Talk
November 28, 2024 – "Strongman"
This is a very valuable text, by Timothy Snyder: "The Strongman Fantasy".
November 06, 2024 – "Today"
Today it was demonstrated (again) that democracy can have dangerous consequences. Still it is better than the alternatives. I am worried and I will say no more.
Instead I want to post an opening statement I wrote for a debate on the subject of "Is AI Art – Art". It took place today at the Culttech summit in Vienna and I was debating digital artist Stephanie Meisl under the moderation of Klaus Speidel. Stephanie and I were expected to disagree a lot but we didn't really. Yet I think we were pretty sharp and made a good contribution. I certainly enjoyed it. What we came up with couldn't have been been conceived by two machines. This was my opening statement:
Art has always been a game between humans.
That we make art, in so many different ways – and that we automatically begin to interpret art when we see it – makes Homo Sapiens different from all other animals.
It goes like this:
Art is made by a human who has certain skills and a creative intention. This person will look for the best possible way to express their intention. Once they are finished, they will say:
I am an artist, this is my work, it had to be like this and I am responsible. Please look at it.
If the work of art is successful, people may look at it not only once, but again and again and they will interpret it and think about it and argue about it with others. WHY does it look like that, WHAT is it supposed to mean, WHAT was the artist thinking?
A few works of art have much more impact than others. They become more meaningful. The questions never stop.
Art can be entertaining and it can be therapeutic and it can be worth a lot of money, but at its core, it is more than that.
Because an AI cannot (yet) have intentions and must be prompted by humans who do, it may be used as a tool for humans in their art-making – but it can't make art by itself.
Real art, on the other hand, will act as a prompt for a creative process in the humans who are confronted with it.
October 15, 2024 – "Freedom"
Some time ago I was contacted by the museum in Norrköping, Sweden. They own a number of my works, among them two Test Paintings (#51 and #52). I learned these will be included in an exhibition called "Frihetens Språk" (The Language of Freedom). The reason for the email was more specific, however, they asked for permission to make a very large print on fabric of a detail of Test 51, to install in the air across a street in the city centre. In order to draw attention to the exhibition. I said yes of course, and thought it would be fun to see a photo of this later. Then yesterday I looked at the museum's website and saw a detail of the painting. Below was a text where I read the following (in my translation):
After the Second World War, a new vision of art emerged on both sides of the Atlantic. There was a shared desire to build a new society that would never again have to experience the horrors of war. Abstract or non-representational painting came to symbolise a new future in the visual arts. It is a form of painting that allows the viewer to use their own imagination in their encounter with art.
One could argue about whether this build-a-new-society description isn't more fitting for the years after the first world war, but that is not why this short text made me take notice. It is the never-again-war moment, described together with a detail (soon a giant detail) of my Test painting. Yes, this is indeed an abstract and non-figurative painting, but at the same time I have always had thoughts and references to blood as I made this one and the other 148. Making them has been almost like an exorcism, as soon as content was on my mind, whereas most of the time I was engaging with purely painterly thoughts about how to achieve maximum visual power in the work at hand.
And now, at this point in time with wars multiplying on the edges of Europe, to be able to see this dualism, this confrontation, play out in the form of painting, asking each viewer (including myself) to use their imagination to make sense of it all. I do wonder how it will work. I will have to see this show
Imagine... that it could truly work as an exorcism!
October 10, 2024 – "Prize"
Today it was announced South Korea's Han Kang will receive the Nobel prize for literature. I haven't read her. My first thought is a memory. During my first visit to Seoul in 1993, I at one point took a pedestrian tunnel under one of the city's many wide road. On the wall was a gallery of Nobel literature laureates. Each one had a portrait with name and year below. At the end the portrait was missing. A text (in Korean and English) announced that this was reserved for South Korea's first prizewinner.
It took until today.
Oktober 09, 2024 – "AI Interview"
Yesterday the official booklaunch for "ART INTELLIGENCE – How Generative AI Relates To Human Art-Making" finally took place at the at the Angewandte in Vienna. I discussed various angles of the book's topic with art theoritician Klaus Speidel. It went really very well – and a lot of people were there: a full house.
Today I was looking I was looking for something else on transcript's (then publisher) website and came across this short interview with me, which was made for the book. I had forgotten it. Now I read it and thought it was rather good. I decided to repeat it here:
1. Why did you choose this topic?
Visual artists (and musicians and other creators) sometimes use software to help them make their work. Generative AI now offers to create it for them. In my book, I explore what this will mean for us artists. I take a broad view, from thinking about artists' ability to make a living in the future, to considering wider, philosophical perspectives and how our understanding of art will change as a result. I have been working associatively, putting dots together to see what picture will emerge.
2. What new perspectives does your book offer?
I was surprised to realize how key initiatives in the development of modern art have combined with the hyper-commodification of contemporary art to create a situation where AI may not face any resistance. Ultimately, I'm looking for what we artists offer that cannot be replaced. Inevitably, this leads to the question of what art is and what its purpose is in today's society. The text is interspersed here and there with small details from drawings that offer a deliberate level of visual friction.
3. What makes your topic relevant for current research debates?
As a practicing artist, I use writing as a tool for both analysis and creation. My goal was to make the book short, intense, and eminently readable for anyone interested in art, whether they are professional or from the general public. Like an installation, it offers a personal and complex view of an evolving and confusing subject. I hope that in its web of voices and connections, a gestalt will emerge that will help the reader navigate and interpret this new reality.
4. Choose one person you would like to discuss your book with!
Given the way I have used quotes, I feel that I am already in dialog with a number of interesting people. They just don't know it yet. One of them is Jaron Lanier. Unlike other technologists responsible for our current situation, he is also a musician. I would like to talk to him about the value of drawing and painting.
5. Your book summary in one sentence:
What is it about human-made art that AI will not be able to replicate?
October 05, 2024 – "Lee"
I saw the film about Lee Miller yesterday in Berlin. 9 years in the making, the process kept on track by Kate Winslet, who plays the title role.
I met Lee Miller for the first time as a photo in Man Ray's autobiography during Christmas 1976. In profile, androgynous. I was fifteen and thought she was the most beautiful woman ever. Less than a year later I got to know Roland Penrose, her husband, two months after she had passed. But I didn't know, yet, that they were married. Later I also met Tony, their son, and much later we visited Farley Farm with our baby son (who puked on the floor in Lee's kitchen).
It was very special to see this film, for the above reasons. The major part of it, of Lee as a war photographer, is very convincing. All the "sexy" stuff before meeting Roland in 1937 has been left out. Man Ray hardly appears. I think this was smart. Kate Winslet is superb in her acting, but her outer shape is not completely convincing for the role. Without her though, the film wouldn't have been made. I think they may have briefly filmed in the actual apartment in Hornton Street, where I first stepped into surrealist painting heaven in September 1977. There is the war, Lee and David Sherman travelling as photographers at the head of American forces as they make their way through Germany, finding concentration camps and death in all versions.
It is very strong. I'm sitting there alone in a cinema in Yorck Strasse, less than two kilometers from the Sportpalast were Goebbels had declared Total War in 1943.
September 29, 2024 – "4:06:48"
Marathon in Berlin. I believe it's my twentieth. Which would make it the twenty-fourth
all in all. The weather was great, I felt good and had no problems, but the time was a bit slow. Never mind. I'm happy I made it. Again.
August 17, 2024 – "Plaster possibilities"
I'm counting the days until my plaster "sock" will be taken off. Today: still five to go. Four weeks with a stiff wrist, yet fingers that can be moved. A plaster which may not get wet. For a shower I have to cover it with a plastic pouch and tape it tight. It's hard to clean my hand. For this reason I had to give up my ambition to paint during this month, which had been my original plan. Writing by hand is very difficult, and typing is a hassle as well. But I can still draw, with some difficulty. Handwriting involves using lots of muscle memory, which for obvious reasons have to be constantly re-calibrated if the writing hand is encased in plaster. Using the same hand for drawing is much less dependent on automated movements. As a matter of fact, every line or smudge in a man-made drawing is new and independent (in obvious contrast to a "drawing" made by an AI). If the pen can still be moved, the drawing can be made. I have had a productive month, much more rewarding than I thought it would be.
August 3, 2024 – "Drawing"
I was out running and listening to a podcast with three people discussing the events of the week. Regarding Israel's killing of a Hamas leader in Iran and Iran's promise to respond, one of them suggested that we may be on the precipice of a catastrophic escalation of the ongoing war. "I check the news every hour," she said.
I'm afraid I do the same, and I am just as worried. Yet things move so fast now and sometimes they offer reasons for optimism as well. It is dangerous to take out any triumph in advance but the way the very old candidate for president in the US actually did step back, which unleashed a torrent of hope among his party's supporters, has been hard not to be moved by. Maybe the other very old candidate, the awful one, doesn't have to be part of the future, after all. The audacity of hope.
It is summer. I have more "free" time than usual and I had planned to paint a lot. That will have to wait, however. I made a brief visit to Vienna ten days ago, to see how work is coming along (printing by Tina Graf and bookbinding by Christina Petutschnigg) on my new artist's book "2024". The book will be the sister/brother of "2022" which I published
in September 2022, just like this book will be published now in September (... must be before the year is over). Anyway, I was very pleased with what I saw. I then found time for a short run (I am as always in summer, prepraing for a marathon) and while crossing a wide street near Spittelau I stumbled and fell helplessly in the middle of the street. Luckily there were no cars close, but I stopped my fall with my right hand... soon it was hurting a lot and I could hardly use it. The next day I went to an emergency room. On the X-ray they could see a crack in a bone. I received a 25 cm plaster "sock" which leaves my fingers free. I can draw, with some effort, but I don't dare to paint because I always make a mess and worry I would not be able to clean my hand. I'm happy to focus on drawing however, and thanks to my instagram project I have become much more aware of what it is... to draw. And what it means to me. The instagram project obviously has to do with the book (Art Intelligence) and its vignettes, and now I begin to see how this writing project somehow gains a role as a connector between various strands of my activities. And not just now, but over a long time.
July 7, 2024 – "Elections"
Is it possible to see Labour's election win in Britain as a hopeful event? The lack of populistic over-promising from it's leader... is, at least, refreshing. Yet it is only two days until France will be at it again.
June 29, 2024 – "Art Intelligence"
My new book "Art Intelligence – How Generative AI Relates to Human Art-Making" has now been published. It is available both in a printed version and as an open access PDF, which can be downloaded for free. Both versions are available from the publisher transcript's website.
June 13, 2024 – "Instagram"
I have started posting on Instagram. Every second day. A special project, triggered by work on my forthcoming book Art Intelligence. I'm surprised by how interesting I find the result. @svenungssonjan
May 18, 2024 – "We cannot die"
A long time ago I had a band called Svart, together with Caiza Almen. The band existed for about one and a half year, but this was 1980-81 and I remember it as having been much longer. We made a couple of records and they can be seen here (a hidden page...). We even had a song called "X" (no Musk association) on a live compilation, called HEARTWORK LIVE KLUBB 2000. It was recorded in Lund at the end of 1980.
Heartwork was an indie record company run by Henrik Venant. He also had a band, (together with three Peters: Ivarrs, Strauss och Puders) called TT-Reuter and they were fantastic. On a whole other level than us and all the other post punk players trying out things in those years. They were tight. They had structures and melodies and songs and they could really really play. In retrospect, it is strange that they did not go further than they did. I will never forget when Henrik gave me a friendly word of advice after a gig: that there is something called dynamics. Until then I hadn't bothered, really. The band was already at the end of its rope, but I took his advice to heart, for my subsequent activities.
More than a year ago I was contacted on Messenger by a Karl G Jönsson in Lund who was planning a book about all of Heartwork's activities, with a special focus on Henrik and TT-Reuter. As Svart had appeared on that live album we were also of interest. The only problem was, I hardly ever look at Messenger, so I never saw his message. Until I did, two months ago, and then I answered. Amazingly, he was still there and told me the book was going to be published very soon and it was too late for any additions regarding Svart. But then I remembered I had once photographed TT-Reuter at a gig in Stockholm and I knew there were some good shots on that film. I asked whether he'd like to see them. He did, I sent him the whole film, no time to scan it, and now two of my photos are in this impressive hard cover book of 300 pages, one of them on the back cover. And Svart has a picture in the book as well and a short text... "four teenagers from Uppsala".
It feels
special and strange. My short time in music (which began after I had discovered art and decided to be an artist (at the age of 15) – and had finished by the time I was 20) had a strong impact on me. Whenever it happens that we (Svart) is mentioned in histories of that area, it is strangely touching.
The title of the book, "Vi kan inte dö" (We cannot die) is a chant in one of TT-Reuter's songs. Sadly, two of the Peters have proven the opposite is true.
May 4, 2024 – "Two books, one quote"
In June transcript Verlag will publish the book I have been working on since June 29 last year when I had a sudden flash of inspiration and started to bombard my own email account with dictated ideas and notes, while out and about. It's full title will be "Art Intelligence – How Generative AI Relates to Human Art-Making". transcript is an international publisher of academic books and they will both sell an edition on paper, as well as making the book available for free download. I think it's an interesting experiment. As so many times before, Theresa Hattinger is responsible for the design, and it looks really very good, I must say!
Second book reference, on a completely different tangent. I'm reading Simon Kuper's 2022 book "Chums – How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK" and it is breathtaking. Kuper, who studied at Oxford himself, describes and analyses how it could be that a tight gang of upper class university chums (with names such as Cameron, Johnson, etc) could crash the UK's political culture and possibly the country's future without really meaning to and certainly without understanding what they were doing. The story pivots on the Brexit campaign. While the book is both funny and easy to read it is also depressing and tragic. You never know (even if you have observed the goings on from a distance) what it will reveal next. This is a quote which made me stop in my tracks. Kuper has made a detour describing the famous Soviet Union spy ring at "the other university" Cambridge from the 1930's to 1964 (Kim Philby & co). He then notes:
Admittedly, the comparison between the Cambridge and Oxford sets isn't entirely fair: though both betrayed Britain's interests in the service of Moscow, the Brexiteers did it by mistake.
April 3, 2024 – "Hypocenter"
I write this eleven days later. When you travel from place to place, from experience to experience, reporting on each and every one in real time is not my model. No social media travelogue for me. Yet certain points in time and place are recorded here, where they will stay fixed in their place as long as I control this space and hopefully longer. We spent two days in Hiroshima. I had never been there before and I was always hoping to have the opportunity one day. Now that I have had it I know I will never forget it. The city was in full cherry bloom and people were behaving accordingly. Still, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was incredibly crowded and you walked slowly from tableau to tableau, picture to picture, from surviving clothes to artifacts which all told a complex story of how life was ended in a flash, for about 100.000 people that day, August 6, 1945. And how it was destroyed for many more over the following years. This is all well known and I don't need to repeat it. Yet while I was in the museum I had this one very un-original thought in my head: I wish every world leader come here and study this in detail. For a long time. Without photo-ops and reporters.
As I write, Sunday afternoon, April 14, this seems even more necessary, as we are all waiting to see what will be Israel's response to Iran's unprecedented direct attack with drones and missiles earlier today.
Which was a response to Israel's strike on Iran's consulate in Damascus on the same day we experienced the ultimate peacefulness and beauty of Saihoji's garden.
Crazy has no limits.
April 1, 2024 – "Moss"
I had wanted to visit a moss garden ever since I heard David Bowie's eponymous track on the Heroes album a long, long time ago. Today we did, at the Saihoji temple on the outskirts of Kyoto. It's nature, it's wild, it's organized, it's carefully taken care of and it was very silent.
March 31, 2024 – "Afternoon"
In Kyoto, Sunday afternoon. A guided tour (booked months ago) through Villa Katsura and its gardens. You may not enter the buildings, only look inside. On this picture a tea house, for the tea ceremony. Designed in the 17th century. The beauty.
March 31, 2024 – "Morning"
In Kyoto, Sunday morning. We visit Takashi Murakami's exhibition at the Kyoto City Museum of Art: "Mononoke Kyoto". It is a real experience. Murakami may be ultra-commercial but he also has real depth and ambition. Beauty and horror battling it out.
March 30, 2024 – "Rokka"
Kyoto in the afternoon. On a long walk from A to B we visit a winebar. It's very small and still empty. Classical music radio is playing. The announcer speaks Swedish. It's P2, from the state radio channel, thanks to the internet. The friendly proprietor speaks some Swedish. He spent a summer in Växjö long time ago, because of the glassworks. As a child I spent three years there. The bar is called Rokka.
March 26, 2024 – "Grave"
In Tokyo on a rainy Tuesday: visiting Katsushika Hokusai's grave.
March 23, 2024 – "Lost and Found"
On the way to Tokyo I forgot my computer on the plane, when transferring in Beijing. And got it back.
March 22, 2024 – "Copy"
I received the finished text from the copy editor Scott Evans and we discussed a few points.
March 20, 2024 – "Contract"
I signed the contract for the publication of my new book "Art Intelligence" with the international academic publishing house transcript Verlag.
February 17, 2024 – "Alexey"
Yesterday Alexey Navalny was killed by the Russian state. If directly or indirectly makes no difference. In the New Yorker today his friend Masha Gessen writes about his life and death. Just before the end she writes this:
A month later, Navalny flew back to Moscow. His friends had tried to talk him out of it. He wouldn’t hear of staying in exile and becoming politically irrelevant. He imagined himself as Russia’s Nelson Mandela: he would outlive Putin’s reign and become President. Perhaps he believed that the men he was fighting were capable of embarrassment and wouldn’t dare to kill him after he’d proved that they had tried to. He and I had argued, over the years, about the fundamental nature of Putin and his regime: he said that they were “crooks and thieves”; I said that they were murderers and terrorists. After he came out of his coma, I asked him if he had finally been convinced that they were murderers. No, he said. They kill to protect their wealth. Fundamentally, they are just greedy.
He thought too highly of them. They are, in fact, murderers.
February 15, 2024 – "Text"
I'm alone in a house in the country. I have a very wide table at which to work. In front of me is a wall of windows facing north. The weather is gray and damp, though no snow. The house is warm. I am deep in the final editing of the book I have been working on since June. About AI, art and artists. It's complicated. Nobody really knows... me neither. That's why I write. Writing is a process of gaining knowledge. I love the final editing phase: you have the parts, you work on the details and you want them all to sing together. In rhythm. You are still discovering.
When so many scary things are going on outside, what one can do is doing what is meaningful as well as possible. Every word counts. Take care of them and make something good. It's a privilege.
February 5, 2024 – "Two Books"
I'm working on two books which I hope will be published latest in summer. One with text only (almost), which will be titled "Art Intelligence". And one with pictures but no text, except for the title page and impressum. It's title will be "2024".
January 1, 2024 – "2025"
What will the world look like on January 1, 2025?