Ideas on image-making, culture and technology

Slop is a decision, not a byproduct. AI drops the cost of production to near zero. It doesn’t drop the cost of bad taste or weak thinking. Knowledge advances through error correction, not volume.

Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling was a job. Certainly not a lightning bolt. It was a contract: papal client, budget, deadlines. The real craft is not evading constraints, but arranging them so they serve the idea.

Iteration is freedom in practice. You make a guess, test it, read the consequence, adjust, repeat. “Stuck” is weather, not geography. It clears when you move.

The future is open and unpredictable by nature. Generative tools give ordinary people levers once reserved for studios, labs and guilds. The cathedral is now a keyboard project.

Here’s what a lot of people miss about AI: language, image and video models are world models. They learn the hidden structures of their domains, then generate novel, coherent outputs. They are engines of creative potential.

Hollywood has a perception problem. Studios shout “shot practically” and “no CGI” while hundreds of VFX artists sit in the credits. The real magic is in the imagining, not the technique.

Quality is a commitment. It is the dividing line between enduring and ephemeral, between timeless appeal and transient interest. Once a medium reaches true resolution, it can begin to outlive its moment.

Shadow is not a defect to be corrected. It is a structure. It grants privacy, ambiguity and silence; it slows the eye and gives an object dignity by refusing to tell the whole story at once.