machines don’t dream

When I’m at home in my apartment in New York, one of the last things I look at at night and the first thing I look at in the morning is a quote by Van Gogh. The small 30cm x 40cm frame hangs quietly on a wall in my bedroom, and set in gold lettering on a deep midnight blue background studded with tiny gold stars, it reads: “For my part I will I also know nothing with certainty, but the sight of the stars gives me dreams.

I’ve read those words a thousand times, but for some reason I lay in bed staring at them the other morning and found myself thinking again about the development of artificial intelligence. As a writer, I already have a few friends who half-jokingly tease me that my services will soon be superseded by apps like ChatGPT. The reality is that the rapidly expanding possibilities of AI should cause more and more widespread concern for all of us.

While I have my armchair opinion about AI – mostly not good ones – I can’t pretend to know much about that conversation from a technical or scientific framework. But I do know what it’s like to be human, living in wild, creative, reflective, and unpredictable ways. It’s part of being embodied.

Among the many things that AI is doing is one that we may not be thinking about as much: that it is causing us to miss out on some priceless, irreplaceable and irreplaceable aspects of being alive. And maybe when we remember these things, we might find ourselves embracing our aliveness with more intention.

German artist Albrecht Dürer In June 1525 after a full night’s sleep painted “Dream Vision” which included visions of the Apocalypse. The watercolor shows a modest landscape with small trees speckled around the terracotta-colored earth. From the center of the canvas, a large stream of water falls from the blue sky, accompanied by smaller columns of falling water. It’s a bleak scene even with the cool color palette. Below the image, Dürer describes the terrifying sounds of thundering water and howling wind in his vision, and how he awoke trembling. He was so moved by the dream that he painted it as soon as possible.

This painting may seem like a strange example of what is priceless about being alive. Yet I am drawn to it because it is a creative work that resulted from someone who values ​​our ability to dream, and pays attention to our dreams. At the time, Dürer would have been surrounded by political and social tensions caused by the Reformation and the German Peasants’ Revolt earlier that year. Who knows if his apocalyptic dream stemmed from fears he had about the state of the world he lived in. Or what this dream changed about their lives.

Dreaming is something machines cannot do; In being alive and able to dream, we have this mysterious well of subconscious information that can be tapped into to access and learn from parts of ourselves that are not readily available in our waking hours. When I’m in regular journaling season, I often try to write down my dreams upon waking, especially if they were stranger than usual or if I wake up, as Dürer did, with a numb physical sensation. . There have been times when there is such a consistency in the things I dream about that I realize how my subconscious is helping me to better understand and work through a deeper worry or emotional problem.

New York based American Interdisciplinary artist Xavier Simons creates art through photography, text paintings, installation, sculpture, performance and video. His work explores how individual and collective identities are formed, notions of empire, how the past influences the present, and the history of Africa and the African diaspora. The 2019 work “Sundown (Number Nineteen)” is part of a series comparing historical photographs with the artist’s present-day created images considering the experiences of black people over time. “Sundown” refers to a time in 20th-century history when many American towns had rules that black people had to leave town or face the consequences.

In this work, Simmons stands against wallpaper patterned with flowers. She’s wearing a bright swimsuit, a billowing skirt that looks like a black diving suit. She has a blue swimcap on her head, in one hand she holds an enlarged black and white photo of black children swimming in different waters. In his other hand he holds a picture box or some kind of telescope over his eyes. She is seeing through it something that we cannot see.

To be alive means to feel connected to the history of others

One of the many reasons I enjoy looking at old photos is because it reminds me that being alive now is its own unique and priceless experience. I am inspired by the ability to reflect on how people lived in particularly different ways than I did, often in aspects of society and culture I find difficult to imagine. For example, being a Black woman, it is always incredibly challenging to look at photographs of Africans taken by Europeans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the world was even more affected by colonial encounters. Or just to see pictures of isolated life in western countries 60-70 years ago.

Simmons’s image of a woman peering into both the present and perhaps the future, conveying this image of the past to the viewer, for me is a reminder of our human ability to engage with memory and accountability, blame and responsibility. Can come with that engagement.

Whichever side of history we find ourselves on, we all have some role to play in working toward creating a more livable and just world for everyone. To be able to look back and interact with the past provides an opportunity to reflect on how we live now and how we wish to live in the future to come.

I also love this work of art because the picture of children playing in water speaks to the human capacity for joy in being alive, even in the midst of unjust circumstances, and the resilience that we are called to survive and explore. Can Flourishing, tough as that can be at times.

To live is also to recognize ourselves as connected to the history of others, and to understand that how we live now will affect those who have not yet come, who will look back and consider how our living ‘s legacy has been prepared for them, in both beautiful and terrifying ways.

British-Ghanaian painter Lynette Yiadom-Boaké is known for the way she gives layered life to the imaginary subjects of her paintings. So much of his work reminds me of the beautiful complexity of what it means to be alive as an individual and as part of a community.

His 2012 painting “Interstellar” struck me with its engaging vibrancy and almost tangible energy. A man wearing green dance pants and green shirt has been caught in a dance pose. In the center of the canvas he balances gracefully on the toes of his right foot. The other leg is out to the side, his leg is suspended in mid-air, and his arms are outstretched. It is as if he is rising from the ballet stance of second position for a move. The energy from this tiny movement pulsates through him and seems to reverberate outward silently but perceptibly.

It is magnetic. The artist achieves this effect with what can only be described as pulsating brush strokes of color that begin in a vibrant green close to her body, gradually thinning in intensity until brown Let the warm olive color not mix with the earth. The painting appears to have a life-giving energy of its own.

I love this work very much. Although the figure is alone, it seems to be charging along with its surroundings. He is throbbingly alive, aware of the power and beauty of being incarnate, but he is also connected to all that surrounds him, visible and invisible. It highlights the reality that, whether we admit it or not, being alive connects us energetically with all the people, places and things we interact with. But the quality of those relationships is determined by how we show ourselves in life and in the world.

The title, “Interstellar”, literally means between the stars. I can’t help but read it in a poetic sense: that to be alive is to exist in a galaxy of stars, within a solar system of existence that contains many worlds, of which we, humans, are just one. There is also the celestial world and the natural world, and we are in relationship with everything that shares this space among the stars.

But to be alive is to be aware of this state among the stars, where we know nothing with certainty, but we embrace the gift of being able to embody and be in relationship with ourselves, with others, and with creation. know.

Follow Anuma on Twitter @EnumOkoro or email him enuma.okoro@ft.com

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