AI ART and Meaning What role does an artist play when employing AI? Artist statement by JJFBbennett If we accept that AI can generate vast quantities of statistically “meaningful” content from data and algorithms, then meaningful art may lie not in the output itself, but in its selection and framing. AI functions as a kind of unconscious, producing raw material at scale. The artist’s role shifts from maker to curator: deciding what to extract from the data’s noise, what to present as art, the context in which it appears, and the conversation it enters. The artist as the muddler and meddler in the centre of it all. This shift has an art-historical precedent. In 1917, Marcel Duchamp’s *Fountain* made a decisive claim: the artist had not sculpted the urinal but selected it, titled it, and placed it in a gallery. Meaning arose from the gesture of choice rather than the act of making. Walter Benjamin, too, anticipated this logic in his reflections on montage and editing: meaning can e...
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Our Fortunate Lives
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The Future of Romanticism
And then, a fracture. The past whispered to them in the quiet of a gilded hall, surrounded by splendour too perfect to be accurate. It was a song—fragile, ephemeral—a thread of memory tugging at their hearts. Its notes were humble and unassuming, yet they carried the weight of the cottage, the dusty beams, and the worn rug where their dream first sparked.
In the echoing chambers of memory, where shadows dance with the remnants of dreams, a woman's thoughts drift to a simpler time, a life painted with the warm hues of shared laughter and humble aspirations.
Beside her, a man's gaze pierces the veil of the present, his mind fixated on the ever-distant horizon of ambition, each achievement a stepping stone to a grander vision.
Yet, in the quiet depths of their hearts, the echoes of their initial dreams, once whispered in the warmth of a shared space, still resonate with the same intensity, a testament to the enduring power of their intertwined ambitions.
"Do you remember the cottage?" she said.
"I do," he said. "The dust in the air, the way the light made it glow like gold... It felt alive, didn’t it?"
"It was alive," she said. "Because we were. Everything we touched felt real. It wasn’t about what we had; it was about what we dreamed."
"And we dreamed of this," he said, gesturing vaguely around them. "A life so vast, so full, it would drown out any doubt."
"But it hasn’t, has it?" she said. "The doubt is louder now than it ever was. It’s deafening."
"I hear it too," he said. "Every time I look at what we’ve built, it whispers that we’ve lost something more precious than we could ever gain."
"We lost ourselves," she said. "Or maybe we just left ourselves behind, somewhere back there, in the cottage, on that rug."
"Do you think we can go back?" he said.
"To the cottage?" she said. "No. The cottage is gone. But we can go back to what it meant. To what we were."
"And what were we?" he said.
"Believers," she said. "Not in wealth, not in power, but in each other. In life, we can create together, not apart."
"It’s strange," he said. "We’ve climbed so high, yet it feels like the ground is further away than ever."
"Because we stopped touching it," she said. "Stopped feeling it beneath our feet. And now, here we are, suspended in a life that feels... weightless."
"Weightless and empty," he said.
"But it doesn’t have to stay that way," she said.
"Do you really believe that?" he said.
"I do," she said. "Because I still hear the song. Do you?"
"The one from the cottage?" he said. "I thought I’d forgotten it. But now... now I think it’s been playing all along."
"It has," she said. "We just stopped listening. But if we can hear it again, we can follow it. It’s never too late."
"And if we follow it?" he said.
"Maybe we’ll find what we lost," she said. "Not the past, but the part of ourselves we left there."
"Together?" he said.
"Always together," she said.
Hand in hand, they turned towards the veiled horizon, and their intertwined ambitions became more determined by the bittersweet wisdom of experience. The future, a vast and unwritten canvas, stretched before them, promising both the thrill of discovery and the ache of uncertainty. With each step, they embraced the unknown, their hearts echoing with the quiet understanding that the pursuit of meaning was a dance with destiny, a journey that would forever wind through the ever-shifting landscapes of their fortunate lives.
This artwork is protected by U.S. and International copyright laws. Distribution and/or modification of the artwork without written permission of the sponsor is prohibited.
The Highway and the Lost Soldier The midday sun around Adelaide River does something violent to the bitumen. At forty-five degrees, the Stuart Highway softens like melting fat; it turns into a black mirror, rippling with an unnatural, liquid glare that pools over every low rise. That is where it waits. He is always trudging south, away from life and deeper into the blistering furnace, his boots making no sound against the tar. The Highway and Lost Soldier Standing From two hundred yards out, he resembles a stranded traveler you’d pull over to save. He wears sun-bleached, disintegrating drill cotton that matches the bone-white dust of the termite country, his head angled down at an impossible, broken angle against the glare. No broad-brim hat. No swag. No water bottle. Just stiff, unnatural limbs jerking with every stride. “Driver... look at his face. We need to stop—why won't he turn around?” He is no lost tourist. Could he be the linesman from the Overland Telegraph days who tore ...
The Terminal Horizon Tourist Bus Discovering the Terminal Horizon The Long Highway Out here, the world ends not in silence, but in fire. The asphalt bleeds into cracked red earth, stretching toward a bruised horizon where the sky refuses to cool. Behind the glass, you drive chasing ghosts through a desert that forgot rain a lifetime ago. Beneath the Scorch Every road leads deeper into the furnace. Even below the surface, the rock fissures and weeps, hot steam rising through subterranean fractures where molten veins pulse in the dark, feeding an ancient, unforgiving heat. Broken Arteries What we built couldn’t hold. Rails twist into the dunes, swallowed by iron sand and wind. Bridges split down the seam, concrete splintered into raw bone, tangled rebar, and dying wires crackling into the smoke. The machines stopped; the wasteland stayed. The Last Horizon And when the road finally runs out, there is only the ash, the petrified stumps, and the quiet. You are a lone figure sitting in...
The Terminal Horizon Highway The Terminal Horizon Tourist Bus Would you catch the Terminal Horizon bus? Travel sketches by metamodernist artist JJFBbennett The Long Highway Out here, the world ends not in silence, but in fire. The asphalt bleeds into cracked red earth, stretching toward a bruised horizon where the sky refuses to cool. Behind the glass, you drive chasing ghosts through a desert that forgot rain a lifetime ago. Beneath the Scorch Every road leads deeper into the furnace. Even below the surface, the rock fissures and weeps, hot steam rising through subterranean fractures where molten veins pulse in the dark, feeding an ancient, unforgiving heat. Broken Arteries What we built couldn’t hold. Rails twist into the dunes, swallowed by iron sand and wind. Bridges split down the seam, concrete splintered into raw bone, tangled rebar, and dying wires crackling into the smoke. The machines stopped; the wasteland stayed. The Last Horizon And when the road finally runs out, the...
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