2023
2022 was a significant year. I reached 40. Got married.
I loved and still do. I wrote and still intend to do it in the future.
Thinking about instruments right now. We consider many things as mere instruments — refusing all accountability about it. Fonts are often considered as instruments. They are way more, they are also pieces of design, pieces of history also assets. I wrote about the Russian type foundry ParaType, how it helped shape the Russian type sovereignty, also when Russia is at war against Ukraine.
I also took the reign of the family office. Again. It just could be another instrument. It is not. It is the first step to better work, more significant work to help others to achieve something worthwhile.
I had to brand my own identity. I made a logo for my company and for myself. I also toyed with LensaAI and got astonishing avatars.
On the digital side, I tried NFTs, without much success, except for advising NFTs holders on the consequences of crypto-to-fiat conversion.
I also tried AI for generating texts and images — among the latter OpenAI, Midjourney, LensaAI. One thing for sure, those tools are very productive, if production is all that matters. It is significant that many observers think that AI could replace artists, precisely because of this producing many images at once, as if productivity was the only thing that matters in art.
The perfect legality, where the ins and outs of all these AI – especially those producing images, also depending on your prompt – is debattable, to say the least.
But there is something more profound in society, the triumph of command. Whether prompts, order, design, committee, scheme, projects, nothing much is left to discussion these days. The work itself seems to be more about execution than decision, the latter has been made elsewhere and beforehand.
Because of that, we should raise deeper questions.
Not — will AI replace artists, but — what is art? Is art the mastery of a technique in order to fulfill the wishes of a client or a supreme and living act of freedom?
Not — will digital invoice accelerate payments and improve VAT recovery but — will entrepreneurs eventually figure it all out by answering this question: was it worth it?
So happy new year, y’all — to deeper questions and better answers.
