But it cannot be an artist
An author produces a text. An artist is a person who lives a public life. You could copy a pop star with AI, but one thing stays missing: mortality.
There is a difference between an author and an artist.
There is a difference between an author and an artist. It is easy to miss, and it matters.
An author is the thing that produces the text. An artist is a person who lives a public life. The artist is a biography, not only a body of work.
Take a pop star like Lady Gaga or Billie Eilish. You could, in theory, copy a lot of it with AI. The sound. The look. The political stances. Even the one-sided bond that fans feel toward a persona.
And yet something would still be missing. It is not a magic spark or a soul. It is simpler than that. It is mortality.
Mortality. The work draws its force from a finite life that can be hurt.
There is a difference between an author and an artist.
The artist is a biography, not only a body of work.
Take a pop star like Lady Gaga or Billie Eilish.
When Billie Eilish speaks about anxiety, the words are not the thing that moves people. AI could write words like that. What moves people is that the words come from a real, finite life. A body that can be hurt. A career that can end. A person who will age and die.
What a fan reaches toward is not just the style. It is the sight of a mortal person facing hard things, in public, at real cost.
The artist is a biography, not only a body of work.
Mortality. The work draws its force from a finite life that can be hurt and will end.
An author produces a text. An artist is a person who lives a public life. You could copy a pop star with AI, but one thing stays missing: mortality.
This is the short version. Read the full-length essay, “The Artist’s Body”.
This issue is part of Everybody's Smart, a newsletter on taste, judgment, AI, culture, cognition, and the future of professional work. New issues every 2 to 3 weeks, free on LinkedIn.
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