my universe and something has always held me back from sharing them. I think finding the confidence to go outside of that, to explore what else is in there, is the most authentic thing I can do going forwards. Will Ai be in the mix...in some form probably. But as always we will see. We're headed somewhere strange. But I think we'll end up back at the video store. And I'll see you there. Attached my piece 'Do Computers Dream Of Touching Grass'

@soynando__o Yaaas! hate de partager la version finale 🔥 Merci l'ami 🔻

@chepertom ça a l'air de bien claquer tout ça. Hâte d'en voir davantage, Thomas !!! ❤️❤️❤️

Let's goooo! Can't wait for the full release of this drop.. Strano has been doing an amazing job to make it a blast 🔻

@blanqspacer Thanks buddy Blanq! Collapse is near tho 👀

@chepertom looks solid!

@5tr4n0 Appreciate your energy a lot my friend 🔻

@chepertom incredible piece mate stoked to have you part of this!

@5tr4n0 🧨

IRREVERSIBLE featuring @chepertom +14 dropping 03/30

dream jam

@jaimederringer Yes it can definitely feel like it sometimes.. Buy I really enjoyed sharing process and experiences in our last conversations 🫂

@chepertom it's like yelling into an abyss....

Being able to reach out to people here feels like a full time job now

Except when you have a residency program with @BorisEldagsen to discuss about being an artist in the age of AI 👾 (with a entire crew of artists) Thanks for creating this moment @postanika 🔻

@solcomma Thank you S🛟l

@chepertom Gm. Lovely.

GM with Rescue_Ladder.ROW

@soynando__o Merci beaucoup Soy, j'apprécie toujours tes retours 🔻

@chepertom J’adore, Thomas ! Magnifique travail. Félicitations ❤️❤️❤️🔥🔥🔥

@BravoCosto Delivering first aid when needed 🫶

@chepertom Chepertom to the rescue 🚒

@0009ine Yeay feels like swimming upstream, I think it’s always been about fighting the noise and now it’s also about trying not to become part of it

@chepertom Yes, especially when there aren’t many people helping amplify the work. There’s also a psychological layer to it. The more you repeat the same thing, like a solo or upcoming show, the more it starts to feel like noise, and the algo tends to throttle the reach.

@0009ine And doesn’t it take too much space/time for you?

@chepertom It really is.

Already have many jobs to handle, not sure I really want this one

@mika8002 Gm here

@chepertom good morning frend!

@Cherry_Web3 Gm gm

@chepertom GM GM ☕️ Protect your energy. Then go build.

@abdlhsyl Gm ma boyy

@chepertom gm friend

@isvirtual_aura Looks gorgeous Laura, congrats 🔥

good morning🌐*️⃣ I am so happy to announce that my website is now available, a space that houses everything about me. You can learn more about it here: laurabutallo.com