A Statement on my Art

When I create art, I do so for many reasons. Some of these are:

• to engage in an expression of being
• to explore a concept or experiment with an idea
• to grow as a person through creativity and struggle
• to immerse myself in a spiritual act
• to have a coping mechanism
• to have a distraction
• to practice meditation
• to be in a flow state
• <insert other human condition>

All of these reasons are very personal, very deep, and very human to me.

I believe art is human and that can include computers, tools, and code when the artist is the author. Brushes have bristles, functions have noise, splatter has randomness, but these tools execute on an artist's decisions; they don't insert decisions or artifacts from non-author training.

Creating rules, tuning algorithms, and injecting intentional, tuned randomness to produce controlled beauty is one of my approaches to art. Depending on the rules, we may call this generative, rule-based, oulipo, algorithmic, or procedural art. The control, the intent, the struggle, the intuition, and the refinement of skill are parallel to many forms and outputs of human creativity and art.

I practice this rule-based art, sometimes with paper, sometimes with fabric, and sometimes with hand-typed, stream-of-consciousness, fine-tuned, meditative code.

I do not use diffusion or LLMs in my artistic process. My art looks the way it does because of my knowledge, practice, and intent – not from a diffusion model inserting artifacts and decisions from artists who did not consent.

A note:

I use LLM tools elsewhere; here's where:

• In education and tech work
• Research and inquiry
  

I remain critical of the aspects of LLM development, use, plagiarism, and impact on society and our environment. I am cautious of what it does to the human mind.

I am not judging others' use through this statement. Accessibility, medical, assistive, and other applications have their uses.

This statement may evolve.