“I Am Not a Robot”
Note: This collaboration is part of our “Signs of Life: Artists and Writers Respond to AI” special folio (click to see them all!). The original call for submissions is here. We asked four artists to provide images from their notebooks–that deeply human dream-draft-drift space. We then provided four prompts. This writer responded to prompt #3: “”I Am Not a Robot” Consider this phrase offered so often on websites that then ask us to identify the traffic lights or motorcycles. How can you convince us? How do you know you are human?” We chose Amy Meissner’s notebook page to shimmer alongside Jacqueline Lyons’s poem. You can see all collaborations from this special Broadsided Responds folio at the link above and the links to the left.
Collaborators’ Q&A
What inspired you to participate in this special folio engaging AI?
Artist Amy Meissner: I rely on my sketchbooks so much. I can’t imagine being an artist without the physicality of opening to a new page, drawing, writing by hand, cutting out and taping in images or photographs, and having the security that I can return to these solid pages, which hold what would otherwise be ephemeral or forgotten ideas. Sketchbooks are my safe and reliable tool, reflecting parts of myself that I would otherwise forget. I don’t see AI as this tool for me, maybe it is for someone, but to me it feels like the antithesis of what I just described.
Writer Jacqueline Lyons: As someone who thinks of AI as poisonous to our physical environment and corrosive to creativity and communication, I had big feelings when I read the prompts for this folio!
What role does AI play in your creative life? Your pragmatic life?
Artist Amy Meissner: Recently, I used AI to transcribe a 4-hour long interview, a task it took 8 hours to complete. Had it done this work myself, it would’ve take 32 hours. So the role it played in my creative life on that day was to be a worker, freeing me to do other things far more joyful and less tedious. I don’t see myself using it as a tool to seek joy or do my creative work for me. Maybe I’ll feel different in the future, but for now I want to rely on myself.
Writer Jacqueline Lyons: AI has no role in my creative life other than as another darkness to resist.
We asked you to choose a page from your notebook for this folio. Why this page? What is your relationship to notebooks as an artist?
Artist Amy Meissner: I use my sketchbooks like junk drawers. Nothing valuable goes into it, but lots of things that seem useful or might have use in the future. Opening an old sketchbook is like rooting around in a drawer, questioning why this or that was saved, or marveling that something was saved at all—and look how useful it is at this exact moment of need. I chose this page because it clearly shows how I was working through initial design concepts at the same time I was working through materials and techniques, a true melding of art and craft on the same page.
We offered prompts for this folio—what surprised you as you worked on the poem you sent us? Do you often use prompts in your writing practice?
Writer Jacqueline Lyons: Writing in response to the “I Am Not a Robot” prompt surprised me with its urgency to locate and declare my humanity, and how assuredly the prompt directed me towards close observations buoyed by daydreaminess….
What did you think a writer would pick up on from your art? Does the response make you see the page differently?
Artist Amy Meissner: I know I’m hit with memory when I look at other artists’ work, whether or not the subject matter is the same as that memory or not. It could be a color or a sound that triggers. I love how this writer creates a litany of all the things that make her human, personal experience that becomes it’s own data gathering and learning.
When you consider the full folio of work from this special feature, what questions, observations, or connections arise for you?
Artist Amy Meissner: I see a clear connection to nature, wonder, memory—humanness.
Writer Jacqueline Lyons: I sense a verticality, a meditative deep-drilling. Am also energized by the movement on the pages that shoots off in many direction.
Describe your ideal “Vectorization”—where, in your wildest dreams, would you most like to see this broadside posted in the world?
Artist Amy Meissner: Made into wallpaper and covering the walls of Anthropic headquarters.
Writer Jacqueline Lyons: Seed packets, or park benches or trail markers–somewhere that people (or birds) might respond with “Oh, wow—a poem.”
If this Broadsided collaboration were a type of weather, what would it be?
Artist Amy Meissner: White sky, low morning light, -5 degrees F… because this is today in Alaska.
Writer Jacqueline Lyons: Sun dogs? Flurries? Hoarfrost? Not your everyday weather.
Do you have a favorite, generative prompt for artists or writers you’d like to share?
Artist Amy Meissner: Heard from Brian Eno: “What do you like?”
Writer Jacqueline Lyons: Rita Dove’s “10-minute Spill,”which involves beginning with a proverb or adage that you’ve changed in some way, and drawing from a small word bank.
Read any good books lately?
Artist Amy Meissner: Currently reading Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters.
Writer Jacqueline Lyons: The Possibility of Tenderness: A Jamaican Memoir of Plants and Dreams, by Jason Allen-Paisant. And his book of poetry, Thinking with Trees. Love them both!
Seen any good art lately?
Artist Amy Meissner: I’m currently taking an intermediate wheel thrown ceramics class at the University of Alaska Anchorage. I see exciting work emerging off wheels, out of kilns, and from people’s hands every day. It’s so grounding.
Writer Jacqueline Lyons: I recently visited a first-Saturday open studios in Camarillo, CA. Spent an inspiring few hours talking with painters, a sculptor, and a woman who creates gorgeous wood block prints of local indigenous plants.