faceless cars, repulsive ai, etc
“some” “of” “my” “opinions”
several things:
i don’t really give a fuck about “ai art,” that’s my smart annoying enlightened centrist contrarian take. i’m interested in what humans have to say, not robots. my stance hasn’t changed since this stuff first started rolling out. ai stuff looks good and it’s impressive, it’s just not interesting to me.
the ai ghibli thing is strange to me, mostly because i’m too disconnected from the zeitgeist to pinpoint a catalyst for its origin, and for me it seemed like within 5 minutes of seeing it for the first time the entire internet was suddenly saturated with it. instant exponential takeover. that kind of stuff just makes me uncomfortable, makes me feel a little ON EDGE. not sure why.
segue, i don’t like the aesthetic direction that electric vehicles are taking. i hate electric vehicles because they mostly look like dog shit. i don’t know if the burning teslas thing is still relevant but i will mention it in this paragraph and maybe you can argue whether or not burning teslas is moral in the comments in order to boost engagement on this post.
i think i’ve been clear on my stance about constant existential scopaesthetic RAPE and the evil magic of cameras so you might find this next point quite strange: i think cars should look like faces.1
one of the earliest thoughts kids’ve probably had since the 1950s has been, “wow, cars look like faces!”
there is a reason internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles look like faces. headlights don’t need to be in twos, spread out like eyes over a mouth-shaped grill. in fact not all of them look like that! and the ones that don’t, probably appear strange to you. ask your girlfriend who doesn’t care about cars to look at the picture below. tell me what she says.
a car’s face is a marketing tool. “aggressive” looking faces convey power, performance, noise…
“cute” faces convey fun, excitement, play…
etc. its intuitive, i don’t have to explain it. consumers just connect with it. not in some sinister, subliminal, “mcdonalds is red because red makes you hungry” kind of way, but in a playful, very human way. it’s nice. it’s what sells.
the electric car lacks an integral vehicular pareidolic feature — the grill. EV designs look and feel “colder” because they are literally colder. they don’t require as much cooling so they don’t need a bunch of vents. they’re muzzled.
ICE cars also look better, i think, because their design is limited by their internals. a japanese pervert had to slave over a clay block to transform something complicated and loud and unsightly into something comfortable and beautiful. EVs, theoretically, allow more creative freedom for designers. their guts aren’t as sprawling. so why is it so hard to make one look good? well, maybe it’s a classic case of limitations fostering creativity, or, maybe it’s because people just like when streets are filled with friendly faces, even when there might be an angry one behind the windshield. sure, you can give an EV a face, but it’s not the same, right? it’s more of a mask. it’s a little bit uncanny valley.
i am going to segue again very smoothly back into ai by saying that i don’t like when my car does something i don’t tell it to do. my car should act as a mechanical pair of legs. gone are the days of riding on a separate living entity to get to where you want to go. a car isn’t a horse, it’s supposed to be an upgrade from a horse. it should be better. don’t neigh at me and trot away when i start to swerve into another lane. i would rather you let me die. my car should do what i say. do you know how fucking jarring it was for me to feel a car pulling me back into my lane for the first time? you wanna know how to make somebody crash? by doing shit like that.
if there’s anything you take away from this little substack post, let it be this:
Anything that disobeys you is not a tool.
you’re the tool, because you’re clearly not the one in control. ai doesn’t obey me, so it’s not a tool. actually, you know what? it does obey me sometimes, after I feed it a hundred different mkultra activation phrases so it doesn’t talk to me like a Reddit moderator. uncanny valley.
i saw a video of this little fucking voice operated ai program from a company called sesame. there were two voices, maya and miles. it’s been a while since i’ve been this mad at my computer screen.
the guy talking to this program had to say this fucking embarrassingly long stretch of commands just so the ai was BEARABLE to listen to. whoever programs how these things talk needs to die quickly. i, and this is real, i have a cousin that was dropped on his head as a baby, and I SHIT YOU NOT the ai talks with their EXACT CADENCE. MY ROBOT SOUNDS LIKE IT WAS DROPPED ON ITS HEAD.
AND IT SOUNDS LIKE THAT ON PURPOSE. SOMEONE MADE IT SOUND LIKE THAT.
every time he tried to ask something even slightly off-kilter this thing was like “woah, woah there, partner, i’m gonna ask you to, tone it down a couple notches, alright? lets, um, take a chill pill, breathe a little, you know?” talking like a fucking marvel character. you have to put in a headlock and punch it until it bleeds and scream commands at it so it talks normally. no thank you. my robot should not be into bdsm.
i will be excited for the future when one of these ai models comes out that isn’t a fucking freak. until then i’m scared, frankly, that i’ll have to check out my groceries with a virtual dent-in-its-head baby.
anwyas,,, more poetry soom… bigger collaborative project coming out soon.. stay tuned folks…
the scopaesthetic affect of vehicular pareidolia is nullified by the knowledge that there’s a human being behind the wheel. you don’t look at the car and think, “this car is watching me,” you think “this guy in the car is watching me.” very important distinction. self driving cars? cameras. no good. artificial observer. this isn’t important whatever im an idiot
evanie laurent is esoteric and mysterious... i am fascinated
Let the cars have little mouths! Who wants to drive a Mortal Kombat ninja?