(I think) caring about art is a good idea

Word Count: 1944

I was talking with a new friend Angela yesterday, and during our email conversation she mentioned her art taking a side seat to the tech-y stuff. It got me thinking about art again, and in particular the seemingly random but firm belief I have that knowing about, caring about, and engaging with art is important (more important than ever before? Who’s to say, really). I initially thought up a large portion of this with the intent of being prescriptive, but some helpful conversations with my girlfriend made me realize that my firmly held convictions are actually not universal truths about our society, art, humanity, or any number of things. I still don’t really like country music though, that one stays unambiguous.

In essence, what I’d like to posit is how my view of art - both as an artist¹ and as someone who enjoys experiencing art - influences my present-day opinions on a variety of things, particularly the fact that caring about art has made me more cognizant of both myself and the world around me in meaningful, net-positive ways. Originally, I was going to focus only on how these perspectives on art could be applied to technology, so some of that residual focus may still linger, and most of my examples will likely be tech focused as I reside within that sphere. Anywho, let's begin!

Intentionality

In my own experience of enjoying art, I have found that in addition to having fun with the pure aesthetics of a piece, I enjoy attempting to delve deeper, to understand the choices behind the subject, the framing, the techniques used, etc. This is largely localized to visual and written art (poetry or long-form), and seems harder to apply more generally to things like the performing arts. In any case, my personal estimation of intentional engagement (with content or a craft) has gone up a bit since attempting to consume art because it’s applicable to the rest of our lives, at least to a degree. Art isn’t the only way to begin to appreciate intentionality, but it’s a good example in my eyes.

To discuss the inverse, i.e. a lack of deliberation, one needs only go to AI assisted software development, a lawless land (kinda) where intentionality and decision making are crucial, and where sound judgement being maintained throughout isn’t a guarantee by any stretch of the imagination. Truthfully, also there’s something to be said about the volume of code produced by agents which makes the review process that much tougher, but it has been demonstrated that the overall judgement time tends to go down in code reviews when PRs are larger. That was already true for human-made PRs, and now I feel worse for open-source maintainers trudging through behemoth PRs on the regular. It's possible but difficult to maintain the same level of discipline with reviews when everything comes at you in a deluge and the artificial time pressure increases - as such, I believe this discernment should be a conscious thought more often.

Reflecting on Context

Part of my appreciation of art, especially older, “high brow” art, is the ability to understand past the surface via a background or foundational knowledge in the context of the art - who was there around the artist, what was happening in the world at the time, was this a reaction to some event or person? What inspired it? How does it hold up based on that? What is it commenting on? All of these fibers weave together into a wonderful canvas that hosts the art, and appreciating art and its context helps us better reflect on our understanding of context and nuance in other situations, like within politics, the news, social media, even personal relationships. When we look at something else someone else created, we can go beyond taking it at face value and engage with healthy curiosity about the deeper meaning. This is especially true of modern art, where the focus is less on the technical expertise with a medium and more about understanding the context that led to a particular piece’s inception or implementation.

Finally, recall the quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” by George Santayana. While common sense and pithy, this is a valuable perspective to internalize, and art is one way to understand its importance. Engaging in art can thus help people become more open minded, or at least consume more perspectives and have more nuance as a result.

Humanity

Art, first in visual media and then orally, then written down, and then on a screen, and so on, is an expression of humanity. While its primary goal can be disputed (whether to express oneself to others, to highlight an idea, to push forward technical thinking in the discipline, to meta-comment on the broader notion of art itself, to productize something a la graphic art), it has always been, at least to me, an expression of humanity most pure. Especially since my friend Hanna mentioned the idea to me after I asked her "what is art?"²

In a similar way to other modern shared experiences, think the World Cup, art brings us all together to imbibe one piece, and then lets us leave with our infinite unique perspectives on the very same thing. Conversely, there exist many types of art across cultures and time expressing the same concepts or ideas, which showcases a shared sense of emotional and experiential understanding. I say both of these to highlight the way in which art brings us together, valuing individualism and community in the same breath.

In this age of technology, where everything is commoditized and the humanities and ethics and caring and empathy seem to matter less³, caring about art and its weight seems vital to me, caring about this discipline which helps alleviate a feeling of otherness and emphasizes the broader human community.

Slowing Down and Being Present

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down to really think about a piece of art. To just stare at it and wonder. In fact, I wrote about that experience, and promised myself (to no avail, yet) that I would do it again. I still remember the flow state I felt writing that article while looking at that picture, the calm as I thought about this piece of art I’d worn as a shirt for a while, with nary a spot of thinking given to it prior to that point. My aim is to do it again at least once more this year.

To me, this is a good example of how consuming art with intention, regardless of whether you notice the nontrivial details or make the effort to understand the context, can help you slow down and be in the moment. You can simply appreciate the minutiae of the brushwork, or the tiny topographical changes in the canvas, something like that. It’s akin to approaching life via DFS instead of BFS, although maybe that’s just more general advice that I tend to abide by. Insofar as tech is concerned, the titans of the industry profit by monopolizing our time, and thinking along these lines is a way to alleviate the challenging but avoidable doom-scroll and go-next nature of our lives.

Art is just one of many things that act like a dolly zoom for the mind, like Anton Ego flashing back to his mother’s home cooked Ratatouille, to hone in on an idea or experience and live in the moment. I recently read Don’t Believe Everything You Think by Joseph Nguyen, and it discussed some strategies that really resonated with me in this regard as well.

As we slow down, we also regain the ability to do things free from the external pressures to go faster and be more productive. AI has ushered in the ability to create quickly, iterate rapidly, outsource ideation, implementation, polishing up, the whole shebang, basically everything except the quick human rubber stamp at the end.

Sometimes it is a good idea to recall when we had fun doing these things, too. Writing code, writing prose, creating music⁴, having research ideas, the list goes on.

There is value to automating the parts of the process that aren't of value to oneself, but it’s hard to reflect on what parts of the process we actually value, and even harder to realize what parts we should value. I’ll discuss this a bit more when we talk about...

Friction

Art, like any creative process (although aren’t all creative processes art?⁵), requires thinking, which is hard. Ideating is hard, sorting out the good from the bad is hard, deciding things is hard, opining is hard, applying technical skills is hard and imperfect, none of these are a science. Doing hard things is good for you. Doing things simply because they are hard is perhaps a different matter.

For more on this idea, especially how it relates to AI and its usage/adoption, I recommend reading Kyla Scanlon’s article, The Most Valuable Commodity in the World is Friction. At the very least, friction keeps us sharp, and I’d like to keep feeling witty for at least another few years before my mind turns to soup.

Connecting cool ideas

Let’s begin with math. While I argued earlier that math in and of itself is art, art can also leverage creative and interesting math! A great example is 3B1B’s video on Escher, and boy oh boy was Escher a nerd. But I’ve talked far too much about math, what else does art refer to, or interact with in any way? Psychology, philosophy, history, astronomy, and theology, just to name a few. Some of these are more obvious than others, and they feel like cop-outs, but art truly is one of those special topics that is a great unifier in many ways, while also being deeply personal to both the artist and the audience member. It can help you be open-minded, creative in the connections you draw between your past and future experiences and knowledge base.

Fin

Look at art or make it, in some way, shape, or form. Slow down, be in the moment, have some fun, connect with others. Engage with your humanity. Till next time!

Again, a big thank you to my lovely girlfriend Maya for helping me proofread this.

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