Whenever I make art I make sure it measures up to the best I've seen at the Met, and has to answer the most important questions /  by Mirena Rhee

The question number one is why, is it meaningful, is it meaningful to me enough to get the fuck out of bed to do it and to keep me up at night.

Question number two is it archival, does it have the capacity to be around for 500 years.

The third question is, will it be compelling enough once I'm long dead for somebody to pick it up and keep it around.

How the fuck do I know what looks good? Of course I know, I go to where the best art in the world hangs, I look at it, and do the same and better.

I don't know what looks good objectively. But I do know what looks good subjectively. So the fourth question is does it look good? Does the composition work? Do the colors work? If I'm no longer around to vouch for it will anyone else find anything beautiful about it?

Often times I have to work with bad materials like acrylic paints but I do know that if I use pigments that have been around for say 2000 years that no matter what they are suspended in, they will work after 500 years just the same.

People think that artists work with paints, fuck no.

I work on my art in my mind and it's done long before I start doing it.

I always laugh when the tech bros start making art, they love having AI do it cuz they don't want to take responsibility for bad art. One of the things AI doesn't know though is how to do the wrong things and break the rules. A beautiful line is always a mistake, a fluke.

Also art has nothing to do with coloring and actually colorist was used as a derogatory name. It's all about the design, the disegno. The disegno of every single line in the painting.

Systematic algorithmic suppression of free speech. Systematic algorithmic dehumanization of society. Automatic algorithmic monopolization and synchronization of thought. The Fourth Reich /  by Mirena Rhee

Systematic algorithmic suppression of free speech.
Systematic algorithmic dehumanization of society.
Automatic algorithmic monopolization and synchronization of thought.
I call this the Fourth Reich.

Nothing to do with Germany of course but the dehumanization of society through corporate speech. Corporations are not people and do not have the inherent kindness of human beings. Their speech left unchecked via algorithmic proliferation creates the environment where human beings become less than the sum of their parts.

The Fourth Reich - the proliferation of social media videos where tech bras finger point at homeless people. A disgrace for the human race. /  by Mirena Rhee

The proliferation of social media videos where tech bras finger point at homeless people. A disgrace for the human race.

I know exactly what I'm talking about because I spent 10 years in Silicon Valley and still worship the brains that operate and create in silicon valley.

Why these perfect smart human beings have become the Fourth Reich?

The only reason for this in my opinion is the isolationist nature of the California car culture. If you are in the car and only interface with its interior rather than human beings you become a creature who sees the world through the windshield.

Take a fucking walk.

Every time I see a tech bra point a finger at a homeless person, I'm like they've become so attached to the algorithm that they can't see the forest for the trees. Glutton for a GPU.

And I'm reminded why poverty is rampant in Oakland and East Palo Alto. Because the tech bras don't want to face their humanity and mortality. So they point to it and giggle.

I call this the Fourth Reich.

Asteroid, baby II, and why art is beautiful /  by Mirena Rhee

Why is this canister with charcoal beautiful? It's just a metal thing with a bunch of rocks in it, right?

Well, it's because of what's behind the picture.

For only those who know though. We know that a bunch of really smart people at NASA had this crazy idea, and then some of them sat down and engineered a really difficult spacecraft, devised procedures, machined elements, and tested and tested again. Then they had to launch it into space and make sure that it got to some faraway place in space and execute a series of absurdly crazy series of steps to scoop a sample from an asteroid. Get back, crash to Earth but stay intact for them to collect what's inside. This is as insane engineering as it gets. Now when you look at this object you already know all of these things otherwise this object is not going to be meaningful to you.

Imagine that it is the same with art.

Perhaps not everything but most of the great art is a product of a series of great decisions that started when the artist was probably five. Maybe there is a lot of art out there that is just not to our taste or we don't understand well which is totally perfectly fine. A work of art is a product that is often judged against the entire body of work of the artist, this is the reason why we have what we call collectors of art. It is just difficult to know what you're looking at unless you know the processes involved, the materials, a bit of history of art, the artists themselves, and many many other things. You have to understand the materials on a fundamental level. You have to understand why oil paint is beautiful and what is a successful use of materials. You have to be competent in the kind of message the artist sends. Because no artwork appears in a vacuum. There's a lot of motivation behind work.

You have to be versed in art to understand it or to create it. You have to be versed in engineering to engineer.

Visa probably knows me better than I know myself, thinking the thousands of bits of data they collected about me over the years, they probably know how often I brush my teeth and worse /  by Mirena Rhee

They know when I sneeze or have a headache cuz I'm directly at the store buying something. I wonder if they have a vault somewhere where they watch carefully and clapp and giggle whenever they get a card chirp. Or they would go “oh she's one size up underwear”, or “stop the cheese”, or I can't believe you just ate your weekly groceries.

The AI art tech bros /  by Mirena Rhee

One of the biggest problems with the tech bros is that they've never actually seen a work of art in person. Even if they've seen it they never understood it cuz it requires an investment. Art's kind of arcane so you need a lot of time on your hands to get to know it, and it's not a profitable hobby.

It's like if you have only seen a picture of a laptop on the internet would you know how to operate it? You got to get your hands on it and put some time in. You wouldn’t even know which side is up.

It amazes me that all the AI tech bras think that they're making art simply because they do some adult coloring book type of exercise. They have no clue how difficult it is to move color-reflecting molecules on a canvas and make it not look like an ass. Cuz they've seen pour paintings on youtube and pencil sketches on Instagram.

Not only it is difficult to make it look like something other than an ass, but to get people to keep it around for 500 years is like a fucking miracle.

Don't forget that the tech bras were into the monkey JPEGs. But it is a very very rare JPEG!

People often confuse the JPEG of a monkey with an actual monkey, like if you download it it’ll jump out of the screen and start scratching its balls. It's not the same, brah.