Cybernetic Machines: AI Art and Cultural Form

A “script” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called a “production company” that outputs a “movie”

A “composition” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called an “orchestra” that outputs a “symphony”.

A “blueprint” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called a “construction company” that outputs a “building”.

A “context model” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called an “AI” that outputs a “virtual world”.

Perhaps


Or perhaps all of the above.

These are all examples of “allographic arts” as introduced by Nelson Goodman back in 1962, versions of art that is crafted by others based on a set of instructions provided by the artist. this could be the director, the composer, the architect, as Goodman postulated, or a set of instructions followed by the Generative AI at the direction of the “Prompt Engineer”.

Of course “Prompt Engineer” is at once both too banal and too unrepresentative of what is going on in the artistic process here. The slightly more upscaled “Context Engineer” (for when one prompt isn’t enough) is similarly unsuitable here. Engineering has little to do with it at all, though much like our architect example above, engineering isn’t precluded from being a part of the process.

Perhaps it’s because the Generative AI tools are too new in their development to have a singular title, like composer or architect, or Madonna or Cher, and so we’re left with the dual names to describe them, by defining them as a variation on the thing that they are somewhat akin to. Think “software architect” or “3D modeler”. Too new not quite encapsulated in the name, the way “TV Producer” has collapsed into “showrunner” in the 21st century.

Maybe it’s in the name.


Or maybe it’s in what we make with it. The art form hasn’t coalesced yet. Again too new; too recently pulled from the primordial technocultural stew. In the early days of the form, we are left reproducing the elements of older media, the same way early television and film were often stage plays and vaudeville acts. We’re caught somewhere between Pong and Space Invaders in terms of development, with Elden Ring and GTA VI undreamed of in the distant horizon.

With that in mind, what will AI art actually look like? Once it comes into its own as cultural form? I hinter at it with Virtual Worlds above. These can be produced using traditional methods, of course, but maybe that’s but one way a fed set of prompts, of contexts, of world models can be realized. AI Art will almost assuredly look something barely glimpsed or imagined.

But I want to play in the holodeck for a moment.


Because I think that gets close to what we’re imagining here. The holodeck, famously introduced in the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation “Encounter At Farpoint” (airdate 1987-09-28) and subsequently retconned and chronologically re-situated as typical with enduring narratives, would allow for the cast and crew to input a set of commands into the computer and allow it to generate the setting, players, dialogue and the like, along a relatively broad range of possibilities. The computer onboard was massively powerful, and generated these holographic simulations with relative ease, but the show(s) always made that distinction between the computer of the ship, and the AI embodied in more ambulatory agents like Lieutenant Commander Data. It stands to reason that the computer of a faster-than-light starship some 250 years in the future would be more that capable at the task at hand.

So perhaps this is what we’re moving towards, where the cultural form of AI art is more akin to an “experience” crafted by an “Imagineer”, though perhaps not in a way akin to a theme park ride held under copyright by the Disney Corporation.

We’re getting closer.


Perhaps we don’t have the words yet because we don’t know what that cultural form will be. It’s had to tell from our Pong-centered viewpoint here.

So let’s try to re-work our formula from above:

A “prompt” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called an “AI” that outputs an “experience”.

Not bad, though perhaps a little generic. But what it gains in that genericity is that it is divorced from the digital. No “cyber” or “virtual” prefixes are to be found. And that allows for growth, for change, for possibility – for the cultural form of AI art to transcend the digital / material barrier, to allow for an full environment to be developed like within the holodeck, or for humans to interact with material AI agents, like the hosts within Westworld. We’re still bouncing around that “theme park” model, but there is art within that creation, of the building and shaping of a full sensory experience.

And the play is the thing, a phrase that was uttered in the holodeck on more than one occasion, I’m sure. So let’s leave it there, our recognition of the incipient cultural form of AI art, and go out into the world to hunt for new words, new worlds, and discover what the future might be.

WYCU Revised

With Predator: Killer of Killers coming out this weekend, I’ve started in the rewatch of the movies, beginning with 2022’s Prey (which is fantastic; more on this later). The prep has necessitated a slight revision to the WYCU timeline, which we talked about here.

Adding in the new releases, plus the Blade Runner franchise and the chronological year, and our WYCU now looks like this:

WCYU Chronology (revised)

TitlePublication Year‘VerseChrono YearChrono Order
Prometheus *2012A0?1
Prey2022P17192
Predator: Killer of Killers2025P1500/1800/19433
Predator1987P19874
Predator 21990P19975
Alien v Predator2004X20046
Alien v Predator: Requiem2007X20047
Predators2010P20108
The Predator2018P20189
Blade Runner1982B201910
Soldier1998B203611
Blade Runner 20492017B204912
Predator: Badlands***2025P???13
Prometheus **2012A209314
Alien: Covenant2017A210415
Alien: Earth2025A???16
Alien1979A212217
Alien: Romulus2024A214218
Aliens1986A217919
Alien31992A217920
Alien: Resurrection1997A238121

Sinners (2025, R. Coogler)

I hold to a rather simple opinion : you can’t be movie of the year if the audience is looking at their watch at the 60 minute mark and wondering if they should leave.

And this is where I found myself at that precise point while watching Sinners (2025).

Don’t get me wrong: Sinners is a fine movie, but the pacing – especially in the first half – was atrocious. Reflecting on the movie after it finished, this was the overall feeling I got. The music was fantastic, and I would have loved to see more or it; the effects were well done. But the slow build and unnecessary bloat brought it down. The denouement felt interminable, on the levels of The Return of the King as well.

I enjoyed seeing the Buddy Guy cameo (which I don’t think is much of a spoiler at this point), and wish he had been present throughout, in some way, shape or form. But overall, I thought getting to the Juke joint faster would have made for a better flick as a whole. Let’s give it a 7/10, as far as ratings go.

Predator: Badlands

If there is a better metaphor for 2025 than an alien hunter preying on humanity, well, it’s probably found over in an episode of Andor, but the Predator from the WYCU is a close second.

We were literally just talking about this as we were laying out our watch guide for the WYCU about a month ago, so imagine our glee when this showed up on the tubes:

So it looks like Predator: Badlands will be joining our rewatch of the WYCU taking place this summer. And while I originally had some plans to slot it in chronologically, with the November 7th release date just announced we may just have to circle back to it once we’re gotten through to the end of the Aliens part of the franchise.

(As always, we’ll see how those publication times go with the podcast.)

But right now: we are very, very hyped. RAWR!

Mickey 17 (Bong Joon-Ho, 2025)

There will be some spoilers in this review and commentary about the recent film.


Do you ever go to a theatre and see a movie with incredible potential but it doesn’t quite reach it, it doesn’t take that next step to get where it needs to be to reach that level of greatness?

Mickey 17 (2025) movie poster

That was my experience with Mickey 17 (2025), a movie I enjoyed, with a great concept and cast, and had so many things go for it, but it felt like it was holding back, and this made it a “smaller” film than it could have been, if it really wanted to take some of the ideas that it was exploring up to the next level.

The political commentary in the film was on the nose, which is remarkable given how long ago this would have likely been in pre-production* and development to nail that, but it seems almost restrained compared to current events that we’re dealing with right now (in April of 2025).

We also see continuing elements of class and social commentary that Bong Joon Ho has had in his other films like Parasite (2019) and Snowpiercer (2013), and there’s a lot of similarities with Snowpiercer in this film. They’re both deeply chilling movie in the same way, and this only is in part due to the winter environment that’s an existential threat that forces humanity in on itself. Hmmm. Probably a paper there needed to unpack all that.

However, the part where the movie hit a wall for me is with the implications of the 3D printing tech and the memory storage: it didn’t take it far enough and explore what it could actually do – it took it to a certain point and just stopped, which is unfortunate, as other movies with similar themes like Edge of Tomorrow (2014) or Westworld (1973) and Futureworld (1976) (or the 2016 HBO series) where we have that printing technology going on explored it better, and I think that speaks to some of the films limitations.

One of the ways Mickey 17 falls short is in the portrayal of the 3D-printing technology and the way it is integrated within society. The tech itself comes across as both silly and kinda dorky in the way it’s implemented, with the slow emergence like from a dot matrix printer in the 1990s to the fully-completed form. This is where Leeloo’s build in The Fifth Element (1997) or the hosts emerging from the vat in Westworld (2016) feel more fully realized. The silliness of the process works, in so far that it also highlight the somewhat bizarre way that this future society treats the implications of this tech. So many questions remain poorly answered by the film: why only one person per ship as an Expendable? Why not multiples for each role on the ship (or at least for the combat, exploration, and scout crews?) Why limit what is essentially nigh-immortality to a very limited underclass? Why would the ultra-wealthy not jump on this very tech? (Though this last point is kinda hinted at in the dream sequence in the epilogue). This silliness brings Mickey 17 more in line with other films like Prometheus (2012), and to be honest, I’ve never really enjoyed movies that kick around the idiot ball.

Some of this is answered, though not to my satisfaction, in the presentation of the Expendables and Multiples in the film. The religious proscription against having more than one, and the way they are treated. And of course, the use of the gun as the final commitment to the process (similar to dog in Kingsman (2015)) may be a bridge too far, though one that the crews of Starfleet have long since overcome. (The argument about whether the transporter kills the user or not having gone on for ages.) If one is already on the upper tier of society, would one be willing to risk it all to achieve this pseudo-immortality?

It might be too much to give up, as the process isn’t exactly perfect. We learn in the second act that there are variations in various duplicates, as they emerge from the printer. Whether this is due to the somewhat less that rigorous process of printing and downloading that occurs by the medical team – who remind one of a collection of grad students in a lab, rather than the most top-notch team out there – or due to some natural variations in the printing process is unexplained. There is a lot of difference in the repetition, and this variance might not be appealing to the ultra-wealthy that would be demanding a greater degree to fidelity in the transfers, much as was seen in the aforementioned Westworld in its later seasons.

Ultimately Mickey 17 is a love story. Despite the difference in each iteration of the various Mickeys, each one of them is loved by Nasha, who he loves in turn. Their meet cute happens early in the movie, and it’s love at first site, a love that endures through each reprinting of Mickey. His love for her is constant (and she does change and grow through the movie too – the role she plays at the end of the film is not who we see at the beginning – as is her love for him, throughout all the different foibles and flaws of the many personalities that are printed.

Though there some throughlines, some continuity in the bedrock personality, which is why Mickey 18 makes the sacrifice play late in the film, despite the wildly different personality from 17. Props to Robert Pattinson for pulling off making the same character feel different in Mickey’s varied iterations.

Final thoughts: Mickey 17 is well crafted, there isn’t any misses in the production aspects of it, though some of the satire misses due to the low-key nature of it. I want to see the Luc Besson version of Mickey 17, that takes the premise and goes all out.


*: apparently this is an adaptation**, which I had heard about going in but hadn’t checked the book out. Also, the book was published in 2022, and adapted shortly after, and was originally delayed in release from it’s original set date in 2024. So the political stuff is even more poignant, or perhaps sadly, more eternal.

**: also, in looking at the wiki after writing the above, the short story was also an exploration of the Star Trek teleporter paradox, so… hmm, yeah.