It is a beautiful thing how, as humans, we give each other space to be creative and to bare a part of our soul. The Romans created architectural feats of beauty and heritage in the form of amphitheatres for that very purpose. Similar to the movie theatres we go to today, people would gather in masses to watch a performer dive deep into themselves to portray someone who is not themselves but stands the chance to resonate with each member of the audience. That is humanity.
Sometimes, humanity also looks like sharing a space to which you are not necessarily privy to its happenings. A recognition of the fact that to be able to go into that creative space and find a part of one’s soul to bare, one must be given a safe space to attend to their own musings. This, too, is humanity.
It was in the quiet sanctuary of Château de Lavigny that Professor Anton Krueger was given space to mull over some of his own musings. Krueger is a writer and Associate Professor of performance studies and creative writing at the Rhodes University Drama Department. As per the arrangement with Pro Helvetia Johannesburg in July 2022, he was joined by five other writers for a residency. There’s no expectation to produce any kind of material, nor is there an expectation for something to come out of the residency. It is simply a space to write. The only expectation is for the writers to interact with other writers, and revel together in the connection created by literature. It was the wish of the widowed Jane Ledig-Rowohlt, who had been married to the German publisher Heinrich Maria, that their home be continuously used as a space for writers from all across the world to get away from it all and have a space for their craft. It was to be a residency space, prioritising creativity.
Image sourced from Pro Helvetia Johannesburg
The greater portion of Krueger’s time there was spent creating a novel about AI. Through a series of connections and conversations (which Pro Helvetia helped arrange) with people in the world of AI and the art world, a story of an AI seeking human physical form to continue helping people was born. Of course, the extent to which AI is helpful is a contested matter, gaining more and more prevalence as AI becomes more and more a part of our everyday lives.
“But the sort of basic one, of the main ideas, was AI for good,” Krueger shared. “Do you know what a Bodhisattva is?” He asked in our conversation, beginning to draw greater picture connections.
At that point, I didn’t.
It’s a being that has devoted his or her life to the benefit of all, to the benefit of every single creature or plant. Like living for others. It’s like an ultimate sort of selflessness, and the ultimate ideal, or compassion and so on. […] So, what if there was this AI that was really, really good for you? And that really, really knew everything about you and could help you,” he asks. “But what if you had to obey it because it knew what’s best?
It brings up a sinister twist to the old trope of the student becoming the monster. It’s very cyber-gothic to think again about how Dr Frankenstein created the Monster but eventually became a victim of its own powers and how it chose to use them.
This is ideal, but it’s all really been coming for many years. Two decades ago, somebody was talking about how the future will be between people that embrace technology and what he called “autollects” – like auto intellects. This was before AI even, he predicted the use of auto intellects, and some people will see this as a solution. Other people will see it as terrible and it will be seen as the end. And there’ll be this wall between people supporting and not.
And the contention is all around us now, especially with the popularisation and accessibility of AI art thanks to text-to-image generators and TikTok filters.
Image courtesy of Anton Krueger
What do you think about AI art? Many would argue art has some very, inherently humane features which would be impossible for AI to replicate. What do you think of an AI like Sophia one day joining you in the chateaux? I ask.
“Writing and images, that could change. All of that could change. I think the one area [where AI hasn’t yet encroached] is performance or embodiment,” he responded.
I think we’re going to see the value of work – or, myself already – of [small group meetings]. So there are some artists that travel around and but they’re not mass market. They do small group encounters of like, 20 people, and they travel around the world. And this is what they do. They do weekend workshops or evenings with the same people each year. So it’s like a little tribe that builds this embodied group of people in each other’s presence who are making music, or expressing themselves creatively and so on. So that might be one of the things that happen. People thirst for that physical presence.
In the complexity of AI’s aliveness, not non-humanness, I got to thinking about Krueger’s other work he produced in Switzerland, and how it was about a series of paradoxical parables attached to the works of people cast to the outskirts of society. The work is currently in progress, with the image source coming from the only-of-its-kind museum, Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne.
“So, is there any paradox of life or thought that really resonates with you? I ask.
“I suppose we’re always between things. You kind of feel like you’re going somewhere, you feel like you’re coming from somewhere. And so there’s a coming-and-going. That’s a paradox, you coming and going at the same time,” he says with a chuckle, maybe at the (non-)sense of this state of being. “Or striving for something, but then forget it, you don’t want it anymore.”
Talking about this constant state of neither here, nor there, it begins to feel like there’s a sense of emptiness attached to the human condition. A constant opposition within the self, manifesting in the external as opposition with everything, over everything, such as AI Art.
Yet, upon being asked if the reflection on paradoxes and AI has affected his creative progress, Krueger highlights that it is that opposition he takes comfort in.
“So on a creative level, I think, the human interaction with somebody reading what you wrote, is very important and very strong. And for me, it’s kinda like a necessary step”, he shares on his process of writing. Speaking on a recent poetry collection – he did declare that there are many moving pieces, all at once, at various stages:
I just made a few copies and gave it to some friends. And I’m sort of waiting for their feedback now. That even the process of knowing that somebody has read this already puts me in mind of structure, some sort of bird’s eye view of maybe moving things around or what’s good and what’s not, and what can be cut. I’m seeing it through their eyes, even if they don’t tell me specifically that was that. That can’t happen with an AI.
For an engineer or an editor to read something I wrote, there’s no feeling in it or desire. So there’s no push and pull. There’s no rejection or desire. There’s no want to don’t want, no preference. I suppose people have preferences. They’re pushing and pulling. They say, ‘I like this, I don’t like that’. With an AI, they’re just doing what you want them to do, or what their master has created it to do.
Krueger highlights that the world of AI is a great help with technical, format-related components of writing. But within creativity, it leaves much to be desired. And it is that, that very desire, that Krueger seeks. A desire for something else, from a very personal, humane space, shared in feedback by fellow writers and friends. In every passing conversation, where a human cannot possibly leave at the door all the places they came from, and all the places they’re going – that’s where the magic is.
This story is produced in the context of an editorial residency supported by Pro Helvetia Johannesburg, the Swiss Arts Council.
