Art

Anton pushed the cold handle and the grey door opened with a squeak. Four students, spaced out two white tiles apart from desk to desk, turned their heads towards him. 

The buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead filled the brief silence before Anton finally spoke. ‘Is this the… uh, the stylised art classroom?’

    ‘Stylised sample production classroom,’ a student in a white dress shirt said. ‘We don't learn art here.’ 

    Everyone’s eyes fell back to their works in unison. Anton stood at the door for a while, unsure if they were expecting him or if he was intruding their class. But no one said anything and the buzz of the lights returned, so he entered the classroom, shut the door quietly, and made his way to the front of the class. 

The room was large — much larger than it needed to be, though it didn’t take Anton long to scan the whole room. The students were all about eighteen or nineteen — far younger than Anton by decades. To the back of the classroom, towers of dusty desks and chairs at the back of the room threatened to collapse through the plaster walls they leaned against. There were no windows — there wasn’t much to see beyond a basement, after all, and more interesting things lay within the room. Instead of windows to the outside, large screens featured a rotation of landscapes and portraits, all of which were washed with the dullness that came with the familiar illusion of colour and life. And at the front of the class where Anton had expected an art professor, the metallic structure of robotic apparatus suspended from the ceiling filled the space. 

    ‘Excuse me,’ Anton looked up at the bulk of metal. ‘I was told I needed to fix some software issues. Should I wait outside until you’re all finished with your work?’

    ‘Oh, it’s alright,’ a meek student with glasses said softly. She smiled. ‘Just do what you need to do. This is only a minor assignment.’ 

    ‘Great,’ Anton set his bag on what was once known as the teacher’s desk. ‘What’s specifically the issue here? I wasn’t given any other details except that the projector stopped working.’ 

    Another student with streaks of purple in his hair looked at him. ‘I guess you weren’t told that we’re still having class, too.’ 

    ‘Oh, er, yeah,’ Anton bit his lip.. ‘Sorry about that. I’ll run a software diagnostics which should pinpoint the problem quickly and I’ll be out of your hair.’

    The student laughed. ‘I was joking. No one ever knows what goes on down here after the first year, anyway.’ 

    Anton plugged his laptop into the apparatus. ‘What do you mean?’

    The girl in the dress shirt stood. ‘No one wants to be in the stylised department because no one likes stylised pictures. It’s lazy and doesn’t take as much skill as the better departments like portraits and landscapes. If you end up here, your only goal is to learn the fundamentals to make the realistic stuff people like and get out as soon as possible into a better department. Then at least you’ll have a chance at getting a job and have some part in creating the stuff they keep showing on the screens.’ 

    The boy with purple streaks cracked a smirk. ‘Or there’s always that department next door—’

    ‘Shush, Remi.’

    Anton tilted his head. ‘But who told you that stuff like comics and cartoons are bad and lazy?’

    The girl shrugged. 'Everyone. And isn't it obvious it's true?’

    Alyssa picked up her tablet and walked up to the apparatus. A metal arm detected her presence and pushed a screen out from its frame, angling itself to her. She tapped a button and a second metal arm appeared, carrying a camera. A QR code appeared over her work simultaneously. Anton watched as she raised her drawing tablet up to the camera, which automatically adjusted itself to scan the code. There was a small beep and for a few seconds, the words processing... appeared on the screen. Then, the screen changed its display: 

ALYSSA CAMPBELL GARCIA, #1035159

Perspective……………….20%

Value………………………..87%

Colour………….…………...93%

Lighting…………………...20%

Anatomy…………………..30%

Gesture…………………….56%

Audience Appraisal…..96%

AVERAGE………………....57%

RECOMMENDED DEPARTMENTS:

1. Advertising
2. Stylised
3. Stylised

    Anton caught a glimpse of Alyssa’s work. Beneath a paper texture, red and yellow stripes exploded behind the black silhouette of a stoic figure with bold, white text beneath it. He then glanced at the screen, squinting his eyes. ‘Is that how you kids are graded now? You don’t even get one human art teacher to look at your work?’

    Alyssa jumped, shock turning into annoyed embarrassment. She clutched her drawing tablet. ’What do you mean “art teacher”? If you wanna talk about art, you’re in the wrong school, buddy.’

    Anton raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m sorry, is this not an art school? Did you just not make a piece of art?’

    ‘Uh, no,’ Alyssa scrunched her nose but smirked in amusement. ‘Did you see anyone in this building code?’

    ‘Then what do you guys make?’

    ‘Art samples. Duh. Samples for art. You know, we produce samples and feed them to art so it can make an even better picture of anything you want from all the samples it has,’ she pointed at the apparatus. ‘The thing you’re here to fix.’

    Silent confusion turned into realisation. ‘Oh. You mean samples to teach this artificial intelligence to generate new images by combining them?’

    ‘Yes. Precisely,’ Alyssa tucked her tablet under her arm. ‘Hence, art samples.’

    A frown stretched across Anton’s face. ‘God, you kids call AI ‘art’ now?’

    Alyssa tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. ‘And has it ever meant anything else?’

    ‘Yes, once. A very long time ago when this place actually had teachers,’ 

    ‘What’s so bad about it? It’s the perfect measuring tool for objective quality,’ Alyssa said.

    Anton tightened his lip. ‘Okay, I understand how an AI could judge the objective and mathematical categories in your grade. But just because something is “more correct”, it doesn’t mean it’s visually appealing and interesting. And what on earth is “Audience Appraisal” supposed to mean?’

    The boy with purple streaks interjected before Alyssa could say anything. Grinning, he stood and opened a new file on his tablet. ‘Here. I’ll just show you.’

    With his stylus, he drew a tiny cartoon figure, a large speech bubble and wrote ‘THE GOVERNMENT SUCKS’ in it. He then generated a QR code for the file and scanned. The screen quickly printed out his results:

REMI SCHULTZ, #9582675

Perspective………………….0%

Value………………………100%

Colour………….……………..0%

Lighting……………………..0%

Anatomy…………………….0%

Gesture……………………....0%

Audience Appraisal…….0%

AVERAGE………………....14%

RECOMMENDED DEPARTMENTS:

1. Stylised
2. Stylised
3. Stylised

Anton slowly nodded with understanding, a small smirk on his lips. Alyssa snagged Remi’s arm and seethed through gritted teeth. ‘What are you doing?! The superiors can see that!’

The fourth student, a boy in the black hoodie, looked up. ‘They can, but will they?’

Remi pointed a finger-gun at him. ‘Exactly, my man Joey.’

‘It’ll still get saved into your student profile!’

‘Then I’ll just delete it later.’

Alyssa rolled her eyes as Joey stood and walked up to the apparatus to scan his work. ‘Whatever. If you get in trouble, it’s not my fault. I’m going to fix my sample now.’

‘Fix it? Are you really going to listen to that thing?’ Anton said. ‘I’m sure it can’t be that bad.’

She turned around. ‘Who are you to say, repairman?’

Anton hesitated, then sighed. ‘I used to be an art teacher here.’

‘You mean a sample production teacher,’ Alyssa corrected. 

‘No. An actual, real-life art teacher.’ 

Joey lifted his head once more. ‘Then why don’t you know about how art works? And why are you a repairman now?’

Anton looked at him and sighed. ‘First of all, I’m a machine learning engineer. And second of all, please don’t call that thing art. It is the furthest thing away from both a piece of art and an art critic. You can draw the blandest photorealistic scientific diagram of the human face and it’ll think it’s a masterpiece.’ 

Joey looked down at his work, then at his results:

JOSEPH LAU, #5483958

Perspective………………..76%

Value………………………...92%

Colour………….……………94%

Lighting……………………87%

Anatomy…………………..88%

Gesture…………………….35%

Audience Appraisal…..90%

AVERAGE………………....80%

RECOMMENDED DEPARTMENTS:

1. Portrait
2. Figure
3. Advertising

‘Fair point,’ Joey said. 

Anton pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘Long story short, I’ve always liked drawing as a kid. So I joined this school, got some years of experience, and became a teacher. But then the AI came in and we were purged out of school. Luckily, I did well enough on the math side of things in high school to get a degree and machine learning was very open for new recruits. So I pushed all things art behind me and never looked back… until now, I guess, as the maintenance boy of the very thing I swore to destroy.’ 

‘Maybe you “teachers” were purged because you guys did a crappy job,’ Alyssa faked a smile. ‘You’re not even doing your actual job right now.’

‘Hey!—’ Anton shut his mouth and recomposed himself. ‘Tell you what. The diagnostics test is automatic and takes a while. So why don’t I try to give some advice to you students?’ 

‘I don’t trust someone who draws just “for fun”. No one does that, not especially when you can get a picture of whatever you want with just a click of a button thanks to people like us!’ 

‘Then why do you make art?’

‘To get a job and get money quick! Duh. Why else would you make samples?’

Anton pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered under his breath. ‘I guess the only problem that’s been solved is the financial states of artists.’

Alyssa threw her hands up. ‘Man, stop with all that ‘art’ talk! That’s all in the past now! We aren’t artists. We don’t need artists anymore because now, we can just give people exactly what they want. And every time even a pixel of our sample is used, we get paid for it. And those two things are all that matter!’ 

Everyone looked at Alyssa. Her voice reverberated in the empty room, lingering only until the buzz of the fluorescent lights returned.

‘So… that really is all there is to all of you?’ Anton muttered, looked down at his laptop. ‘Those are the only reasons you’re here?’

Alyssa said nothing, her chest still rising and falling. The other three students looked at each other in silence.

A quiet murmur escaped the girl with glasses. ‘We don’t have any other choice.’

Anton looked at her. His expression softened. ‘No. Never believe that. You always have a choice. Do you know the real reason why you’re in this class?’

‘Because we suck?’ Remi chuckled.

‘No. It’s because that thing decided that you’re not good enough. And what is there behind it? Nothing. Nothing but lines of code written by people who don’t understand art.’

‘What about audience appraisal, then?’ Joey asked. 

‘Nothing more than algorithms to make artists like you chase what it wants you to chase.’ 

‘And how do you know all this?’ Alyssa said firmly. ‘How are you so sure it’s true?’

Anton drummed the surface of the table. He bit his lip and finally brought his eyes up to Alyssa’s. 

‘It’s because I made this AI. I was one of the first to teach it what was right and wrong.’

The students raised their heads. Remi furrowed his brows. ‘Wait, how? Why?’

Anton looked up at the apparatus looming over them. ‘Do you know why this art school is the most prestigious one? That’s because it was first developed here. Since I both had artistic training and prior programming skills from high school, they moved me from the teaching department to the development team for this AI. I was involved in teaching it perspective and lighting and... it was a huge success! It helped artists all over. But the more developed it got, the more its suggestions became the law. And no one would listen to the dangers of this. I may have been able to leave before things got out of control, but now young minds like you are trapped by my creation.’

Anton sighed and leaned against the table. ‘It never was supposed to be a critic blind to context and interpretation — let alone a replacement for a teacher, because our job isn’t just to teach. Our job is both to inspire students like you, and to teach you how to inspire others by connecting them to your work, because that is what art truly is.’

    The class fell silent. Anton checked his laptop. 

    ‘Is… is the diagnostic test complete?’ Alyssa asked.

    ‘Um, yes. There isn’t anything wrong with the software,’ he walked around the apparatus. ‘Let me check the physical projector — oh, yep. I found the problem. Its wires are completely busted.’

    ‘What? How?’ Alyssa said.

    ‘Uh, it was me,’ Joey raised his hand. ‘The projector kept flickering, so I tried fixing it. But apparently now it’s completely broken.’

    ‘Why didn’t you just tell a superior?’ Remi chuckled. 

    Joey shrugged. ‘I wasn’t bothered.’

    Anton unplugged his laptop and closed it. ‘Well, guess my work here is done—’

    ‘Wait!’ 

The girl with glasses covered her mouth. ‘Oh, sorry. That was too loud. But, um… were you really an art teacher?’

‘Yes, I was,’ Anton reponded. 

The girl stood from her seat, her drawing tablet clutched to her chest. ‘Okay. Then if it’s okay with you, can you please…’

She swallowed. Her voice lowered. ‘Can you please tell me what you think of my work? Because if I just paint what everyone else does, I get a good score. But every time I actually have fun with a painting, it keeps telling me that…’

The girl fumbled with her tablet, opened a file, generated a QR code, and scanned it. Anton looked at the results.

MINNA FIGUEROA, #5483958

Perspective………………..64%

Value………………………...62%

Colour………….……………80%

Lighting……………………51%

Anatomy…………………..49%

Gesture…………………….56%

Audience Appraisal…..50%

AVERAGE………………....59%

RECOMMENDED DEPARTMENTS:

1. Stylised
2. Stylised
3. Landscape

‘This is what I made last semester,’ Minna said. ‘And that’s why I’m here.’

Anton smiled. ‘I’ll be honoured to have a look at your work.’

She chuckled nervously and handed the tablet to Anton. Soft, pastel, orange hues of a sunset splashed all over the canvas with accents of purple detailing the form of a river gently flowing downstream. Children skipped rocks and their dark purple shadows bled like ink in the river. Anton found himself holding his breath in awe. 

‘This is… beautiful,’ Anton gasped. ‘The perspective does need a bit of work, and the composition could cater a bit more to the focal point. But for a first-year piece of art, this is really impressive.’ He handed the tablet back to her and smiled. ‘Nice job.’

Minna’s eyes shone and she beamed. ‘Really? Do you mean it?’

‘Every single word of it,’ Anton too lit up. He looked at the four students in the room. ‘Listen. I want you all to remember this. We are humans. We are unpredictable, individual, and impressionable, each with our own unique view and interpretation of reality. That’s what makes you, you. And that’s what makes you artists. Never let anyone ever take that from you.’ 

A sharp squeak pierced the air and the door swung open. A tall woman in a blazer stood at the door. Two armed guards accompanied her sides.

‘Mr Anton Pratama?’ she said. ‘You’re overstaying your welcome.’

‘I was just leaving,’ he packed his laptop into his bag and slung it over his shoulder. ‘There’s no software issue with the projector. You’ll need to change it physically.’

‘Mm,’ she nodded. ‘These students will pay for it.’

A guard grabbed Anton by the back of his shirt and shoved him out of the door. Anton yelled in protest, but what followed was silenced by the door slamming back in place.

The four students didn’t return to their seats. They stood beneath the apparatus, waiting for someone to say something.

‘So…’ Remi started, ‘what now?’

‘We still have half a semester left, and no one really cares about what we do,’ Minna said.

Joey looked at her. ‘What are you suggesting?’

Minna looked up at Alyssa. They shared a smile.

‘It’s fine if we never choke up the cash for a new projector. It’s fine if the whole thing breaks down. We won’t be needing that thing when we make art, anyway.’