This article is based on this Dutch article of Martijn Benders
It warms my heart that Mozafar is still remembered in a poem.
Speaking of obsessive images, I recently made my first official music video. Attentive viewers will notice that Nick appears entirely as Munch’s Scream here:
This coming Wednesday, my first official album will be released on Spotify: The Sound of Wonty Love.
It’s not from The Stoss, which is another band I’m part of. While that name is promising, I’m still looking for the right sound for that group. Nonetheless, I think this new album could already be a convincing opening track for the band, with a touch of that Black Hole Sun feeling from Soundgarden.
There are people who refuse to listen to my music at all because I partly use artificial intelligence in its creation. But would it annoy me if suddenly everyone started calling themselves poets and shaping their work with the help of A.I.?
I don’t think so. In fact, I’d probably welcome it because the poems people write these days are often so lifeless. I care about the quality of the poem; I honestly don’t care who wrote it.
The argument against A.I.-generated art almost always comes down to labor: you haven’t worked hard enough to make this, and that lack of effort makes the work undesirable. But the same was said about musicians who used sampling machines or drum machines. Did you know that in England, there was nearly a ban on the drum machine in the early eighties?
This attitude of ‘There Must and Shall Be Toil’ is, I think, the epitome of Christian parrhesia. The artist must atone for his existence, he must suffer, and from that suffering, the value of the work emerges. Preferably, he also dies in poverty, like van Gogh, after which the state can forever profit from his work and with much ado return some of that money as grants to other artists.
So no, I don’t relate to those sentiments. What matters to me is whether a work is good, not whether it was created by human intelligence or machine intelligence. The latter, by the way, can almost be called miraculous: the possibilities that artificial intelligence offers us to explore new forms of creativity are practically limitless. It allows us to push boundaries and venture into realms that were previously unthinkable.
I understand that some people are hesitant and cling to traditional views about art and creation. But innovation has always faced resistance. Think of the rise of photography, initially seen as a threat to painting, or electronic music that purists rejected because it wasn’t ‘real.’
For me, art is a constantly evolving concept. It’s not about the means, but about the result and the impact it has on the viewer or listener. Whether a piece of music is composed with a guitar or with the help of AI algorithms, what matters is whether it evokes something, inspires, or provokes thought.
So let the critics talk. I will continue to experiment and create in my own way. My album The Sound of Wonty Love reflects that. It is a fusion of human emotion and technological innovation, and I am proud of it. And I have worked quite hard on it: you have to try hundreds of things before you find something that works, mastering skills over the years, etc. But for some, stance dopamine seems to be the only guideline. That feels quite constricting to me.
Martijn Benders