Many of you will have heard the story of Nigel the Loneliest Sea Bird in the World. If you haven’t, Nigel was a gannet who lived off the coast of New Zealand. He was the only gannet to settle on Mana Island following a conservation effort to establish a colony by building several concrete decoy gannets as bait. Nigel chose one of the decoys as a mate and spent his lonely life courting, grooming and attempting to communicate with the inanimate concrete statue. He died beside it some years later.
This story is so tragic to me that I have to be careful not to think about it too hard as it can really ruin my day. But I do think of Nigel quite often. I think about him every time the question of generative AI art comes up. A common question that is asked now is this: If AI can create music or artwork that is entirely indistinguishable from the real thing, what harm is there in enjoying it? To me, you might as well ask, why does it matter that Nigel loved a concrete decoy?
The creation and consumption of art is a two way relationship. When an artist creates something they are revealing a part of themselves. To engage with art fully completes a connection between two people. A connection that happens on the canvas, the cinema screen, the phone screen or the air particles between speaker and ear. We take a leap and trust that there is someone there to meet us halfway.
When I listen to Girl/Boy Song by Aphex Twin, I not only enjoy the sonic palette, the scattered rhythms and playful harmonies… I vicariously experience Richard James’s childhood in rural Cornwall. The music evokes fragmented moments of sun kissed cliff-top mischief. I can smell sea air and ripe farmyards. I can hear laughter that isn’t there. All tinged with the deep melancholy of lost youth and over time mixed with my own memories of the song - both ecstatic and painful. Richard James knows nothing of me and his work doesn’t need an audience to be brilliant. But without a human as the source, even a parasocial relationship such as this suddenly feels entirely hollow. I wonder if Aphex Twin would care if he learned that everyone who ever listened to his music was a bot. I suspect he would.
To listen to, read or look at AI created media - knowingly or not - is to take a leap and be left falling. Perhaps your attention has earned a few pennies of ad/streaming revenue for some piece of shit tech bro. But beyond that it has meant nothing. You are Nigel cooing over concrete.
Photograph by Leon Berard
