Seconding this! Am up here checking the weather like someone waiting for a package. It keeps saying we might get snow and then...no snow! I think our snow got shipped down south by accident!

Generative AI is an engine for churning out contaminated information faster than people can produce safe information, let alone fact check and correct it.

And corrections never remove the original contamination, it's an attempt to stem the metaphorical bleeding and hope for the best. 11/

as a picky eater, I love having friends I can give pickles (.....and tomatoes.....and onions......) to. Yeah, I could ask for No Pickles (in theory) but then I would deprive myself of a valuable friendship currency!

Template (modified slightly to remove elements I found distracting) from: drive.google.com/drive/folder...

For anyone like me who was like "I need to inflict this on my own group chat" this seems to be the original: www.tumblr.com/squidknees/7...

Sometimes they are thinking of art as an economic investment. The meaning for some people (especially ppl buying at the Hirst level but even people buying relative unknowns) can be "do I think this piece will go up in $ value?" And it sits in storage for 10 years getting looked at by no one.

Meaning IS part of the value of art. There's a whole discussion to be had about how we determine and price Value in various societies. And unfortunately "art creates meaningful experiences" hasn't had much success in motivating ppl to pay most artists enough to live on. So we turn to other strats.

Even for the stuff I do for a flat rate, I'm factoring in "how long will this take me & will it cut into other work time?" in my prices. Meaning is hard to put a price on so it doesn't really factor into my economic calculations or those of most artists.

Indeed! And I appreciate how much you value the fact that art has meaning. That IS the cool part of being an artist! But most of us are trying to escape working retail and the whole economics and taxes bit really matters. Meaning is too nebulous for billing at my level. But I CAN track my hours!

Most artists are not getting paid the kind of money Hirst is. That's like 1% of artists. (and he's still doing economic calculations for materials costs and the hourly wages of his production team!)

This is true. The terms and terminology I use matter. Most clients do not want to discuss the philosophy of symbols and meaning when I quote prices. So an economic framework is a better way of transmitting the message of why I should be paid to most clients. Not you, of course. But most clients.

I agree that this is the meaning they may find in it but I think approaching this transaction as "I am charging you for the meaning of luxury you find in my font design" while true on some level is still not a great argument for why I should be paid for my work.

So "Artists need to be paid bc the person paying finds the work meaningful and is compensating the artist for that meaningful experience" doesn't work if I can't convince my client to agree w/ me on what meaning even is.

My point is that I don't want to have to argue semiotics with clients to determine my worth as an artist.

I think we've demonstrated that I'm not romantic about meaningfulness. "what is meaning and what do things mean and how is meaning conveyed" is a whole huge topic called semiotics. a stop sign has meaning. and some may call it art. others will argue that it is not.