Presenting, Spectacle. 🧵👇
"It's not just a collection of images, but rather a way of seeing the world that has become a material reality"
Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle” simplified and visualized using GPT3 and DALL-E 2
sterlingcrispin.com
opensea.io
"It's not just a collection of images, but rather a way of seeing the world that has become a material reality"
Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle” simplified and visualized using GPT3 and DALL-E 2
sterlingcrispin.com
opensea.io
Debord’s book critiques modern life, arguing that we have been alienated from ourselves, each other, and reality itself by the cultural, economic and political conditions of society, which he calls the spectacle
Although written in the 60's, it sound's like it's about the 2020's
Although written in the 60's, it sound's like it's about the 2020's
In remaking the critical theory as tweet-sized writing and imagery using @OpenAI 's tools, I've created a chaotic cross section of imagery excavated from the latent space of the neural network, and the society that it was trained on.
My reinterpretation is not a direct critique of OpenAI’s efforts to create semi-autonomous technology for cultural production, but a mirror held up to the kind of society we’ve created that has led to these technologies.
GPT3 and DALL-E 2 were trained on billions of examples of writing and artworks created by people. They can produce essentially infinite 'content' and are unique in their size and high quality. But they're just one small step in our ceaseless drive to create advanced AI systems.
The situationists might describe using GPT3 and DALL-E to critique itself and the society that’s created it as the hijacking of a capitalist system against itself. A cynical interpretation of this artwork might be that I’m commodifying the critique it back into the system itself
Debord describes the tension between these takes, and the pervasive reabsorption of any critique back into the spectacle.
Marxists describe our alienation from labor, and the means of production controlled by an upper class. Now those means of production are increasingly, AI.
Marxists describe our alienation from labor, and the means of production controlled by an upper class. Now those means of production are increasingly, AI.
Does this devalue human life and cultural production, or free us from the demand for labor?
Does this help see the world as it is, or pull us deeper into a ceaseless stream of representations separated from what they once were?
sterlingcrispin.com
opensea.io
Does this help see the world as it is, or pull us deeper into a ceaseless stream of representations separated from what they once were?
sterlingcrispin.com
opensea.io
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