Among the many, many joys of having children is watching shows and movies with them. Along with Shaun the Sheep, and the Backyardigans, my twins loved Wallace & Gromit, as do I. The chase scene in The Wrong Trousers, with Gromit chasing Feathers McGraw on an inside-the house model train track is the best. It has been 32 years since The Wrong Trousers, although in between there was The Curse of the Were Rabbit (2005) and A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008). Now, we have Vengeance Most Fowl, which sees the return of Feathers McGraw.
There have always been strong plot elements in Wallace & Gromit about technology, due to Wallace’s barely useful inventions paired against the long suffering Gromit. In The Wrong Trousers, this took an extreme turn, with Gromit being kicked out of the house in favor of Feathers McGraw. In Vengeance Most Fowl, Wallace invents a ”smart” garden gnome, called Norbot. Gromit is quite happy toiling away by himself in the garden. Norbot, however, totally destroys this pleasure by frenetically clipping all the shrubs and other parts of the garden. Neighbors watching are amazed and want to hire Norbot. Wallace, always pinched for money to pay for his inventions, readily agrees. Feathers McGraw, in prison from The Wrong Trousers blue diamond heist, figures out how to hack Norbot and turn him to the dark side, eventually leading to an army of evil Norbots. Gromit, naturally, catches on, and as he always does, saves the day. The world is made safe from technology gone awry, once more.
The creators of Wallace & Gromit have spoken about the film as a comment on Artificial Intelligence. There is a direct reference to it in the film, The creators are not anti-technology: even while still using Claymation, they have adopted some digital techniques, shooting for example with digital cameras, which was a great help with editing. They add that
But a lot of the biggest advances have actually been in things like material technologies, not digital technologies. So Wallace’s sleeves used to be made out of modeling clay, and we still do use modeling clay for their faces and hands, but now we can use silicone. Just a few years ago, you could either make silicone look good but it wouldn’t move correctly, or you could make it move correctly, but it wouldn’t look good. Now there are silicones that can do both. Which means that the animators don’t have to constantly sculpt the clay. It speeds the animation up. It’s the difference between them doing maybe half a second or one second a day, it can double the speed of their work.
The joy is still in the use of your hands, and that is reflected in Gromit’s gardening, which Norbot destroyed. As the creators explained:
We should be very clear that we haven’t, and we wouldn’t use A.I. as part of our creative process, because we believe in the human touch. It comes down even to the aesthetic itself. In our films, you can see the thumbprints, and that’s really important to us.
Whether or how to use technology, including AI is up to each artist, although not all artists apparently agree, from the brouhaha over Christie’s upcoming “Augmented Intelligence” auction, which it
describes this way:
Augmented Intelligence is a groundbreaking auction highlighting the breadth and quality of AI Art. The sale includes remarkable works from some of the most innovative minds — from early AI pioneers of the 1960s such as Harold Cohen to contemporary artists such as Refik Anadol, Pindar Van Arman, Holly Herdnon & Mat Dryhusrt, Alexander Reben, Claire Silver, Sasha Stiles and more.
The auction redefines the evolution of art and technology, exploring human agency in the age of AI within fine art. From robotics to GANs to interactive experiences, artists incorporate and collaborate with artificial intelligence in a variety of mediums including paintings, sculptures, prints, digital art and more. Collectors will have the opportunity to experience a truly captivating exhibition at Rockefeller Center for the duration of the online sale, 20 February – 5 March.
As
reported in ARTnews, the auction had led over 4,000 artists to send an open letter to Christie’s urging it to cancel , arguing:
“Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrights work without a license. These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them. …Your support of these models, and the people who use them, rewards and further incentivizes AI companies’ mass theft of human artists’ work. We ask that, if you have any respect for human artists, you cancel the auction.”
Christie’s demurred, writing to ARTnews: “The artists represented in this sale have strong, existing multidisciplinary art practices, some recognized in leading museum collections. The works in this auction are using artificial intelligence to enhance their bodies of work.”
Other artists disagree with canceling the auction, including Alexander Reben, who has a 12 foot tall robot in the auction. In a piece of what might be called AI performance art, it is said that the robot “Guided by the artist’s AI model, … will paint a new section of a canvas live during the sale every time the work receives a bid.” Reben himself explained: “AI expands creative potential, offering new ways to explore, remix, and evolve artistic expression rather than replace it. The future of art isn’t about AI versus artists – it’s about how artists wield AI to push boundaries in ways we’ve never imagined before.”
One of my daughters is going to get a MFA in graphic design, and loves to create typeface. She does it all by hand, finding the mind-hand connection the most satisfying, as Gromit did with a shovel in the garden. Daniel Libeskind the architect told me he likes to sketch his designs by hand for the same reason, although afterwards “the kids” in the office execute it digitally. Technology has long been a sticking point for some artists, going back to painters’ attempts in the 1800s to quash photography. The debates on the copyright front and AI of course also involve the use of one artist’s works by other artists which complicates matters. Those debates do bring out one aspect of copyright law that is often overlooked: many copyright disputes are one creator versus another, rather than the more rhetorically charged creator versus user/tech company.
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