INK, CLAY, WOOD & STEEL | 12 DECEMBER 2025 | LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
In recent weeks I’ve had some moments of despondency lamenting what I see as a pointlessness in contributing any more to commercial/pop music ventures in light of recent AI developments. It feels futile to create work that will be so easily lost amongst the deluge of artifice about to rain down upon us. The same could be said of the film industry, and I know painters & photographers are having their challenges too.
But as with every cultural movement, there’s a counter-culture. What if, as consumers of art, we are already consuming from a poisoned well (I know how much I manipulate, edit, and tune a pop record), and that by AI pushing this envelope, we all react by returning to value what is real; ink, clay, wood, human things. Objects and sounds made with a heart, soul, and fingerprints. Things we can treasure, because they have a soul given to them through the hands of another.
I have visions of my grandfather, his weathered hands working on wooden sailboats in his shed. A friend sitting in her kitchen bathed in warm evening light, intuitively forming clay into an aesthetic pottery that feels millennia old. Or a guitarist, the instrument nothing more than a box of wood & steel, played with such touch that it incites the deepest memories, nostalgia, and raw emotion from an audience. If this is truly the cultural shift that might occur, I think collectively the movement has the potential to be very healing for us. And maybe we’ve needed it for a while.
