Learning to Dance with the Machine
The smell of coffee mixes with the faint metallic tang of my laptop overheating.
Some mornings
I scroll my feed and think: The machines are winning.
Lions hanging out with puppies. Homes too perfect to exist. Smiles too symmetrical.
Questions: Why do artists feel both threatened and compelled to collaborate with AI technologies in their creative processes?
It takes a second look to spot the glitch, that flicker that gives it away.
Yeah, sure, for now I can tell the difference. But for how long?
Every update is faster, smoother, smarter, as if even light is sick of waiting.
People keep saying, “Don’t worry, artists can’t be replaced.”
I hope so.
But it’s already handing us the apple.
The car drives itself, the fridge takes notes, the inbox promises it’ll handle it all.
We take a bite and call it progress.
We’re all quietly getting hooked on automation, one click at a time.
Photographers worry the next commission will vanish, into software.
I know a few. They whisper over coffee, laugh nervously.
My upstairs neighbour was a graphic designer. Old school.
Lost his job to an update. Fifty-five and suddenly obsolete.
Too old, too analog, too human.
It happened to every generation, the old replaced by the new.
But there used to be years in between, time to catch up.
Now it happens daily. Faster and faster.
Nobody steering, everyone watching, pretending to understand, refreshing the page, hoping the update still includes them.
We want to believe creativity is sacred. That something in it can’t be automated.
Automation can mimic style, but not the soul behind it.
AI can learn the surface of art, but never feel the ache beneath it.
It can copy a mood, not a memory. Right?!
So maybe the real danger isn’t replacement. It’s distraction.
While we debate if machines can feel, they’re already painting, faster, cheaper.
Some shun that. Plenty don’t.
And “good enough” just gets better. Terrifyingly so.
I’m not anti-tech. Far from it.
I adapt. From brush to camera. Photoshop to Midjourney.
But this time the tool studies us back.
It isn’t just creating with us; it’s quietly learning how we think.
While we’re busy experimenting, it’s already out there, one step ahead.
You see it everywhere: knockoff prints on Temu, eerily familiar ‘new’ art online.
The internet eats your signature and asks for seconds.
Yet some lean in. Code becomes pigment, glitch becomes poetry.
Maybe that’s the only way forward. Not purity. Presence.
The ones who learn to dance with the machine might still lead.
Confession: I don’t know where this ends.
I still want to believe the world craves the tremor in a human line, the accident that becomes meaning.
Maybe the future of art isn’t about being irreplaceable.
Maybe it’s about being unmistakably human.
Even if artists stay untouched, the changes will touch all of us.
One way or another.
Artists face rapid AI-driven change, challenging the essence of creativity and survival. Understanding this shift helps us navigate a new human-machine art landscape.
And as mad as the world feels, the disbelief, the ache, the speed, there’s still beauty.
There’s progress that could bring us closer, not apart.
Humans against the machine, not humans against each other.
Even in the deepest digitalization, artists will follow their calling.
That pulse doesn’t upload. It just… keeps beating.
I’m trying. We all are.
Dominique Catherina Foertig
Read next: Catapult Uncensored - Dominique Lost in Translation
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Author: Dominique Foertig is the founder and editor of Catapult – The New Munchies Art Club, a Vienna-based curatorial and editorial platform for contemporary art.
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