| Both sides previous revisionPrevious revision | |
| articles:on_llms [2026/07/02 14:01] – wgp | articles:on_llms [2026/07/02 14:04] (current) – wgp |
|---|
| </figure> | </figure> |
| |
| The AI bubble has been imposed on people, while in the background companies invest immensely in large language models—together with the infrastructure they require. Since the capitalist class has invested so astronomically over recent decades in AI, they now have to push the technology equally hard to establish it, to make it profitable, and make billions of people use this infrastructure. From a sense of capitalist class solidarity, they impose LLMs to protect their mutual investment, with great determination.((Gareth Watkins, “AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism,” New Socialist, February 9, 2025. https://newsocialist.org.uk/transmissions/ai-the-new-aesthetics-of-fascism/.)) | The AI bubble has been imposed on people, while in the background companies invest immensely in large language models—together with the infrastructure they require. Since the capitalist class has invested so astronomically over recent decades in AI, they now have to push the technology equally hard to establish it, to make it profitable, and make billions of people use this infrastructure. From a sense of capitalist class solidarity, they impose LLMs to protect their mutual investment, with great determination.((Gareth Watkins, “[[https://newsocialist.org.uk/transmissions/ai-the-new-aesthetics-of-fascism/|AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism]],” New Socialist, February 9, 2025.)) |
| |
| The aim is to make the public, major companies, and, especially, governments use LLMs until these models become something they can’t give up, similar to other supposedly convenient big tech tools people continue using out of habit while ignoring their problematic aspects, even when using them becomes a burden. | The aim is to make the public, major companies, and, especially, governments use LLMs until these models become something they can’t give up, similar to other supposedly convenient big tech tools people continue using out of habit while ignoring their problematic aspects, even when using them becomes a burden. |
| No person in their right mind should accept the idea of making something liberatory out of the very same colonial archives. For someone who wants to engage in decolonial archival practice, the first thing you should do is to refuse to work with those archives and instead start archiving otherwise; practice counter-archiving, and build your own archive. When we apply this logic to LLMs, we can see that the current liberal discourses on copyright, “discriminatory AI”, or even “AI ethics” etc. barely scratches the surface of the core problems of the technologies. Centralised archives and museums represent “our” culture, as much as big datasets represent “our culture”. | No person in their right mind should accept the idea of making something liberatory out of the very same colonial archives. For someone who wants to engage in decolonial archival practice, the first thing you should do is to refuse to work with those archives and instead start archiving otherwise; practice counter-archiving, and build your own archive. When we apply this logic to LLMs, we can see that the current liberal discourses on copyright, “discriminatory AI”, or even “AI ethics” etc. barely scratches the surface of the core problems of the technologies. Centralised archives and museums represent “our” culture, as much as big datasets represent “our culture”. |
| |
| “AI is not a tool, but a socioeconomic instrument of power.”((Marie-Claire Koch, “Philosopher: AI Is Not a Tool, but an Instrument of Power,” Heise Online, November 10, 2025. https://www.heise.de/en/news/Philosopher-AI-is-not-a-tool-but-an-instrument-of-power-11072370.html.)) | “AI is not a tool, but a socioeconomic instrument of power.”((Marie-Claire Koch, “[[https://www.heise.de/en/news/Philosopher-AI-is-not-a-tool-but-an-instrument-of-power-11072370.html|Philosopher: AI Is Not a Tool, but an Instrument of Power]],” Heise Online, November 10, 2025.)) |
| |
| The spectacle becoming de rigueur in contemporary art in the 2020s is a consequence of the embrace of virtual and augmented reality technologies and, more recently, AI. The augmented reality bubble did not last long, despite being hyped to a prominent place in the art market. It started losing air within a few years after failing to establish itself as a viable genre with monetary value within the semiotic economies of contemporary art. VR and AR, which have their origins in the defence sector, offered allegedly enhanced sensory experiences, not unlike purported augmented empathy, augmented feelings that (apparently) become available to humans uniquely through these technologies. After these technological and discursive interventions fizzled, AI has been pushed aggressively within contemporary art in various ways. While performance art has always been a spectacle, for example, the current state of AI transforms it increasingly into auto-generated slop that aims to evoke feelings of astonishment in a similar fashion to the way non-art generated images do. While the generation of texts and images is being forced on us in every aspect of our quotidian lives, the aesthetics of generation are taking on an inevitable currency that art strives for. | The spectacle becoming de rigueur in contemporary art in the 2020s is a consequence of the embrace of virtual and augmented reality technologies and, more recently, AI. The augmented reality bubble did not last long, despite being hyped to a prominent place in the art market. It started losing air within a few years after failing to establish itself as a viable genre with monetary value within the semiotic economies of contemporary art. VR and AR, which have their origins in the defence sector, offered allegedly enhanced sensory experiences, not unlike purported augmented empathy, augmented feelings that (apparently) become available to humans uniquely through these technologies. After these technological and discursive interventions fizzled, AI has been pushed aggressively within contemporary art in various ways. While performance art has always been a spectacle, for example, the current state of AI transforms it increasingly into auto-generated slop that aims to evoke feelings of astonishment in a similar fashion to the way non-art generated images do. While the generation of texts and images is being forced on us in every aspect of our quotidian lives, the aesthetics of generation are taking on an inevitable currency that art strives for. |
| |
| The slopification of art is not about art about slop but art that has internalised the aesthetics of slop. Performing the slop is a performance that awakens similar affects as general slop does for its consumers, in particular producing shock and lurid fascination. Similar to how slop-producing influencers work, slop artists give “people what they want: the creepiest videos, the most over-the-top.”((Drew Harwell, “Making Cash off ‘AI Slop’: The Surreal Video Business Taking Over the Web,” The Washington Post, August 18, 2025. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/08/17/ai-video-slop-creators/.)) One of the most recent examples of performing the slop was at the Venice Biennial 2026, at the Austrian Pavilion. In contrast to the shock effect created by the performance art in its origins, in the slop timeline, no other feeling is intended to evoke, such as disgust, discomfort, threat or provocation. Abjection may be there, but existing in a more passive way, as in an endless loop. There is much more to come from this genre, it seems. | The slopification of art is not about art about slop but art that has internalised the aesthetics of slop. Performing the slop is a performance that awakens similar affects as general slop does for its consumers, in particular producing shock and lurid fascination. Similar to how slop-producing influencers work, slop artists give “people what they want: the creepiest videos, the most over-the-top.”((Drew Harwell, “[[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/08/17/ai-video-slop-creators/|Making Cash off ‘AI Slop’: The Surreal Video Business Taking Over the Web]],” The Washington Post, August 18, 2025.)) One of the most recent examples of performing the slop was at the Venice Biennial 2026, at the Austrian Pavilion. In contrast to the shock effect created by the performance art in its origins, in the slop timeline, no other feeling is intended to evoke, such as disgust, discomfort, threat or provocation. Abjection may be there, but existing in a more passive way, as in an endless loop. There is much more to come from this genre, it seems. |
| |
| Many have already written that AI slop recapitulates fascist aesthetics; some have compared it with Italian futurism, which celebrates acceleration and war machinery.((Simon Denny, “Epic Fury: The Dark Art of Defense Tech,” Artforum, April 20, 2026. https://www.artforum.com/features/simon-denny-art-defense-tech-1234747490/.)) Slop’s connection to trans-humanism, however, is largely absent in this discussion. Similarly absent is its connection to cyberfeminism, although this is not a clear path as the one to futurism. Looking from today’s perspective, cyberfeminism cannot be seen as a separate category of its own but must take its place within historical relations, where technologies were lionised and positioned as saviours, then “cutified”, and then no longer treated as the mere tools (or products, services, or infrastructures) as they should have been. Without asking infrastructural questions, any attempt at reckoning with critical understanding of technologies can only feed into the dominant optimistic narrative of technology as Big Tech bros define it. Girl-bossing capitalism only serves to add sparkle to the system itself. | Many have already written that AI slop recapitulates fascist aesthetics; some have compared it with Italian futurism, which celebrates acceleration and war machinery.((Simon Denny, “[[https://www.artforum.com/features/simon-denny-art-defense-tech-1234747490/|Epic Fury: The Dark Art of Defense Tech]],” Artforum, April 20, 2026.)) Slop’s connection to trans-humanism, however, is largely absent in this discussion. Similarly absent is its connection to cyberfeminism, although this is not a clear path as the one to futurism. Looking from today’s perspective, cyberfeminism cannot be seen as a separate category of its own but must take its place within historical relations, where technologies were lionised and positioned as saviours, then “cutified”, and then no longer treated as the mere tools (or products, services, or infrastructures) as they should have been. Without asking infrastructural questions, any attempt at reckoning with critical understanding of technologies can only feed into the dominant optimistic narrative of technology as Big Tech bros define it. Girl-bossing capitalism only serves to add sparkle to the system itself. |
| |
| _.”. _.”. _.”. _.”. | _.”. _.”. _.”. _.”. |
| The following provides an example of the genre: | The following provides an example of the genre: |
| |
| “While critical discussions [of] technologies like AI, blockchain, and immersive media are well established, attention to the operational and infrastructural conditions that enable AxAT practices has been limited.”((“Future Art Ecosystems R&D Fellowship: Art X Convergence,” n.d. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/future-art-ecosystems-rd-fellowship-art-x-convergence/.)) | “While critical discussions [of] technologies like AI, blockchain, and immersive media are well established, attention to the operational and infrastructural conditions that enable AxAT practices has been limited.”((“[[https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/future-art-ecosystems-rd-fellowship-art-x-convergence/|Future Art Ecosystems R&D Fellowship: Art X Convergence]],” n.d.)) |
| |
| Slopification is not just an aesthetic proposition. The slop logic is now becoming procedural to AI-assisted production. The first wave of the AI-generated images, a prompt saying “a person doing X” generates an image. When you look at the image, what you see is an image performing a prompt. | Slopification is not just an aesthetic proposition. The slop logic is now becoming procedural to AI-assisted production. The first wave of the AI-generated images, a prompt saying “a person doing X” generates an image. When you look at the image, what you see is an image performing a prompt. |
| |
| In contrast to other traditions of antromorphic image-making, for example puppetry or animation, there is no extra layer to the process other than performing the prompt in a convincing way. In puppetry, the intervening aspect of embodiment enables the de- and reconstructing of the human body. In the words of Matthew Isaac Cohen, “Puppets are alien others and closely associated with the person. They are ‘not me’ and also ‘not not me’.”((Matthew Isaac Cohen, “Puppetry and the Destruction of the Object,” Performance Research 12 (4): 123–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528160701822742.)) | In contrast to other traditions of antromorphic image-making, for example puppetry or animation, there is no extra layer to the process other than performing the prompt in a convincing way. In puppetry, the intervening aspect of embodiment enables the de- and reconstructing of the human body. In the words of Matthew Isaac Cohen, “Puppets are alien others and closely associated with the person. They are ‘not me’ and also ‘not not me’.”((Matthew Isaac Cohen, “[[https://doi.org/10.1080/13528160701822742|Puppetry and the Destruction of the Object]],” Performance Research 12 (4): 123–31.)) |
| |
| With animation, however, there is no connection between the human and the anthropomorphic anymore. Still, there is an extra layer of textures and 3D calculation instead which calculates movements based on the mechanics of the human skeleton. | With animation, however, there is no connection between the human and the anthropomorphic anymore. Still, there is an extra layer of textures and 3D calculation instead which calculates movements based on the mechanics of the human skeleton. |
Post-Platform Digital Publishing Toolkit