THE HUMAN DIMENSION: MAKING IN THE AGE OF A.I.

What is it to be human? Ever since ChatGPT rolled out to the public in late 2022, and increasingly as A.I. chatbots and agents demonstrate an expanding range of human-like behaviors, we, as a society, have been forced onto terrain once occupied solely by philosophers. What is Being? What is consciousness? What is “life”? At the heart of such questions is the desire to distinguish ourselves from our machines and to define what remains distinctly human as artificial intelligence becomes omnipresent. “No one supposes that computer simulations of a five-alarm fire will burn the neighborhood down.…Why on earth would anyone suppose that a computer simulation of understanding actually understood anything?” So wrote philosopher John Searle, back in 1980. “I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive.” So said Microsoft’s Bing chatbot (codenamed Sydney) during a conversation with New York Times reporter Kevin Roose in early 2023. What are we to make of this? The question becomes especially pointed when it comes to creativity: if a machine can simulate artistic expression, what remains distinctly human about the act of making?

One response is offered by Jean Dubuffet. Though not a philosopher, Dubuffet had a philosophy, in the vernacular sense, which he articulated in “Anticultural Positions,” his December 20, 1951 lecture at the Arts Club of Chicago. “Personally, I believe very much in values of savagery; I mean: instinct, passion, mood, violence, madness.” Dubuffet was chasing what precedes reason. Before we have critical faculties, we have bodies — bodies with needs, bodies vibrating with sensation. Mortal bodies. Our finitude gives our lives stakes: our experiences matter. We respond emotionally to this mattering. These emotions are the source and essence of our art. The art of reason is an algorithm. This follows that, and therefore...Et voilà, the large language model. “Culture,” as Dubuffet saw it, seeks to rationalize what is primitive in us — to make us more predictable, more algorithmic. From that angle, A.I. foreshadows humanity once the process of acculturation is complete. All reason, zero friction. 

Dubuffet might approve of the turn culture is now taking. As A.I. has become increasingly pervasive, qualities long associated with human presence have taken on renewed significance: tactility, instinct, emotion, mess. The stuff of Art Brut. But the shift takes many forms. Alongside rising interest in outsider art, the past few years have seen the art world embrace surrealism, raw texture, exposed process, and large-scale work that demands immediate physical engagement. These are all means of asserting the presence of the maker — the body, the spirit, and the experience behind the work. A.I. can simulate dream logic, imperfection, even the appearance of a seam left showing. But — per Searle — can simulated experience really stand in for the thing itself? And if not, how do we tell them apart? 

According to a recent Vogue story, homeowners show a growing preference for vintage and antique décor — or for products that convincingly pretend to have history. “Patina” is a watchword. Time-worn furnishings and housewares are one expression of a broader turn away from sleekly formulaic perfection in interiors; another is the preference for spaces that look lived-in rather than picture-perfect. We are bringing nature inside through organic shapes and materials — rough-hewn or reclaimed wood, pieces scavenged from grandparents’ attics. Or muddy earth tones — “dirtcore,” as a trend report by Thumbtack termed it. And so here we are, following Dubuffet: “Mud, rubbish and dirt are man’s companions all his life; shouldn’t they be precious to him?”

“The more digital our world becomes, the more valuable qualities like texture, variation, and imperfection feel,” interior designer Nick Ozemba told Vogue. He gravitates to “pieces that carry a sense of authorship”: hand-blown glass, forged metal, ceramics. There is plenty of that to be found — up-and-coming creators (such as Dana Arbib) are collaborating with glass furnace maestros in Murano, taking up blacksmithing (as Barnaby Lewis has), and going nuts with clay and glaze (like Woody De Othello). The resurgence of craft took center stage at this year’s Salone del Mobile, where the overarching theme was “matter,” and by extension, the hand’s shaping of various materials into objects. Highlights included live weaving and Talia Luvaton’s surreal vessels of wet-formed leather. But what, exactly, makes that authorship perceptible?

“Everyday products are used, seen, touched. The tactile and expressive qualities of materials are important means of communication, and ask for a hands-on design process, an intense exploration of textures that appeal to the human scale,” assert Hella Jongerius and Louise Schouwenberg in their manifesto “Beyond the New.” Published in 2018, it seems prescient in our current A.I.-saturated moment. David Pye’s influential The Nature and Art of Workmanship, published 50 years earlier, pushes the question further. Pye queried terms like “hands-on,” noting that humans work with tools; where, he wonders, do we draw the line between the handmade and the machine-made? Pye suggests that, in fact, trying to define what is handmade is a fool’s errand, and that what we should be asking about is the level of “risk” involved in the making — as in, the risk that the work falls short in some way. “If I must ascribe a meaning to the word craftsmanship, I shall say as a first approximation that it means simply workmanship using any kind of technique or apparatus, in which the quality of the result is not predetermined, but depends on the judgment, dexterity and care which the maker exercises as he works.” 

Pye’s distinction becomes especially useful when technology and handwork converge. For instance, RUSSO BETAK, the winner of this year’s SaloneSatellite Award, blends biopolymer with discarded oyster, mussel, and scallop shells to 3D print paper-like sheets the duo then forms by hand into sculptural lighting. Machine-made? Handmade? In cinema, likewise, directors such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Christopher Nolan, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and Ryan Coogler all shot their most recent movies on film, and it is common practice for cinematographers to put vintage lenses on digital cameras, to give some texture to images — but that doesn’t stop anyone from using LED lights or high-tech software for editing and visual effects. And yes, A.I. is creeping into that workflow. 

To take a cue from Pye: Maybe the distinction lies not between the handmade and the machine-made, but in the traces of human judgment left behind. The current appetite for texture suggests how much we want to see evidence of that process. In Byung-Chul Han’s Saving Beauty, first published in Germany in 2015, the philosopher addresses the then-dominant aesthetic of “smoothness.” “The smooth is the signature of the present time. It connects the sculptures of Jeff Koons, iPhones and Brazilian waxing.” Smooth is impermeable, polished, perfect. It hasn’t gone away, but texture is making a comeback. Nowhere is that truer than in fashion: It’s in Bottega Veneta’s “Craft is our Language” campaign, celebrating half a century of the house’s handwoven Intrecciato leather, and all over the Spring/Summer 2027 runways. LOEWE, for instance, showed patchworks of skived leather and glass beadwork developed in collaboration with Cécile Feilchenfeldt (one of last year’s LOEWE FOUNDATION finalists); at Chanel, Matthieu Blazy developed an entirely new embroidery technology and an entirely new way of making tweed. These were just two shows of many that emphasized movement and tactility. Meanwhile, at The Row, antique linens were incorporated into looks — a subtle idiosyncrasy that restores the distinctiveness of the brand’s much-knocked-off “quiet luxury” aesthetic.

An even more meaningful development is the direction of emerging talent. It is impossible not to feel Steve O. Smith in his custom creations, for example; their beauty is derived from his gesture and the sense of touch. The effect is tender, a welcome warmth in a world that now often feels cold. Or, as Dries Van Noten might say, “the only true protest is beauty.” Van Noten borrowed that line from a Phil Ochs song for the title of the debut exhibition at his foundation’s palazzo in Venice. The group show, which just closed, focused on “the human dimension of creating,” and spanned fashion, jewelry, glass, ceramics, photography, furniture design, and sculpture. A treasure trove of the perfectly imperfect. Some work had a kind of madness to it, like Kaori Kurihara’s stoneware piece Pierrot fleuri, which reads as a specimen of hallucinated wild botany. Dubuffet, of course, would approve. As he said: “Delirium! The highest degree of delirium! Plunged in burning dementia! Art is most enrapturing orgy within man’s reach.”

Can an A.I. achieve delirium? It’s early days yet for the technology; maybe in a year’s time we’ll have chatbots that mope, daydream, have panic attacks, fall in love, call in sick. If so, madness may also be within the reach of code. For the moment, though, we remain unique in our fragility and inspired illogic and unpredictable desires and needs. And so long as that is true, there will be a difference between human expression and its facsimile.