In addition to looking at Jameson, I needed to go back to my bookshelf. One of the formative works for me before I went to grad school was Saul’s The Doubter’s Companion. I haven’t talked much about it here (though I did bring it up in the August newsletter, which was composed while this post was being drafted).
But it led me to a longer form work of his, the 2001 title On Equilibrium, which covered many of the same themes in a more traditional structure. In it he talked about “the six essential qualities of humanity” that help us be responsible individuals. These qualities are common sense, ethics, imagination, intuition, memory, and reason. These qualities don’t stand in isolation; they are assistive. They help each other up.
That being said, it’s worth taking a look at what Saul has to say on Memory, in the context of our look at Nostalgia, and Soylent Culture.
“Art consists in bringing the memory of things past to the surface. But the author is not a passeiste. He is linked to history; to memory; which is linked to the common dream.”
J.R.Saul On Equilibrium (2001, p.236)
and there is some more on the source, Le Clezio, see footnote 22
What this means for Soylent Culture, is that with AI (art), the artists have access to everything; all the memories scanned and stored within it; and the artist then becomes a curator of what to display.
AI Art is a digital art form. In the same way that a painter working on a painting is limited to the colors on their pallette (or within their budget), whereas a digital artist working on a tablet has a nigh-unlimited range of colors and hues to select from, and must decide from that range of what is possible, what best suits the piece.
This still involves skill!
This is no less art!