Recently, there has been an unexpected rise in AI-generated art. These computer-generated art pieces are for the most part indistinguishable from art made by actual human artists. Whether this should be considered art or not has become the topic of much debate. As we move further into the digital age these factors have to be considered for all art forms, including writing. These concerns were fresh in my mind as I read Lisa Dush’s article “When Writing becomes Content”.
In summary, Dush goes over the plight of artists as art becomes transformed into content that can be read and repackaged as a product of the medium it is communicated to the masses with, instead of a product of its own design. This can be summed up by Lisa Dush’s inclusion of a New York Times quote by Tim Kreider:
“This contemptuous coinage is predicated on the assumption that it’s the delivery system that matters, relegating what used to be called “art”—writing, music, film, photography, illustration—to the status of filler-” (Dush 174 via Kreider)
Dush then continues within the article, attempting to define content in a way that allows one to respect writers and artists who create it, while also embracing the fact that art has, indeed, become content. She does this by giving content clear traits:
“I identify four characteristics of content: content is conditional, computable, networked, and commodified. New vocabulary benefits a field if it illuminates phenomena that current terms ignore or obscure-” (Dush 174)
Content is a commodity that can be networked and communicated and consumed by machines as she mentions on page 178, “in networked space, a video or a tweet is judged not on whether it communicates very useful information, but rather on the number of clicks and tweets it accumulates.” I think that this is a very valid concern when it comes to defining content, because it is given validity based on a very different set of key values from how art usually would be when viewed directly by the naked eye. Regardless of what one takes from a post or a piece of writing, it will not be commodified based on its usefulness or relevancy, only by the engagement that can be seen by machines. That said, it does cross over to some degree, such as ads corresponding to a user lingering over a picture of a product and content recommendations based on searches and liked posts, but it is never a clear one-for-one representation of how people would normally intake the content without the disconnection granted by machines.
Once content is defined and given its due as its own term, Dush then explains the metaphor for content and writing as opposing approaches to created work that can not be interchangeable. Instead of trying to combine the two under one umbrella, Dush continues on to explain the methodology of creating content that tailors to both the metaphors of writing and content. As she says on page 188: “My department, for example, has reimagined our Writing for the Web course – Students now write on platforms, such as WordPress and Twitter, and discuss issues such as how to repurpose content across platforms and how to write effectively for both human and nonhuman readers”
I think that this article brings attention to a major issue when it comes to how art is perceived by the public, as the link between artist and what is created becomes severed and it is the deliverance of the product that matters rather than the very existence and statement of the product itself. The quote I liked most from the entire article sums up nicely how exactly art and content could never be synonymous:
“writing is connected to many things we value, and perhaps even love: books, authors, pens on paper, memories. Not so content.” (Dush 191)
We have now witnessed the intervention of digital mediums in how we consume content and how writing as art is being transformed into a commodified existence and as I mentioned at the very beginning, art is being created by machines, botted social media accounts are impersonating real individuals and videos can be produced based on auto-generated formulas. It begs the question what the limits of these twisted possibilities in the digital age will be as well as, what really is content and how do you really separate it from content and what’s the dividing line. But Lisa Dush in writing this article provides some guidelines to it all as well as a stark warning for a problem that many would not even care to realize exists and gives clear warnings and solutions which can springboard awareness and improvements in the digital spaces curated toward instead of against artists and writers.
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Dush, Lisa, “When Writing Becomes Content”, National Council of teachers of English, December, 2015, pages, 174 via Kreider, 178, 188 & 191, https://library.ncte.org/journals/CCC/issues/v67-2/27641
