Monomad: Testing The Waters

We are in the era of soullessness. A time in which creativity is no longer something highly appreciated, but now seen a slog that must be sped up in pursuit of fast revenue. Yes, I'm talking about the tragedy of the world's pursuit of learning algorithms that produce images of various types at the expense of bundling everyone's existing creations together to shit out something of zero value. I've tried to ignore this side of things, I think it's poison, but I feel that recently with my travels and constant photography pursuits, I can't help but feel that the world of the creative is slowly doomed. The realisation that one can produce for themselves remains, and that the monetary side of things will continue, just in a significantly different manner. Here in Armenia the political sphere is fucked. The government is attempting to push down protests with police might as the nation protests the acts of its supposed leader, which simply hands over villages to the neighbour that constantly demands more land and fires bullets and drones at Armenian's youthful defenders. I hate politics. But this feels like a similar outcome with what's happening in the art sphere. The artist fails to stick up for itself. It gets pushed down more and more, nothing done, and what happens is the greedy continue to kick, continue to demand more.

When I first started doing photography, this machine learning nonsense didn't exist. I attempted to upload a few images to microstock websites here and there out of curiosity, and with the sheer number of photographs I now own and take on a daily basis, I figured it might be worth to test the waters by uploading them to various platforms. A bit of an experiment in this dumb era, to see what works and what does not. The problem? All of these stock platforms now boast their dreadful artificial intelligence services, even using the images people upload as a training model, offering peanuts as a result. One look at these platforms reveals a wasteland of AI trash, completely broken anatomy and low quality images listed. All for the small fee ranging from 47.99 to 375.99 per license!

It's this neglect of the artist that makes one realise how early of a concept something like Hive is, in which its members can decide value and even remove value from something that's clearly lazy and doesn't deserve to be placed ahead of other creations, particularly in the argument of AI. Though, I felt it could be fun to experiment beyond Hive and see what happens with some of these images. It's crazy to see some of them getting accepted on some major platforms, then rejected on others on the basis of quality issues, then to see that their platforms are riddled with the aforementioned AI trash that clearly has quality issues. How did it come to this? How much more insane can things get? I can't help but think this is still only just in its teething phase and things will get worse, but can something like Hive really prevail and provide the solution to this? Will people be smart enough to adapt?

Today was a weird day of trying to understand my surroundings. Being incapable of doing so despite the attempt. Everything felt a bit off, the struggle to do something fun only to have the reality of the world hammer down and reject it. Trying to visit new places and finding more disappointment, having the weird structure of society make no sense again for a creative. Visiting a botanical garden and having them claim I need to pay $12 to be able to photograph it; I merely stated I won't take any photographs in that case. I walked on in, pulled out the camera, and snapped away anyway. But it had me thinking: how do such people operate? How can their views of the world be so backward? The lack of realisation that people can help you push forward, that hitting people down when they're capable of helping just makes things harder for you in the long run. Did they not realise that every person that could've passed through into the garden could've served as free advertising for the beauty beyond those gates through the power of photography and social media?

But that's how this world works, things aren't always so black and white. Sometimes nothing really makes sense, and you're left just trying to figure things out for yourself. Trying to understand how things came to this. How to adapt to it while maintaining your own values and integrity. Sometimes that doesn't even feel possible. The feeling that you can't stick up for yourself anymore and some powerful fist will only continue to hit at you and keep you down. Perhaps some refusal to accept the norm is needed in people. Perhaps some sticking up for each other and ourselves is needed. The rejection of utter idiocy that just does not make sense or benefit anyone. For context: the botanical garden was basically empty on a spring day in which the sun threw down 30 degrees (celsius). One has to question: who is at fault for this? Certainly not the consumer that wants to improve things and also contribute.

I guess this post is a little bit of complaining. A bit of disappointment in the way things are and are heading. At least nobody can take away the joy of roaming the world with a camera, no matter what rules they try to enforce. It'll never stop me. And maybe, one day, someone from the future may stumble across such images, and find importance in them. To see that defiance in us, and appreciate it.