By Cody Gallo

"It’s a runaway train, but it’s a beautiful trip…. every day…”

-David Lynch, on film production

A switch flipped in the world. There is no going back. OpenAI released ChatGPT to the masses for experimentation and research on December 2nd, 2022. Like their release of DALLE•2 on September 28th, 2022, along with the Midjourney and Stable Diffusion image generators, it created a ripple of reactions regarding AI-generated imagery. A strong, collective visceral reaction asked, Is this Art?

It can be argued that we had not even settled that question for human-generated artifacts. By crashing through this mass, public experiment with AI, we may actually spur more conversations and reflection on our own humanity. What is art, and who is the artist?

Renowned filmmaker David Lynch has always been known for his unique and imaginative approach to storytelling, and his thoughts on the creative process are no different. In an interview after the creation of Twin Peaks: The Return, Lynch compared the production process to "a runaway train, but a beautiful trip." He went on to describe the experience on set as a delicate and ever-evolving journey, where every day is a new challenge.

“Picture it," Lynch said, "when you get there in the morning, it's like there's a giant ravine. And as you're working during the day, you're building a glass bridge. It's a delicate bridge and it's made of glass. And once you've got everything done for that day and it feels correct, boom, the glass turns to steel and you can cross over. And then you've got to do it again the next day.” (Wigler, 2017)

For three months in 2016, I worked with Lynch every day on the set of Twin Peaks: The Return in my role as a Director’s Guild Trainee. His metaphor captures the essence of what it means to be a creator in the art world, where the unknown and the uncertain are constant companions. It takes a true visionary to see the beauty in the chaos and turn it into a work of art that resonates with audiences.

The Rift

In his quote, Lynch describes a ravine, a rift in the earth between where you are and where you want to be. The Rift becomes an important concept to anchor our definition of art and test the outputs of AI. I first encountered the concept of art springing from a rift in Raymond Chandler: The Detections of Totality by Frederic Jameson (2016):

The work of art, which emerges, according to Martin Heidegger, from (or within) a ‘rift’ between what he calls World and Earth—terms we can rewrite for our own purposes as the dimensions of History and the social project on one hand (Culture), and Nature or matter on the other (ranging from geographical or ecological constraints all the way to the individual body).

Here Jameson applies Martin Heidegger’s rift theory from The Origin of a Work of Art, published in 1950, to pulp fiction author Raymond Chandler. Jameson argues that Chandler transcends the pulp fiction genre and creates a work of art by his unique style of writing and his ability to address larger cultural and social issues in his detective stories. According to Jameson, Chandler's writing is characterized by its use of poetic and lyrical language, which elevates his works beyond mere pulp fiction and makes them a form of artistic expression. Chandler's writing is also marked by its intense focus on the character development of his detective, Philip Marlowe, who becomes a symbol for the contradictions and complexities of modern urban life.

Chandler and Lynch as storytellers both use mediums of popular culture mysteries to explore the Rift yet push the boundaries of their chosen genres into Art. Detective Philip Marlowe and FBI Agent Dale Cooper become metaphors for the artist attempting to uncover or reveal the unknown. Someone who tries to connect the dots between the perceived experience or the unreliable witness, and some objective truth of the natural world, or in actuality, the collective experience of the world. If we think of the ravine that Lynch seeks to construct the glass bridge across as—one side being the perception of the human condition, and the other side being the natural, organic world of matter, we understand the rift-in-experience as the only true source of Art.

John Dewey, an American philosopher, and proponent of aesthetic theory, also saw art as a product of the interaction between the organic self and the world. In his view, the expressive act in art is set off by "an impulsion," a state of unsettlement in the organism that arises from interaction with the environment. Today we usually refer to this as the artistic spark. Culture, according to Dewey, emerges from this interaction over time and serves as a means of communication between people, “culture is the product not of efforts of men put forth in a void or just upon themselves, but of prolonged and cumulative interaction with environment.” (Stanford University, 2021)

Dewey believed that works of art were the only media that could facilitate complete and unhindered communication between individuals in a world full of limitations and boundaries. This sentiment precedes that of philosopher Martin Heidegger, who saw art as a way to bridge the gap between people and bring forth hidden truths.

Both Dewey and Heidegger attempt to take back Art from the Fine Arts movement that seeks only to elevate beauty and aesthetic pleasure, and place it back in the realm of popular culture, as well as in the hands of everyday artisans and craftspeople — that anyone could have an experience with art.

Perception and the Rift: A Journey into the Mind

Perception is the end product of a chain of events that starts with sensory input and includes a cognitive, interpretive component…The brain fills in missing information without your knowing it. (Levitin 2020)

Perception is a complex and fascinating phenomenon, one that has long intrigued philosophers, artists, and scientists alike. In recent years, our understanding of this fundamental aspect of human experience has been greatly advanced by advances in neuroscience and psychology.

According to cognitive psychologist and neuroscientist, Daniel J. Levitin, perception is a chain of events that begins with the sense receptors in our eyes, ears, and other body parts, and ends with our interpretation of what we see, hear, and feel. Levitin has written extensively on the subject of perception and the many factors that can influence it, including attention, expectation, and prior knowledge. He argues that our perception is never a direct reflection of reality, but is instead shaped by a complex interplay of these factors, which can lead to a rift between what we experience and what is actually happening in the world.

Neuroscience has provided a valuable new perspective on the rift that can exist between perception and reality. By studying the brain and the way it processes sensory information, researchers have been able to uncover the many ways that our perceptions can be shaped and distorted. For example, recent studies have shown that our expectations and prior knowledge can play a significant role in shaping what we see and hear. This has important implications for the way we experience art, as it suggests that our perception of a work of art is never a neutral or objective experience, but is instead shaped by the complex interplay of our individual experiences, expectations, and prior knowledge.

One of the most interesting developments in the study of perception has been the discovery of simulation in psychology and neuroscience as described by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barret (2017), “Scientific evidence shows that what we see, hear, touch, and smell are largely simulations of the world, not reactions to it.” This concept refers to the idea that our brain constantly creates simulations of the world around us, which we use to make sense of the information that our senses are receiving. These simulations are not necessarily accurate reflections of reality but are instead shaped by our expectations and prior knowledge. This discovery has important implications for our understanding of perception and the rift that can exist between what we experience and what is actually happening in the world around us.

The discovery of simulation in psychology and neuroscience has important implications not just for the way we experience art but also for how it gets created and where it emerges from. It suggests that we are always living in two dimensions simultaneously: the dimension of the world as it is, and the dimension of the simulation that our brain is creating.

Constructing the Glass Bridge

There certainly lies hidden in nature a rift-design, a measure and border, and, tied to it, a capacity for bringing-forth—that is, art. But it is equally certain that this art hidden in nature becomes manifest only through the work, because it is lodged originarily in the work. Martin Heidegger (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), 2011)

In 2016, deep in The Valley (as L.A. locals refer to the area north of the Hollywood Hills), existed a portal to The Red Room, an anomalous extra-dimensional space in the world of Twin Peaks. Here we would enter a soundstage to the film scenes for The Return, and I can vouch for the fact that filming in The Red Room mirrors the experience of watching the series. We felt as if we existed outside time and space as we constructed the sequences, and actors learned to deliver their lines backward.

Each day, the production would take a one-hour lunch break (unusual in the film industry where 30-minute breaks are standard), so that Lynch had time for his Transcendental Meditation, where he could dive into the chaos. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew would eat or nap, read, chat and tell production stories, or browse our phones. As the hour began to expire, we would get the unofficial code over the radio that “David is finishing his sandwich.” It meant his meditation was done, he was eating a sandwich, and we would return to work soon, return to constructing the glass bridge. The various artisans and craftspeople of the crew would begin their work, starting to tinker with the lights, lenses, costumes, makeup, extras — all the small pieces of the bridge. Lynch would return to his chair, raise his bullhorn and call “action!”

When Lynch says “And once you’ve got everything done for that day and it feels correct, boom, the glass turns to steel and you can cross over,” he is completing the work of art in such a way that holds open the rift he has observed, allowing audiences to cross and peer over into the abyss. Jameson continues on Heidegger:

From this perspective, not only can the work of art not be called upon to heal this fundamental ‘rift’ in our being between World and Earth, or History and Nature; its vocation lies quite the contrary in the holding open of just that scandalous rift (Jameson, 2016)

From this standpoint, the artist and their work of art provide two services, sometimes simultaneously. First, art can bridge the perceptions between disparate people having individual experiences of the world drawing them into a collective, if only temporary, experience of the world. Second, art can create a bridge between the artist’s perception of the world and the “objective” natural world, and by holding open the rift for spectators to experience their perspective, the spectators gain the opportunity to evaluate and understand the world, the artist, and their own experience of the world against the artistic representation.

The RiE Test for art-in-the-age of AI

The artist upon gaining awareness or insight into a particular rift in the human experience may feel this impulsion to bridge the rift. A piece of art should bridge the two poles of what Heidegger calls “The Speechless” and “The Talkative.” He refers here to the infinity of what can be said on the one hand, and the silence of its innermost hiddenness on the other. The artist then must find a way to mediate between these two realms and thus create a bridge between chaos and order.

When a piece of art emerges that successfully bridges these two poles, then it becomes a transformative experience. In finding a way to mediate the rift between the realms, the artist applies an artistic medium — their poetry, painting, dance, film — and begins the struggle to express the inexpressible and to capture and hold their audience’s attention. The aesthetic nature of art comes from this need to hold attention or create a sense of awe that moves the audience.

So I propose the the Rift-in-Experience (RiE) Test for art-in-the-age of AI. The RiE Test examines the AI-generated output for its ability to bridge the rift between nature and culture. In our current phase, I would argue that works of art still require a human artist to create a prompt that recognizes the Rift-in-Experience through empathy and curates the resulting artifact for audiences. We can apply the test by evaluating three rules, and all three must apply:

1. Does the artifact explore a rift-in-experience?

2. Did the generator (human or AI) recognize or observe the rift-in-experience as opposed to probabilistic (chance) creation?

3. Does the rift get revealed to an audience/perceiver through their experience with the artifact?

Put to the Test

So with this test in hand, where does that put us in this wild frontier of AI generated art? The first conclusion says that many images and artifacts created before and without AI also do not meet this test. Pages and pages of content fill Behance and Art Station and Dribbble and many other sites. The millions of images created by humans (and used to train generative AI) do not actually constitute any artistic experience.

On the other hand, there are some people using AI image generators as tools to create art that meets the criteria above. What AI currently lacks is the ability on its own to empathize with a human experience and create original art that results in an experience of the Rift. The AI tools also currently primarily generate images not just based on a prompt but also on a “seed” number, which simulates the roll of the dice, the probabilistic chance of generating a certain image. Those familiar with Midjourney can pull the meta information on their creations that reveals the seed number. The community also uses the now colloquial language of “rolls” and “re-rolls” to refer to how many times they pulled the AI slot machine to get their version of the image.

As a perceiver of the art, in this current phase, more is revealed by the combination of seeing the image and the prompt. The true rift-in-experience comes from knowing what the human prompted—what the person sought from the AI. The novelty of the experience comes from seeing the surprising or mixed results that the AI generates. As Charlie Warzel (2023) describes it in his article for The Atlantic Monthly:

I remain drawn to AI prompts, which are usually far more intriguing than the outputs they yield. When people share AI-generated art or text, they frequently do so alongside the string of commands that brought it to life. Traveling back and forth between the instructions and the end result is revealing, even intimate. It’s a bit like being granted access into a person’s brain to see how they piece together disparate bits of knowledge, how they reason through a problem, or how they employ their creativity to produce something unexpected.

If you scroll through the public channels of Midjourney viewing the images and prompts of random users (see examples below), the true revelation comes from inferring what they want from the AI. The prompt reveals more than the output, which means that most of the AI-generated images are just that - imagery, not Art. When you collect both the image and the prompts, more gets revealed about the human condition and its search for meaning. Something in the user’s psyche gets displayed when they describe what they want to imagine.

As we move forward through this new age, perhaps the most productive thing we can do, instead of catastrophizing about AI, is to use the experience to reflect on our own humanity. We can become better at judging and curating Art for the human experience. However, what I see as a real concern may be the unintended consequences of circumventing the pursuit and need for mastery.

The AI tools give users instant access to many mediums of art in digital form without the need to master them. While I believe that people will still pursue learning painting and photography and drawing, there could be an unintended consequence by creating the perception that mastering these mediums that require rigorous training and schooling holds less value. The pursuit of mastery itself seems important in the journey of becoming an artist. A journey that takes the artist to the edge of the abyss, requires them to recognize the Rift, struggle to build a bridge that spans it, and then invite people to follow them across it.

[If you have enjoyed this essay, please consider collecting the entry as a patron to show your support and cement the record of these original ideas]

A selection of prompts and images from midjourney.com:

/imagine prompt: “I am moving at the speed of light traveling from planet to planet as i stretch across the galaxy, speed effect, global illumination, UHD, HDR, 8K, surreal, hyper details, rich colors, photograph —@Dream.Hub”

/imagine prompt: ”Irate summercore vibes, apparently the beach isn't cool anymore. I wish my friends weren't all goth sometimes” @Hiro_Hallow

/imagine prompt: “Cinematic wide Shot, Fantasy, Enchantment, A moonlit forest with Niobe from Africa walking amongst her people, queen of a matriarchal society, standing amidst the trees and flowers, emanating a sense of otherworldly power | CAMERA: filmed on Arri Alexa with zeiss 12mm lens” @Sierra_Faust

A Note on the Art

The Glass Bridge limited series can be collected as NFTs on Opensea.

Notes & References

Banville, J. (2020, July 17). Philip Marlowe’s Revolution | John Banville | The New York Review of Books. The New York Review of Books. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/10/27/raymond-chandler-philip-marlowes-revolution/

Barrett, L. F. (2017). How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Pan Macmillan.

Dewey, J. (2005). Art as Experience. Penguin.

Heidegger, M. (2002b). Heidegger: Off the Beaten Track. Cambridge University Press.

Jameson, F. (2016). Raymond Chandler: The Detections of Totality. Verso Books.

Levitin, D. J. (2020). Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives. Penguin.

Lynch, D. (Writer / Director) (2017, December 5). Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series. [Complete series on blu-ray]. Showtime Entertainment.

Martin Heidegger (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). (2011, October 12). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/

Midjourney. (n.d.). Midjourney. https://midjourney.com/

Stanford University. (2021, June 24). Dewey’s Aesthetics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dewey-aesthetics/#CultArtsSign

Warzel, C. (2023, February 8). Talking to AI might be the most important skill of this century. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/02/openai-text-models-google-search-engine-bard-chatbot-chatgpt-prompt-writing/672991/

Wigler, J. (2017, December 3). The Hollywood Reporter. The Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/twin-peaks-david-lynch-directs-part-8-video-1063382/