There is no doubt that the myth of originality shapes my own work both in and outside of digital spaces, but it also haunts all of art. As someone working with digital tools and networks, it takes a lot of effort to ignore how my work builds on others' techniques, shared knowledge, and collective tools. But i think this is equally true of all art - it’s just more obvious in digital space. We often hear the quote by Picasso saying “good artists copy, great artists steal” - but even invoking this has become paradoxical, reinforcing the genius myth it supposedly challenges by citing yet another singular master. Artists across all media are entangled in systems that require maintaining the fiction of pure inspiration untainted by others' work. I may question these myths, but also depend on them, nervously maintaining them because I cannot imagine how else to sustain what I call an art practice.
I want to encounter art that challenges my assumptions, and sometimes end up using the word originality as a shorthand for this longing, but in reality novelty follows a cycle - what seems radical now becomes familiar, gets absorbed into our common visual vocabulary, then gives rise to new forms of the unexpected. Whether in painting, sculpture, performance, or code, the unfamiliar gradually becomes understood, only to generate new forms of strangeness. Yet grant systems, institutional recognition, and critical frameworks remain trapped in myths of linear progress - the delusion that creative work advances steadily towards an ever-more-original future. My applications and statements perpetuate these myths, knowing they’re partial truths but needing them to survive in a system built on fantasies of artistic autonomy.
AI gives us a chance to reconsider what an individual artwork means and to reject the simplistic version of art history as a series of heroic revolutions by individual geniuses. Every AI-generated image is visibly, undeniably the sum of countless human-made images - making obvious what was always true of all art forms. Each creative act, whether digital or physical, builds on a vast heritage of human creation. Instead of seeing this AI-enabled visibility of art’s collective nature as a crisis, it opens an opportunity to acknowledge how art actually evolves through networks of influence and exchange. But this means confronting my investment in the old myths, my reliance on systems that reward claims of unique genius.
The real issue isn’t machines processing our work – it’s that both traditional art institutions and new technology companies concentrate resources amongst a few whilst neglecting the collective effort they depend on. This pattern repeats across all art forms - from painting to digital art, from sculpture to performance, a tiny number of people capture most resources while the rest piece together an existence through teaching, commissions, and related work. Now tech companies build fortunes on our collective creative heritage, while many of us still chase these markets, hoping to be the exception.
These realities raise questions that resist easy answers: How to imagine different ways of working and supporting each other in a world that has always been uneven and is now made more so by technological change? Perhaps it starts not with grand declarations of new movements, but with small acts of transparency and mutual support. Finding ways to balance both the necessary fictions that make space for art in society and the reality of how art emerges from collective knowledge and shared practice.
The path forward isn’t in sweeping manifestos or revolutionary systems, but in gradually making visible the actual ways art gets made whilst preserving what draws us to it. Rather than waiting for another heroic revolution in art history, it’s about investing in slow, careful exploration of how to make creative practices more honest and accessible. Creating space for many variations and mutations of our creative commons - not in the competition of the market places but in recognition of how different approaches and explorations enrich the collective resources we all draw from.
In resisting new forms of exploitation by AI companies and tech platforms, I try not to become a conservative defender of the art world’s current inequitable structures. The challenge lies in imagining paths beyond both the traditional systems that have excluded so many and the new economic models that threaten to further concentrate creative resources. It’s about remaining open to change while moving towards more open and collective forms of artistic flourishing rather than backing new monopolies and privileges of creative power. About finding ways to maintain individual agency while acknowledging its foundations in collective knowledge, to pursue particular interests while building networks of mutual support, to be both oneself and part of something larger.
