Notes from the Editor's Desk -- 4/11/23

In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in pursuit of gain. Mechanical reproduction of a work of art, however, represents something new. Historically, it advanced intermittently and in leaps at long intervals, but with accelerated intensity. The Greeks knew only two procedures of technically reproducing works of art: founding and stamping. Bronzes, terra cottas, and coins were the only art works which they could produce in quantity. All others were unique and could not be mechanically reproduced. With the woodcut graphic art became mechanically reproducible for the first time, long before script became reproducible by print. The enormous changes which printing, the mechanical reproduction of writing, has brought about in literature are a familiar story. However, within the phenomenon which we are here examining from the perspective of world history, print is merely a special, though particularly important, case. During the Middle Ages engraving and etching were added to the woodcut; at the beginning of the nineteenth century lithography made its appearance.

-Walter Benjamin

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

What then is left when variability becomes mechanically reproducible? Originality is the obvious answer, but then arguments have been advanced that originality only differs from variability in degree, and not in kind, which leaves only the question of origination.

I read Whitman and think of recent advances in what I will call artificial variability rather than artificial intelligence. Trained on everything Whitman could have read in his lifetime, trained even on Whitman’s own corpus, I am skeptical that a system could capture experience in the way that his observation of seagulls does. I doubt that the system could continue with articulations that differ from Whitman’s poetry only in degree. Language is the ultimate realization of the poet’s vocation, but it excludes the animating element, unequivocally familiar and real to Whitman, and that it is the reader’s responsibility to intuit and experience again and again. A system, I should think, can only produce variability in what is explicit, and what is realized through Whitman’s observation of seagulls is not improved when fitted ad nauseam to a wider and wider array of birds. Even with this defense of literature’s final island, I can hear the question hot on the lips of its denizens: is this enough?

Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong shadow,

Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,

While these generative systems may astound with their complexity, I doubt if they could articulate novel sentiment of a consciousness that, however briefly, articulate the transcendental, and therefore produce a feeling of transport in their reader. Systems, in other words, can produce skyscrapers, captivating due to their utility, but not cathedrals, a structure whose ultimate purpose is mysticism. Now, most writers are also incapable of articulating transcendence, and it is likely that only the novel articulations are of value, or indeed have ever been of value. These successes are produced by few. Aspects of human life that people value will be supplanted, just as skyscrapers replaced lots where humbler buildings once stood, because the apparatus of religious experience, religious as distinct from spiritual, is flawed to the point that our society does not optimize for transcendent considerations across all domains. The function of skyscrapers is never also the function of worship or wisdom. Our modality of intellectual progress has not also been spiritual in a century or more. A system can pattern match our writing, but not without the elucidation of a spooky secret, which I am unsure it is in any one’s interest for machines to lay plain, and this is a semblance of understanding, but it is not synonymous with understanding. Man can understand writing while also understanding himself, and this makes all the difference, both in terms of reception and production. I had no say in the cathedrals or the skyscrapers, and I have none in these new structures.