Art, artifice, and the artificial

Can AI make something truly beautiful? The bar for makers is higher now. To risk not making a Mission Impossible 7 Pt. 2, but to risk being disliked. To make something beautiful, and true.

This weekend, I found myself rewatching a video that cycles back into internet collective consciousness every few years (or at least in the corner of the internet I live in—maybe this is revealing): the Goo Goo Dolls’ July 4, 2004 performance of “Iris” in Buffalo, New York, exactly 21 years ago. The setup feels almost mythic: rain veils the stage in thi…