Why draw hours meticulously to make one small etching? Why to spend weeks to complete a collage? World seems to yearn for space filling art, something that takes your attention by force by its size and loudness. Why make small size prints or harmonious mixed media collages that require endless balancing and take a lot of time to finish, quiet works that are so easy to miss?
One reason is that I don't like the spirit of our time, which demands entertainment and grand size. Nowadays art must be so big, unprecedented and something giving you ever more better emotional vibrations exhibition after exhibition. Computer assisted artmaking dominates the space, AI and other programs – artmaking tools as those who are using these tools tends to remind us – are getting better and better.
Hundred years ago it took easily months or even years to complete one challenging sculpture. Now it's possible for one artist using these tools to fill the whole museum space in the same period of time. No wonder that the computer with its programs is the main instrument for so many contemporary artists.
So, why am I reluctant to count in AI and other computer programs to my toolbox? Maybe because I want to think as much as possible with my own brains and to use my own hands. And to maintain the art making tradition which is linked to handicraft. Yes, I know that my attitude here is an old fashioned one and it's easy to contradict. But anyway. It’s the stance I have taken. For me art is not something I generate (more or less) with applications, but something I make from start to finish with my hands and brains. This choice I have made has become even more important now when the whole world seems to fuss around AI, and along with it, the new possibilities to create more and mode astounding aesthetic experiences. I want to draw a clear line between me and computerized artmaking.
Sure, a computer is a good tool. I'm not denying it. For writing this text, for example, or keeping a web page in order. But even when I write I handwrite the text first. Thinking happens simultaneously with writing and drawing and I don't want to outsource this to the applications. Hand, pen and paper are connected to thinking and memory. It’s also a matter of professional pride. I want to be capable of thinking, writing, drawing and painting myself. It feels good to know that I can. Even if the whole world is turning to be more and more profoundly automated in all fields of society – art included – I will continue to be a manual, handmade man. An art Luddite. Fuck AI.