Cosmos of Kate

What is art? Merriam-Webster defines it as “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination.” I would even beg to differ on the skill aspect of that definition. Anyone can make art, at it’s core I believe it’s simply a form of self-expression.

Growing up I always felt like I had a difficult time expressing myself well. I wasn’t good at verbalizing what I was thinking or feeling, I never have been. It wasn’t until late junior high and early high school that I explored the realm of self expression through poetry and writing. Conveying my feelings in metaphors or short stories on a page was much easier, and frankly more beautiful, than trying to explain it to someone. I have also always been quite a private person, not wanting the world to know every part of me. Expressing myself through art is a way to share myself with the world indirectly, letting them see snippets of who I am without revealing too much. When I was roughly the same age, I began photographing things with my dad’s old manual SLR camera. Something about framing the world in certain ways, the ways that I saw it, felt deeply personal and beautiful to me. When I was in high school, my favorite subjects were English and art, both outlets for my self-expression. I was able to hone my writing skills, practice my creative writing, and focus more on my poetry. I was also exposed to new forms of art such as stained glass, block prints, and batiking. All of these were ways to express myself.

Poetry and writing in general became my major outlet not just for my creativity but also my feelings. I recently heard someone describe their thoughts as mind spiders. I love that image, spiders in your mind scurrying everywhere, so fast that you can’t catch them and they oftentimes will overwhelm you. Writing is my way of taming those spiders. Every time I start feeling them swarming, I write. I get it out, I release whatever it is that’s trying to claw at me. I believe this is true for many artists. Their chosen medium is what helps them make sense of themselves, the world, and their place in it, or at least temporarily tame the spiders.

One thing I have also realized throughout my life is that not everyone is artistic. Not everyone sees the world through an artist’s eyes. Many people are very analytical, logic oriented. While I believe there are certain aspects of art within more structured fields, there’s no denying that they are more concrete, have more rules, are more strict. When I watch a movie with someone whose mind works this way, I typically come away talking about all the things I noticed, the metaphors, the way certain scenes were structured, the use of color throughout the film, and oftentimes I will be met with “Huh, I didn’t notice any of that.” To me, this is mind boggling, not because I don’t understand their way of seeing the world, but because I do, I just also see the world from another perspective.

Two things happened simultaneously during my high school years : I was developing my love of expression through art, and I was developing my love of computers and science. These two realms are often very different, and very separate, one being concrete and the other being free form. I decided to become a nurse as a career, a highly scientific job, and am now in the process of becoming a nurse informaticist. My brain thrives on and craves science, structure, uniformity, making sense of things. But… my brain is also chaotic, jumbled, racing, unsettled, and very much understanding that art is often the byproduct of this type of mindscape. Sometimes I feel very isolated in this sense, being very much in tune with both art and science. I genuinely know very few people who are both as artistic and scientific as myself, but perhaps I am just too introverted. The beauty of it is that I am able to relate to and understand most people I encounter. Being both sides of the same coin has made me an extremely open-minded and accepting individual, which I believe are two of my best qualities.

However, I feel like these two worlds, art and science are currently at war with each other, more so than in previous decades, and it makes my mind spiders frantic. I recently posted about artificial intelligence and how I’m completely here for it and excited to see what comes of it. This is true, very true. I’m interested to see what it can do for us, what ways we can use it to our benefit, but also what ways we will try to manipulate it in ways that should likely be avoided.

I was watching Guillermo del Toro’s new iteration of Frankenstein recently (absolutely gorgeous movie, go watch it if you haven’t seen it), and was blown away by the artistic foundation on which it is built. Not only are the visuals exceptionally brilliant, but the acting, specifically by Jacob Elordi who plays Frankenstein’s creature, is some of the best, most dedicated I have ever seen. I subsequently watched multiple interviews with Guillermo and Jacob; hearing them talk about the dedication they each have to their craft, the way they approach movies, the passion they have for what they do, frankly left me in awe.

Similarly I recently saw Hamnet in theaters and was absolutely left speechless by the acting in that movie. Jessie Buckley is on track to win a best actress Oscar for her performance (deservedly so), and Paul Mescal is so dazzling, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I recall first seeing the previews for the film, and then film itself and thinking, “Who is this actor that I’ve never heard of? He’s so good, why have I not heard about him before?” I knew Jessie Buckley from several of her previous works and have always absolutely loved her, but somehow knew nothing about Paul Mescal. Turns out I was living under a rock. As leading man in both the BBC series Normal People from COVID times (which apparently was massively popular and I somehow missed it) and Gladiator II (another one that I just wasn’t interested in watching when it came out a little over a year ago), not to mention his multiple other movies, one of which earned him an Oscar nomination for best actor, he’s really quite well known and I was just oblivious. Of course, after seeing Hamnet and doing my interweb sleuthing, I had to watch the rest of his works… which DID NOT disappoint! Having only been acting in shows and films for the past five years, he is already touted as one of the great actors of his generation. Though what draws me to him most is the emotional depth he brings to his characters, and how completely and utterly dedicated he is to his craft (not to mention his dashingly handsome face and Irish accent).

Needless to say, I have been watching a lot of movies recently, and subsequently discovering an entire realm of creativity that I had not previously explored. In discovering my newfound adoration for the art of film, I watched an interview with Guillermo del Toro about making Frankenstein in which he very animatedly says, “Fuck AI!” And I completely understand that sentiment. Artistic expression is something that is at the core of what it means to be human, something sacred that we need to protect. When we use AI for things such as creating videos and movies, when we lean on AI for help with our writing, when we utilize it to create images or stories for our entertainment… we’re slowly (or perhaps quickly) losing our humanity to technology. It’s no longer an instrument that we can use to assist us, but something that is used to replace not just our skills, but our creativity, our imagination, the forms of expression that are, and should remain, sacredly human. This is absolutely a hill I am willing to die on.

Do I think AI could end us all? Yes. Do I think it will be due to the mass uprising of sentient robots? Perhaps. But more so, I think the potential exists for AI to strip us completely of our very essence, to the point where we don’t even know what it means to be a living, breathing human anymore. Being human in this modern world is frightening, with so much potential for our jobs being replaced by AI. But what’s more frightening to me is not just losing our jobs, but losing ourselves, our essence, our art and creativity, our self-expression, to our own scientific creation. I’m reminded of a scene in Frankenstein when Victor says “I never considered what would come after creation. In having reached the edge of the Earth, there was no horizon left.” Sadly, along with creativity and self-expression, another core trait of humanity is acting without first considering the consequences of our actions. Another famous movie quote from my favorite of all-time, Jurassic Park, sums up perfectly humanity’s biggest flaw which, I’m convinced, will ultimately lead to its demise: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”