Jack Marsh

Like photography was a new medium. You know, y there are b photography in the

Hmm.

nineteen again, I don't mean to go to nine maybe just a very historically minded person, but I photography it's use the history is useful. And photography for lots of people for a brief period actually, very, very brief period, people thought it was like the end of painting. Then they realized it wasn't. Okay. And AI

Yes.

are AI image generation.

People, it's the end of creating. No, it's not. It really isn't. Okay. But what it will do is it will create a new art form. And what it will do is it will create a chain reaction in every other art and affect them enormously. So one of the things that photography creates is it pushes art into a more abstracting and more loose and more painterly

Yeah.

form of position. So you have impressionism, you have

various forms of symbolism, and like you know, people like Gustave Moreau and others who are producing incredibly kind of mythical, strange paintings.

Welcome to Tastebench. I'm Philipp Zahn. My co-host is Bruno Marnette, and this is a podcast about taste and the creative side of AI. Today's guest is Jack Marsh. Jack is an art historian and co-founder of Not Quite Past. The company uses AI to produce custom tiles in the traditional Delft style. But this is just the first step. Jack and his co founder want to leverage AI more broadly to change interior design.

Jack, it's a pleasure to have you. Let's start by a simple question What is a Delft tile?

That's well, there you are. So I think the simple answer, it's got many different answers, but a simple answer is that it's a tile made well in antique terms, it's a tile made mainly in the Low Countries, though there's a sort of an expansion pact to England as well, because they copy it. Between the s the middle of the 16th century, all the way up into the 19th century. Now

Your listeners might be, or viewers for that matter, might be familiar with blue and white. And that's very interesting because that doesn't immediately start in Delft tiles. Delft tiles begin, they're a form of myolica. And they they're imported by a bunch of people from I believe, I believe, Italy that set up shop in Antwerp in about sort of 1525 or so. And they're very bright and they're very colourful. You might not you might not sort of notice them as Delft tiles, but they are technically delve tiles. So they're they're myolica or faience.

Which is basically a kind of tin-glazed ceramic. which tin, by the way, is sort of an opaque white, so it gives enormous brightness with that white, opaque white, gives enormous brightness to any other pigments that you you put on it or into it. And so these these are emigrants to the burgeoning kind of you know, markets of

Mm-hmm.

and the burgesses of the low countries. They came there and they brought this tile, but the blue and white came in in these sort of l

Very early 17th century, so 16, about 1615 or so. And it's a very interesting interesting story. So in China, there's someone called the Wan Li Emperor. And the Wan Li Emperor took a slightly different approach to previous Ming Dynasty emperors. By the way, this is the real waning of the Ming Dynasty. So things are going very wrong in Ming Dynasty

Mm-hmm.

China. Very, you know, you know, there are marauders at the borders. Of course, you've got the Qing coming in at some point. But you essentially the Wan Li Emperor decided to open up trade a bit more.

With Europe. And what this did is it flooded in relative terms. It was still a trickle, but a much, much bigger trickle of porcelain and other Chinese goods into the Netherlands and into Spain. And you see them in Countless Still Lives, you see in Renaissance painting. Yeah. And so you have this blue and white in shocking colour, porcelain, extremely fine clay, and and the Europe goes wild for them. But then

After the Wanli emperor leaves and a new emperor comes in, that new emperor adopts a new kind of policy and he shuts off trade, really strangles it. And so there's a massive gap in the market for blue and white porcelain. And so the ingenious traders of the burgeoning Dutch Republic decide that we're gonna dispense with all this kind of brightly colored stuff and we're gonna move towards the market. And so basically it's it's the the blue and white of Delve is really a marketing move. There's no more porcelain coming to the Netherlands into Europe.

So why not just paint everything as blue and white and try and sort of say that it's vaguely sort of Chinese in character? So so you look that you look at the the very earliest tiles and they have this sort of Chinese style border. Often some people call it the the the one li hook motif or corner motif. And and yeah that's really the kind of the beginning of the iconic blue and white tiles. But they they div

Mm-hmm.

they have a wonderful development over development over time.

Briefly, I'm slightly obsessive, so you've you've opened you've opened a you've opened a kind of a tiler. So

That's a good thing.

Floodgate.

but I I could go on and on. But but what's so interesting about

Please do.

double tiles is that they start off really heavily framed. You have

Mm-hmm.

this idea of like a pattern going across tiles, almost like a kind of ragu or pattern. And so the pattern will often dominate across four tiles. So it'd be what the repeat of the pattern will be four tiles rather than one. But as

The 16th century goes into the 17th century. And as you know, that you have the this rise of Dutch art and the observation of everyday life and the love of interiors and the love of you know, you go from Breu, you go from Bosch with his sort of the fear and the demonic fear of everyday life to Bruegel and Bruegel into people like Vermeer and Peter de Gog and others like that. you know, you you this love of observation vibe. And so in these dove tiles, they stop very heavily patterned.

very heavily framed, they have these diamond shaped frames. But you'll notice slowly that the tile, the frame starts to disappear. And the frame gets less and less and less. And instead what you have is like they reduce the frame to

Mm-hmm.

like little corner motifs. And I know if you know Delft tiles Unfortunately I don't have one with me. It's really sad. But but the corner

No worries.

motifs are like this memory of a frame. But they've destroyed the frame. They've

Mm.

destroyed the frame and what remains is this great white space.

It's enormous theatrical space where the entire world and their fantasies and imagination kind of impinges. And it becomes the the Delft Tile becomes this white space for the observation of everyday life. You if I don't know if you've looked at Delft Tiles, but you'll see everything on Delft tiles. You'll see people carrying kind of sacks, or you'll see people, you'll see Cupids, you'll see people kind of like frolicking and almost engaging in sexual acts. You'll see

political controversies, you'll see, you know, and and it they are just like in art in the 17th century, the Dutch golden age, where they are depicting everyday life, everyday life, so in these tiles, which by the way, you can find in in Vanmeer pictures, you can find in Peter de Hogh pictures, because they because they're depicting the interiors, they also depict the tiles as well. You can find the kind of the Dutch mind, the Dutch world in these tiles. And so there's a wonderful development. And then it sort of tapers off. And it goes

In the 18th century, the Netherlands sort of fall behind, Britain becomes industrial, other countries become industrial. and in particular, what happens is that a bunch of people it starts in Italy but really takes off in England. a guy called and I think this is something I really want to talk about, because I think slop is not a new phenomenon. It is totally not a new phenomenon, and it's not, it is not, and

No. Tileslop.

Yeah.

and the industrialization of beauty.

In the 18th century, in the 19th century, is crucial to really understanding AI and slob and beauty and the question of that. And I would love to talk about William Morris, I'd love to talk about the great exhibition. But anyway, let me get but finish off what I'm saying about Delft tiles. So what happens is in the 18th century, you get people like John John Green and Guy Sadler in Liverpool, and they they they have engravings. Yep.

engravings, but instead of putting normal ink on there that you print onto a page, you put ceramic pigment on there. And you can print on tiles. And so previously Delft tiles were kind of rapidly painted by people. By the way, they had their own incredibly good incredibly good industrial processes. So for instance, you know how Delft tiles, I don't know if you're familiar, but they're very spare. That's also because it's really cheap to make. So y if there's only a tiny little cupid or a tiny little

figure in the middle, you can just chuck them out very, very quickly, produce thousands of tiles.

Mmm.

And also they use something called pouncing, where you have and they still do this by the way. So in Mexico there's a fiance tradition as well called Talavera Poblana. I've been to some of the great factories here. they still do this. So it's they get tracing paper and they poke holes on the outlines of the design. And then you get a little bag of charcoal dust and you bash it against pouncing and then it leaves little dots where you need to paint. So literally the painters of Del Tiles, they're literally just filling in the gaps.

That's all they're doing. They're filling gaps. Yet, of course, beauty and feeling, whatever, but they're incredibly industrialized. And but of course, what goes in people in in 18th century England, they're using woodcuts and engravings to print ceramic pigment on tiles. And this leads to explosion of ceramic wares. And the Dutch can't compete. And they start selling to farther afield, they sell to Poland, to Russia, they sell to and they have these incredible.

Incredible interiors in Russian palaces where the entire walls are covered with delve tiles, but they're selling to them because they they can't sell really to low, they're being outcompeted. and eventually it sort of dies in the 19th century and is only slowly and slightly recovered. and there's the arts and crafts movement in the late 19th century, which is a response to slop. and they kind of revived

Mm-hmm.

them a little bit, so William Morris.

engages in Delft painters. But essentially the tradition sort of dyes. However, nowadays it they are incredibly popular. In certain parts of England and America, they're now seen as incredibly desirable. and there's great there's that you see them, you'll see this constant in the interior design world they love the phrase timeless. Of course it's

Mm-hmm.

incredibly time bound, but you know this you know that they they fall under the rubric of

Timeless design, which is I think it's basically the idea is like inflected

You

with kind of heritage, but also not so garish as some bits of heritage as to sort of impede on slightly more modern taste for sort of slight spareness and things. So anyway, that's a long answer to a very short question. I apologise.

That

that was a very good answer and very interesting to learn actually. you founded a company Not Quite Past, which

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

is doing several things at once, I'd say, from looking from the outside in.

Hmm. Yeah.

Maybe describe what the company is doing. And before you do that, maybe you can locate how the market looks like for these tiles before you enter into the space. How it normally works,

Yeah, okay.

how it's produced, etcetera.

Yeah. It's very true that we're doing multiple things and and the current state of the s company as it seems the website is actually only a part of the company because it's really expanding into lots of different areas. But the market. So Delft Tiles, you had they're quite popular and lots of ceramic there's a there was a range of production. So some are very, very not very well informed in their design and not very good.

but others are pure kind of copies almost. but they're copies in a very interesting way because they like so much of people who revive things, they turn what was a living tradition, which had mistakes,

Hmm.

which had space for creativity, into something that no no th they're they're too well behaved. The the the the tiles

Hmm.

are overly perfect. There's no mistakes

There's not a brushstroke that's loose. they don't take risks. So much of meaning and so much of creativity is risk-taking. And a lot of these heritage tiles that they may even be hand painted, that they don't really reflect a certain kind of life that Delve tiles were full of. You know, as I said to you, they were painted very quickly. And they were painted with an enormous gusto where brush strokes would go wild, they would do things in an asymmetrical way.

they would place things in in sort of very odd positions. They wouldn't even mind, they would sell you slightly smudged tiles, you know, that and they were look beloved. whereas the heritage ones were very yeah, well behaved. And so there was a sort broad range of things.

Hmm.

And there are existing sort of tile printing and tile transfer companies. I should say that we're not we don't just print. We're like we use the traditional sort of transfer, basically, the John of a more modern version of the transfer.

And so ceramic pigment is actually bound into the tile. it's not like a sort of a like a mug that goes that

Mm.

peels off in the dishwasher or whatever. It's

Yeah.

you can put these in the dishwasher

you

and they'd be fine. because that is it's chemically bound. Yeah, so that's that was the sort of the state of things. and of course, the broader state of things was the idea that you couldn't use AI at all. The AI was it was this was 2024, 2023. So the idea the slop was a sort of term that was emerging. You I can remember sort of thinking, where is it coming from?

This term, but people keep on using it, but it really became a meme. and really the part of the idea of the company, part of the idea, there are many rivers that flow into the idea, but one idea was simply you know, I did art history at university, and you see some artists, certainly the modern era actually, who look at something that is slightly degraded or something that is seems kind of

thrown out an outcast, an abject or slop. And it's a challenge to try and make that beautiful. And it seemed to me very, very important to try and make AI rooted, interesting, beautiful. And the challenge was: can we get AI tiles into some of the most AI designs, into some of the most luxury interiors possible? And the answer is absolutely

Mm.

yes. Our tiles have been put in incredibly

rarefied environments. We've done commissions for Eaton College, which is like the top school in England. It's like a really huge thing. For the office and the house of the of of the headmaster. And we've we've had tiles in you know luxury homes, we've had tiles that are sold in various different places. So we we've we've the answer is AI can to this idea that that that was I think very much broad that

no one likes slop, slop's awful, AI produces slop, that's it, is

Hmm.

wrong. Because you used in the correct way, it can be produ it can be used to create things that people will not just like put up on their wall, but literally like they'll grout them into their bathrooms and look at them every single day for the next 10, 15. I mean the commissions I get like we want these to be here for 50 to 100 years. so like that is that's not ephemeral.

Mm-hmm.

That's

enduring. That's not meaningless.

It's the opposite, yeah.

It's something that is going to be lived with for around people for a very long time and is going to accompany them for a very long time. So it was a kind of experiment in a way in a philosophical can it be done? And the answer is yes. But it has to be done in the right way. And I guess we can maybe talk about that. But it I I should say, by the way, that we make

I have Yeah.

Delft tiles, we have factory in Stope on Trend. you can use our website to make tiles, but of course you wanted to talk about

we've learned with customers and indeed that's very interesting as well that how they approach things. but we're also looking more broadly into the use of robotics and artificial intelligence to develop not just TARS but in in general kind of an art of the sort of the broader art of ornament how can we produce ornamental things with artificial intelligence

Hmm.

and AI and we're working on many projects at the moment right now.

There are so

many, so many things we can branch off. We'll come back to this, but I I want

Mm.

to maybe drill down a bit on this process because when

Thank

you when someone goes to your webpage, there is basically the option to create your own tiles, right?

Yes.

Can you walk us through how this works? Specifically

If I'm imagining some random person trying to do this and putting motives there, is there any kind of correction from your side? Correction is maybe the wrong word, but kind of feedback effect that you do from your side that maybe you want to be careful with putting this into your kitchen or your bathroom for the next 50 years? How does this work, this

Mm-hmm.

process?

Philip, we're very ecumenical. We we we welcome all tastes. but the but you know but and indeed we've had some very we've had some pretty saucy tiles, I can tell you. But I

You could not speak poorly of your users.

Okay.

No.

but I no, I mean so how it works is broadly speaking, there are two options. We have a shop, we have tiles that you can buy, which are designs that we've made, and then that you can make your own. And there are a number of different models which have been trained.

on specific, very specific kinds of tiles, different kinds of motifs from very specific periods, all kind of historically accurate in a way, right? And you can just type in dog or you know

Whatever.

seagulls or a pop a positive plant or a cactus, whatever, and it will it will produce a very good, often very good

interpretation of that kind of style with that motif. And of course you can take this to the anti and you can do really crazy things. And that is part of the fun. I think that's part of the fun. I I'm not saying that our company has a broad range. I think we we do very high end things, but also like that this is

Fun things.

a fun company. And I think it's another element too that people forget that like, you know, that one of the things that AI can do is it can open up the creative process to people that didn't have the skills immediately.

And that fun of creation, I think, is a cool experience that a lot of people do. But I tell you something very interesting, which is I thought a lot of people would a lot of our customers do use that route. But it's very surprising that the majority of our orders, and certainly our big orders, come from customers that talk to us, they just email us and they tell us what they want. Or they'll give us a few images and they do and they or they will

They will, or it won't even be, it's not even a customer, it will be an interior designer. So we work with loads of interior designers. And the interior designers will have a color that they'll want, and they'll have a specific vision. And we and so it's not just simply a case of you know prompting these models which have been you know trained on various kinds of ductile. It's really a a collaboration constantly. It's kind of like a design company. I do loads of kind of almost like kind of design consultancy work sometimes.

And and and I personally make a lot of tiles for people, which is very interesting because that that that shows that there is an element which can't be automated at the moment. But but but or at least not entirely. But I think another thing too is that people yes, people like creating things and they like creativity, but the for the majority of the experience that most people want is you walk into a shop.

And you see beautiful things and you pick something. And so the idea that the mass of everyone is busting. They have taste, right? But that you've got to be careful. So they have taste, they like what they like, but they're not necessarily

Mm-hmm.

gonna sit there for an hour and devise an entire, like like come up with their own like complicated decorative scheme. A lot of people they just want to go, they go to Chanel or they go to

furniture shop or they go to an interior designer and they want they have an idea but they want someone else to create it for them. And so there is this customer craftsman or customer kind of kind of maker or or or creative person distinction I think for a lot of people. And so the idea that with with AI, everybody's gonna be creating things, everybody's gonna be making their own stuff, it's not true.

People definitely want, they have taste, but they're not they want other people to make beautiful things. It's a great experience to sort of go to

Mm-hmm.

a shop and see all these incredible patterns, all these incredible tiles, and then to be told what they mean or to be you know, and and to be walked through. That's what people want, really, the vast majority

of people. and there is a separate issue of AI for makers, for craftsmen, and and whatever. But I think the vast majority of people, they they're not gonna sit there making their own things. So we have these models on there.

website, but often it's it acts as a gateway drug to opening a discussion of what they want. And then we will work with them. They tend to send us an email and then we will work with them to produce a set for them. Very often with with lots of AI involved, obviously. I mean I'm not personally drawing these tiles at all. I mean everything's done with with artificial intelligence. yeah,

Yeah.

so that's how it works.

But the sorry, just can I have one follow-up then? Sorry. And

Can I? Yeah, go finish. on. Yeah.

it's just because what you describe, this kind of

Thank

residual, let's call it. I it's a technical term, but it it sounds but you know what I mean. There seems to be something also in the conversation, right? Between whoever wants to buy, even if just going into a into a shop, you are in a conversation

Mm.

suddenly with a palette of things with portfolio of different things that you are engaging with. And I guess the

Yes.

same is true when you are

emailing you or, you know, I have an idea but I'm uncertain, et cetera. I is this the kind of relationship that is important and the conversation that leads then into well yeah, I'm refining actually what I want here along the along the process.

I think it's crucial, yeah, absolutely. It's absolutely crucial. it you know, I'm a gr I did art history at university and like like lots of you know, you kind of if you're interested in a subject and I'm very interested in it, I you know, you ask what what is the point of art history? What is the point of art history? Well you know, like you know, because there is this idea that artworks you don't need any knowledge. You just walk into a gallery, you look at a work.

And it immediately conveys everything you need to know. But the answer is that meaning is actually contextual. The meaning is outside the object. And that the more you understand about an object, the more powerful its meaning would be. To give an another example of this, if you had two identical van Goghs, okay, two identical

and

starry nights, let's say, or or you know, Cafe at night, but then someone gives you a contextual

Tidbit. They say this one is painted by Van Gogh, and this one is a forgery painted by someone a year ago. It changes everything. Okay? And that alone tells you that the experience and the meaning of art, what is meaningful to us, is not simply the sovereign artwork.

The object. Yeah.

is not simply, you know, this there's this, you know, Kant in the Critique of Judgment says that the the the art, you know, to the degree that it includes sort of

the the the the aspect of say a still life with beautiful food in it, you it's got this sort of anything that relates to the world is bad and not art, but art should be this completely disinterested, pure play of form. This is what he creates in the Critique Judgment. It's pure play of form. And therefore the idea that the artwork stands alone without any like the more it has no contextual meaning, almost the better. The more it just engages just pure play of form. That is the pure aesthetic experience, it's just not true. And it's and it's very indicative of that period of time where he was writing.

Where that those kinds of ideas were very, I think, alluring to an enlightened audience. anyway, and but artwork is context. So getting back to this idea, yes, of course, of course, the more you put the more you engage with something, the more you understand the history of something, the more you want to elaborate a complex decorative scheme, the more meaningful it is. That's that's very clear.

One thing I'm curious about is when you describe the different use cases, right? From people who come to your website with an idea and will design it yourself to the other extreme, which would be the Eton headmaster.

Mm.

A challenge some people have when they start a new business sometimes deciding what brand they would have, right? And very often the advice and how you should start small and maybe expand later. It sounds like you kind of did the opposite. You started pretty wide or

I'm curious to hear what challenges or dilemmas you might have encountered in that process. How

In the in the press of of like marketing.

can you essentially simultaneously be perceived as a top-tier trusted partner

Mm.

for entire designers and at the same time being the more playful website where people quickly print something in a way they could print a t-shirt?

I mean, is there a tension between the two possible brands or two possible types of businesses?

Of course. Yeah, of course. it's true we do hold these quite strongly in in in a in a in a crucible of marketing becoming. we it is it it I think we got a lot of press. So this idea of using AI to create beautiful things was very,

Mm-hmm.

very powerful in twenty twenty-four. And the I guess in the way almost quite to our surprise, but also deliberate, it was explosive. And

we got massive media retention almost immediately. We were in the Financial Times, we were had a full page article in the Spectator, we were on the Spectator Podcast, we we did like loads of different kind of media things because people were just very curious and very interested in this idea. And that kind of launched us very strongly. And when and when you identify something that is very meaningful, and I think Delft Tiles are very meaningful.

I think they they they are very iconic and mean a lot to certainly an English public, i in in maybe more elite circles. they it it really it really just caught on and a bunch of people took a chance on us, interior designers, and then we build up a a kind of so much of this business by the way is very word of mouth. So a lot of these

Mm-hmm.

Let's see.

things are done through email really. and someone knows someone who knows someone who knows someone. the website is a showroom.

But really a lot of the main work goes through in email. and

See.

yeah, I think I think once you're used, once you're in name, once your things are kind of once you give a good service to a lot people, I think in the interior design world, which quite quite a interconnected world, you get known and I think people will start coming to you. and so we we appeal to both, but we we aspire to the to the higher end, absolutely. And I think that really distinguishes us because

We really don't want slop, or or we really don't want things

Yeah.

that feel wrong, or feel tawdry, or feel soulless. yeah, that there's an element of play. I think there's another play, and I think the business the business

Yeah.

does lots of different things, and we're gonna do even more things, which we could talk about. But yeah, I I should say well, by the way, one one little thing about why we chose TARS.

is that at the time the outputs of generative AI in early 2024, 2023, were very small.

Yeah.

interesting.

And so we had ideas for wallpaper,

Yeah.

Very interesting.

we had and we indeed

Mm-hmm.

we have done wallpaper, but we had ideas for wallpaper, we had ideas for other things. But really tiles are perfect because they're small and square,

you

and you can just

put that input immediately onto a thing. And then most importantly, it's an object. I think that really s that really made that was one of the reasons why it was so compelling.

Mm-hmm. It's it stands for itself, yeah.

Yeah.

It was a physical object. You could get immediately, you can get it in four weeks. You can get something that was created by you in four weeks. yeah, it was the reason why we chose tiles partly was because they were small enough to actually to make the look the sort of resolution of the outputs at that time bearable. and again not slop and blurry but quite high quality.

I sorry, can I get just gone?

Good gun, good gun.

I think it's you already kind of anchored this before that production processes change, the economics of it changes, that has an effect on the distribution, and then also ultimately what consumers can afford, and

then maybe

Yeah.

even later later on the taste as well. Can you walk us through in the case of tiles or Delft tiles specifically, because you alluded to this, how you see this mechanism at play and how you also kind of see this now.

From your own perspective as a as an entrepreneur.

So the the the as it were the re the economic ramifications of AI, or or what exactly so yeah.

You you

you mentioned before that there was basically a slopification already before in the process

Yes.

in the I think nineteenth century basically happening.

well, yes, okay.

And I would like to talk a bit about this, what consequences you could see, and maybe also the parallels that you can see more broadly to what AI slop is doing now relative to that.

That's a huge category, a huge topic. But essentially this. Where to begin? So

Maybe it's maybe let's start at the Great Exhibition of of eighteen fifty one. are you familiar with the Crystal Palace, built by Joseph Paxton?

I am not familiar with it, no.

You're not familiar with the Crystal Palace. Okay. It's probably the most significant building built by the British by a British person in in the 19th century. And why is that? Because so what it let me just describe what it is, and maybe you should get a picture, but it is an

Yes.

absolutely enormous building. Okay, you should get a picture up because you read on some of these absolutely enormous building.

Yes.

It was a temporary building. It's made of, it was based upon so Joseph Paxton built great greenhouses for rich clients.

Aristocrats who wanted, you know, all their kind of specimen plants in a warm environment. But he he decided to apply this to a building. And he created a

Wow. Okay.

ginormous glass and steel building. And why I say it's the most important building in the 18th century in the 19th century, built by a Victoria, an English Victorian, is because it basically foreshadows glass and steel construction, which will then become

Mm-hmm.

massively important in Chicago.

Which would then become massively important in modernism, Chicago because being the birth of the skyscraper, it was massively important in modernism and our entire all our cities across the world, the new buildings, many of them are glass and steel. It starts with Joseph Paxton. And it's an absolutely ginormous structure. It's the 300,000

Looks massive. Yes.

panes of glass. And it was built pretty quickly. You know how long things take these days. It was built-wateringly quickly. And it also had very beautiful neo-gothic ornament on it. But anyway.

So the building was great. It was a fantastic triumph of Victorian ingenuity, of engineering combined with decorative quality, really just an incredible thing. But the exhibition, in many ways, was seen as a great catastrophe. Because they what had been going on in so you had industrialization. And industrialization allows you to make mass goods. And one of the things you can do is you can also make mass ornament.

And so what had happened in the last eighty, ninety years in Britain at least, is that increasingly you just had the most crazy forms of like quite tatty, quite crappy ornament on everything. and a lot of it wouldn't make sense, a lot of it didn't look right, a lot of it would just fall apart immediately. you know, you would have like you know, really like cruddy stuff, right? Slop, slop, slop

Slop, yes. Yeah.

one point

Okay, that's what it was. And it's you know, it is exactly where we are in a way. So industrialization. What happened is that ornament before required craftsmanship, materials, hours of labor, years of training. And so it indicated elite quality, high end things. And then suddenly with the with the industrialization of ornament, it detaches. Lots of people can do it, lots of people will start doing it if you don't really know what they're doing.

well they and they're doing, but they're just not it's not particularly lettered and cultivated. And and so you see a huge proliferation of ornament, but it like it's rubbish. And so when you go, so the Crystal Palace was filled, it was meant to be a celebration of the all the products that Britain could produce. There were other there were other nations there. It was what the first great exhibition, so lots of nations were invited,

Mm.

and so you have like Persian rugs and you saw Chinese things, whatever.

And but when you came to the English bit, the English section, lots of people felt it was absolute garbage. And it the the the wallpapers, they were judged on simply how many colours you could fit into a wallpaper, not by any kind of quality of the wallpaper. they were like rugs

Mm.

that had like 3D like scenes in them, but they just people thought this was insane. Like what like you need a pattern, like a flat pattern, you have these like weird.

And then very poorly done linear perspective drawings of sort of women floating around.

Mm.

And what do you why why are we doing this on rugs? It's really weird. It's slop. It's strange, right? It doesn't understand

you

what a rug is. And then you go to the Persian section and then you see the rugs that they made. High quality craftsmanship, beautiful flat designs, the perfect. And they thought this is a crisis. We we have enormous industrial might, and yet the stuff we produce is really crap and ugly and compared to what's been made in India, in Persia, in China, wherever.

And so lots of people come together. They actually create a slop exhibition, by the way. So in 1852, in Marlborough House, they create a thing called the Chamber of Horrors. So all the worst things that were in that exhibition, they put together and it becomes an exhibition. Now, one interesting earlier figure, so I'm really going on. Do tell me if I'm just going on, but one interesting figure is Wedgwood. So Wedgwood took up transferware on the ceramics, but he made it incredibly.

Incredibly tasteful. So all

huh.

of his wes Wedgwood stuff was made by industrially, trans by trans whatever. But he sold it to kings and queens and to the elite. He was a brilliant marketer, but he understood also that you need to make it beautiful and tasteful. Here is a tool of industrial creation. Let's make it beautiful. And that's what Wedgwood did. And he was wildly successful. And I think it's an example of how you can take things like AI.

Or indeed in the 19th century and 18th century industrial processes and and bring them into a process of taste or of or of careful kind of building of context and meaning, rooting these things into tri traditions, understanding the what things are meant to be like, what what visually works, and be wildly successful. Wedgewood teaches you that mass production can be the height of elite taste.

And yeah, and so what happens in the 19th century is very clear. So you have people like the Arts and Craftsmen like William Morris and Ruskin who say very strongly that we need to go back to craft, return with the capital V. and which is complicated, but anyway, that's broadly it. Ruskin says that you know that it's the context of a work that matters, you know, that you can machine work machine work is dead, and that that something with all the errors of life that is made by craftsman is alive. and then of course the last one you have, the most important one perhaps.

Which still defines our entire era is modernism. And the functionalist bare walls. In one sense, there are many ways to understand this, but in one sense, are basically a response to the fact that 19th century creates this sort of like insane level of ornament, insane, and also not just ornament, but like massive explosion of styles. Massive

Mm-hmm.

explosion of styles. Historicism, neo-baroque, neo-gothic, you know, neo-moorish. Like it's like insane. You walk around Vienna, I'm sure you see.

Everything is like unbelievably kind of you know varied and neoclassical I should say as well. And and modernism is like this is this is an infected atmosphere of just 19th century madness. We're gonna do away with ornaments forever and we're gonna have bare walls, it's gonna be functional, we're gonna tip create a machine aesthetic. And so modernism is a response to slop, you could you can interpret it as that. Is is a response to the madness of ornament, of mass industrialization.

of like pattern books, of like styles that people can pick and like, you know, so it's what what I mean to say, and I'm glad I got the chance to say it at length, is that the nineteenth century plays out slop in a very interesting way. anyway, I I'll give it to you.

And I love the, you already laid quite a few criteria on what made this slope recognizable as search, right? You talked about, in fact, it was not rooted in meaning or tradition. You talked about the fact that it didn't make sense.

Mm.

Do you think today it's possible to build a slope detector, something that could look at a chat GPT generated image and

Mm.

fairly quickly decide if something is not making sense?

What would be the challenge

I think yeah.

in that?

I think I think certainly I think that I think that if we're talking about slop qu as is understood as images that don't make sense, that I think is very susceptible to AI. just like more intelligence, throwing more intelligence, more computer these things, I think you will just get models that will produce v you know, multimodal models that really understand something before it's created. but

The because there's there's lots of different types of so sloppers like something that doesn't make sense. But then there's sloppers a certain kind of garishness, crappiness, or maybe something that feels very popular or vulgar, maybe, or things that feel you know, that feel very they don't feel quite right. I mean, in a way it's sort of LLM speak pro style is is quite sloppy, you know, it's like this sort of

That's load bearing, not expert y, is is an example of slot where, you know, where it's like a

Yeah.

Cliche

Exactly, exactly. And I think

a little bit. Yeah.

that those are probably in a smaller way absolutely susceptible to improvement, very much. but I think the real deeper question is regarding taste, and I think beyond that, although it's actually kind of more foundational to that, is questions of meaning and of beauty. because taste is an interesting relationship as a word. I mean it's it's quite an interesting word because

You know, so taste taste feels like quite a bourgeois thing, in in the sense of like a

Mm-hmm.

bourgeois subject of we're individuals and we have tastes, right? Rather than there's more of a perhaps a a more collective thing as well, that there's taste, but then there's also culture, right? And the cultures belong to certain groups of people, not just individuals. and I think maybe the obsession with taste is maybe reflective of a of our very liberal and very individualist and and maybe even globalized age, actually that

We are not looking at maybe representations of group identity as much, like history and things, because maybe we're slightly more uncomfortable with that too. Or maybe AI companies are slightly more uncomfortable with that as well. But I but which I think is very interesting. but I think you're you're seeing you're seeing AI being used by all sorts of cultures and they're creating their own, their own, their own kind of identities with it as well. yeah, so I I've kind of lost my thread, but anyway, last time.

We were talking

about essentially detecting slop. Can you create a machine, understand the difference between slop and not? And I think you covered a lot of it. But I guess you're leaving still some room for this slightly difficult to explain notion of taste. Is that a fair summary?

Yeah, I think I think yeah, I think I think it

could I can think it'd be very much improved. I but one of the key problems in AI is that it's a universal tool. And things like taste are inherently about difference. They are inherently about differentiation. the idea of taste is one of discrimination. It means one is thing is better than another. I mean is the idea is I pick this wine over this wine, or I pick this artwork over this artwork.

I've spent a hundred thousand pounds on these artworks because I think they're beautiful and it's a special of me rather than something else. and so we have an AI which is very generalist, but the process to make it very differentiated, and not only that, not only is taste differentiated, it's also a social phenomenon, which means so we work as groups of people and we work as like comparisons to each other and through and understanding this individual, you know, in Bourdieu is a thinker who talks about social capital.

I don't necessarily buy into Bordieu's stuff, but he none this very clear about this idea that I think which is true that it's a form of hierarchy, or like, you know, it's a game, it's a kind of a game or it's a form of hierarchy. or indeed it's an expression of the sort of transcendent values of a particular society in terms of art and beauty. that I think is harder to do because it's an inherently dynamic phenomenon as well. I mean you again we're talking taste and fashion as a lower end concept, and then there's like beauty and meaning.

But these things are always constantly changing. And

Yeah.

that's because it's incredibly dialectic. You you you you posit one thing, that becomes beautiful, beautiful becomes fashionable, fashionable becomes sort of ubiquitous and generalized, ubiquitous and generalised becomes boring crap, everyone has it, and then and

Yep.

it just it's a cycular, it's not it's not even cyclic, it's it's more it's just constantly changing. and that will be a

Evolution. Yeah.

little bit harder. Will AIs be able to predict fashion trends? Interesting question, I don't know.

Will AI be able to identify who are the live players in fashion and

you

to monitor their works closely and then to sort of be able to distill very, very accurately the kinds of styles and choices that they're making in response to other people? I think that might be more possible. Whether it could actually make the taste decision itself is hard still, and I think people are.

I think it goes back also to this idea of contextual meaning too, that

Mm-hmm.

if as soon as you say something's made by an AI, for a lot of people that immediately detracts because meaning and taste is it derives its meaning from the force around it, from particularly from the idea that someone has spent their life, you know, one of the reasons why Van Gogh paintings are so amazing is the story of his life. He, you know, he worked f for years by himself.

selling one artwork famously. They're writing these incredibly

Mm-hmm.

impassioned letters. It's the struggles of this man. You know, he ends up in asylum, he cuts his ear off, he kills himself. You know, all these the stories and you know the last painting, you know. Why is the last painting so interesting? The context. And AI struggles with context. So trying to bring if you're you need to make it contextual, maybe you need to bring process involved. And I'm very interested in this idea as well, process of

mistakes and of risk too. and sacrifice as well. I mean it's interesting. Maybe maybe maybe yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, I mean i

this it this there's a famous example like the the the photograph by Robert Cappa of the Spanish Civil War, right? I mean imagine this would be AI generated, it would be basically meaningless almost. But

Yes.

knowing that okay, there is a backstory, it might have been staged, but anyways, I mean he was there in principle, and we know that from later stories. it it gives a total very totally different story to the whole thing, or Vermeer as well, right? I mean, for a large chunk of time it was basically not a well known artist, as as far as I know.

It was quite late

Yes.

that he was recognized. It's a total different story, basically, that the process itself and the backstory now gives us a very different pi p perspective on the paintings or on the photographs.

Absolutely, absolutely. And it's almost a nonsense to kind of create a photograph that doesn't link to s it I mean it's sort of interesting, but yeah, it's I mean completely. And so for me when I when I think about I s I see AI as an amplifying tool. I see it like

Hmm.

Wedgewood saw transfer printing in ceramics. you make and indeed the whole nineteenth century. because in reaction is a great exhibition.

They started creating very beautiful things with all with industrial processes. And and so in fact, I you the V&A Museum in London. The actual name of that museum, the original name, was founded by a man called Henry Cole in the eighteen fifties. It's actually called the Museum of Manufactures. And the whole point of that museum

Hmm.

was that look at the great things of the great crafts and arts of the

Mm.

nineteenth century. Sorry, of all sorry, of all history. We have new tools, we have machines.

We need to learn how to make things as beautiful as this. It's literally literally

Mm.

is a museum against slop. I mean it literally is. it's saying we need to make tools, these incredible and powerful tools, more powerful. sorry, not more powerful, well more powerful, but also more beautiful. Sorry, forgive me, and to root

Yeah.

them in tuition

Guided, yeah.

and to and to make understand what makes something beautiful, like we're trying to understand now. Why is we have this incredible tool, but how do you use it? And I think

I I you're working at a very meta level, which is very interesting, and seeing if you can make AI like general in a more general way, sort of understand like taste and differentiation. I I kind of worked at a sort very im like embodied tiny project of Delft Tiles, you know. it's a it's a very but we're kind of doing similar things of trying to work out what how do you make how do you use these tools to allow people to make what to make beautiful things or indeed just to allow people to make better decisions about creation.

I think it's entirely possible.

These tools, in some sense, very often introduce new new forms of grammar, right? Like the photograph or even o oil in the form of painting. They give

Yeah.

new opportunities. And then there is basically this massive explosion of just trying things out. And

Yes.

then very often there's this kind of consolidation or recogn recognition that certain things are just better than others.

Yeah.

How do you see this happening in the maybe let's keep it a bit broader because we should talk about this as well, because you are not for not only focused on tiles, but you

you

explicitly want to go more into interior design more broadly and maybe even beyond.

Yes. Yes.

So maybe you can talk about how you want to experiment in that space and how you see this kind of the evaluation process later on happening here.

Yes, yeah. I think so one, your point that AI has its own affordances, has its own it's a new medium. Like photography was a new medium. You know, y there are b photography in the

Hmm.

nineteen again, I don't mean to go to nine maybe just a very historically minded person, but I photography it's use the history is useful. And photography for lots of people for a brief period actually, very, very brief period, people thought it was like the end of painting. Then they realized it wasn't. Okay. And AI

Yes.

are AI image generation.

People, it's the end of creating. No, it's not. It really isn't. Okay. But what it will do is it will create a new art form. And what it will do is it will create a chain reaction in every other art and affect them enormously. So one of the things that photography creates is it pushes art into a more abstracting and more loose and more painterly

Yeah.

form of position. So you have impressionism, you have

various forms of symbolism, and like you know, people like Gustave Moreau and others who are producing incredibly kind of mythical, strange paintings. You have lots of different lots of different you have the creation of like very abstract painter like Whistler, who does these like incredibly abstract things, things that we can't that on the one hand are getting away from verisimilitude as the criterion of art, i.e., that you make something that appears is simply a form of mimesis. But simultaneously.

Is looking at photography, and photography is weird, right? It can like you can take a picture of like if you do that with a camera, it will create a blur. And

Mm.

those like blurred, weird images become quite powerful for and look at if you look at the compositions of late 19th century art, you'll notice that you know you had very hierarchical triangular, and they start floating around like you're holding a camera. Like you're sort of or they'll be very blurred, like you're blurring an image or something.

So what I mean to say is that AI is going to absolutely transform art. And it's going to completely transform how meaning is made, how the craft of art, it's going to completely transform it. But it won't destroy it. and as regards what we can do, so two, what we can do in interiors, I think there's just so much. there are

Mm-hmm.

lots of companies, but it's not just so AI in AI is intelligence. That's one wing of a of a biplane, right? The other bi the other

Hmm.

wing of the biplane

is robotics. And so

Uh-huh.

robotics is like physical intelligence, if you will, or and then and then AI is sort of mental intelligence. And there are lots of people working now on there's someone called Michael Springart in monumental labs is working on using robotic arms to carve sculpture. But even he will have a five percent end process where they will chip away to make it look a bit more human because they find that the cleanness of the robotic thing too kind of offensive.

Hmm.

But

I think there's one of the things so what we're looking at, for instance, we're developing an AI that's gonna that doesn't just diffuse an image, like create like in you know, doesn't just create the image through a kind of standard process, but actually understands how to make the image brushstroke

Mm.

by brushstroke by brushstroke. And I'm very interested in process, I'm very interested in mistakes, I'm very interested in random like.

One of the problems of AI is that it has like a it's very goal-oriented reinforcement learning and things like that. Very it's very

Mm.

goal-oriented, but but art is actually quite different from that. It's sort of it's it's okay to kind of deviate from your goal a little bit and to

Mm.

come into a different realization midway. And I and the process and the reaction, I think in inviting more of that context into decision making is very I think powerful. yeah, lots of different things. I th we're looking at also

This is not again not really AI, but we're looking at possibly producing a moving tile. So there's one of the things that we've discovered we felt is that screens have been create have been like optimized for like virtual, like sucking you in and like I'm taking you out of a room, taking you out of reality. Can screens be through various means

Thanks.

subdued and so that they don't become virtual, but they become decorative. They they push out. They are an accent among other accents in the room.

They push you

Mm-hmm.

back into that room, into reality, rather than forcing forcing you away. Is it possible to create a screen that looks like a Delft tile, but is which is sort of moving the pattern on? That's what we're working on slightly as well, in a very exploratory way. But I think interior design, I think, I think what in a very small way, going back to one of your points, your kind of possibly maybe what maybe what you're kind of working on Taste Bench is like helping creators make. I think certainly.

Mm-hmm.

Like interior designers will are all definitely using AI. I get lots of AI images from interior designers actually, where they've like created things, they've asked it, they've like modeled rooms

Yeah.

slightly. Again, it's like a sort of sketch for them. You know, it's part of the process. and increasing that in a slightly copilot way or like providing inspiration in various different ways, I think it's absolutely it can totally enrich interior designers and architects too. I know loads of architects who are using AI.

And you look at the build some of the buildings that have been creating these AI images, they're very good. And they're very interesting. And I think architecture is a particularly an era where I just want to say one thing, so going not this is more recent, but still a little bit historical, which is just that prior to AI there was like a crisis in meaning.

Lots of people don't like architecture. They see it's like they're doing the same things over and over and over again and not really coming to any kind of new positions. This is all prior to AI, by the way. Like the the

Yeah. Yeah.

like concept art has kind of destroyed craft itself. And that for a lot of people, I mean, there are increasing divergences of an elite like arch like curators or architects who like one kind of building and then lots of other people like other types of buildings. but it and there's like a real mismatch.

And a lot of a lot of art's like sort of lost its direction. I don't know about you, but as a someone who's interested in art, it really feels the field is not. I mean, when you have in so there's someone called Ellsworth Kelly, I always talk about because I I'm in San Francisco a bit as well. there's like a picture of El one of some of Ellsworth Kelly's pictures. And Elsworth Kelly is a an artist in the 1960s who creates who basically takes abstract art of Pollock and others to like the craziest degree, eliminates all human aspect to it, and it's literally just

Canvas of red and blue and green and yellow on the wall. And when you've done that, it sort of sort of kind of like

What's next?

What's next? Yeah. So th this this is

Thank

I'm trying I think the AI slot problem has deep roots, is what I'm saying. And I also think that I'm very hopeful that AI will very much improve. will be v it it's inexorably being used in biotechs. And those who say they're not using it are. there's a lot of reaction to it. I don't know what about you and what you think, but there was a very strong reaction to it maybe a year or two ago. But now it's sort of people are more open to it. I don't know. What do you think?

It

comes in waves,

Waves.

depends a lot on the industry. We see, for instance, in video game industry, people get really mad when something is made with AI. Then

Yeah.

this new game comes out where it's actually okay. then there could be, I think, every kind of community, every art form goes through its own cycles. At least that's the impression I got.

Yes.

And I think the...

I've just noticed something in our conversations. I think we've talked a lot about kind of the creator side. Like we kind of talked

Yeah.

about how, know, someone intentional, interior designer, yourself could make good things with AI. I think part of the fears people have is also the consumer side, right? Like if you see the music industry, for instance, one of the reasons people are really annoyed at Slopify, as they call it, is the AI-generated

playlist that is kind of pushing content to people and potentially destroying their muscles or the capacity to appreciate good music. I

Yes.

have this mental model of music in particular, is

Mm.

I was lucky to be born in a time where we didn't have infinite choice in music

Nope.

and we had to actually think about which CD to buy and so on.

And all this

Yes.

friction was kind of forcing us to kind of make decisions. Like, okay, if I buy this CD, I'm likely to like it for a week, whereas this one, I know I'm going to get bored of it tomorrow. Right.

Yeah.

So there was an environment in a way that could potentially require the consumer to make, to develop their own taste, if you want.

Yes.

In the world of music, there's a lot of fear that, you know, if there's no appetite for good music, maybe good music will disappear.

And I'm very curious about your thoughts on visual arts. Do you have similar fears or how the consumption is going to change?

A an audience is everything. An audience

is everything.

I remember there's a Fran Liebewitz, she's a New York journalist, and she she spoke about the ballet in New York. And and there were there were hard there are hardcore people in that audience who who went to every show and appreciated every difference and every sort of like slight kind of and understood that there was and they became you know an incredibly they're incredibly sophisticated, kind of critical kind of core.

that that in what in many ways made the the the the decisions possible because if you're and it is true that those can those audiences can disappear.

These things can disappear, absolutely. And it and it's and it's very important that yeah, the conditions of art and the conditions of music making will absolutely transform what music is even made because as you say, it's a commercial thing. And I think it is a danger, truly actually. I do think it's a danger, and I think that you lose markets can also get stuck and not realize what's better as well. I think that they lots of people

Like English food maybe, like in the twentieth century, you

Ha.

know. English food was just awful. and it's only flaked

You

that like things have actually got better. but I think it's like we didn't we sort of got so kind of you get kind of stock home syndrome in a certain way. You can you cannot and because a lot of English food, the reason why it's very bland is is actually partly the climate. You know, Mexico is obviously much much more fruity and exciting, but it actually extends from from Puritan Puritanism in the seventeenth century, that a lot that spice was seen as sinful and it was banished from the diet. And

in the if you look at sixteenth century earlier, it was very, very lively and very kind of you know these things were purge and but don't but don't improve, right? Because people get stuck. It's very inertial. So yes, I think that is is is a I think it is a danger. I I think that there will always be what we've seen as well with music and things is like we don't have there's no like the era of music has just dissipated entirely. They used to have a very strong because it was it's top 40 and there was there were a few shows and there are key figures in the music industry and there would there was this very

This it was very limited, but there was kind of a succession. Whereas now it's like, I just listen to 80s music and like 90s, I don't listen to more music. I mean, you know, and and everything is sort of very abundant and present, and this there's this word that's going around in b in politics as well, which is abundance. But

Hmm.

so much of meaning is limitation, and so much of creation involves limitation.

So I think I think it's it's true. I think, yeah, I think I I don't know too much about music, but I can I can see that it may become a problem that people will just not.

Good

And like music, music for in the in the 20th century was an incredibly rich talking about the context of things, you go into the record shop and you'd go to gigs and you'd you'd read magazine and there's some like journalists who was talking, it was a very rich thing, and now it's just reduced to like a kind of a jam on Spotify.

Yeah, I I do think the conditions will will change. But I think as I was saying, taste is very dialectical and people will respond to this and and there will be constant kind of challenge and and overturning of this kind of thing. And I think that we may see the the creation and the imposition of our own kind of limits and constraints and things as a kind of artistic exercise to improve the quality or like to improve our taste. because there's just too much to choose from.

It's very g it's aw it's quite awful actually. It's like having this sort of abundance is just really it's it's kind of

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry to, I don't

want to end on a negative note. So we're to have

in the past, ornaments in cathedrals, let's say, were also used to tell stories. We have

Mm, yeah.

at least in public spaces and more broadly also we have come away from that. Could you

Yes.

see this, maybe starting from tiles, but maybe also more broadly interior styles,

Yes.

this narrative style taking up again?

And how

would it look?

I think it's very interesting,

but but I think I I think so much of this is actually prior. I think that we've lost stories. We exist in an incredibly deconstructive age where you know if you have people like post-structure saying that, you know, it's impossible to have narrative and truth, there's no gr the grand narratives must be deconstructive. These are profoundly hum human things. Like, you know, these are they're not evil. You know, narrative is not evil. humans

think constantly in stories. And if you impose on everyone through theory

Mm-hmm.

the idea that stories are like, I don't know, crazy or lies or

Things of the past. Yeah.

think of the past. you know, that they're like they're like an imposition even, or even evil or imperialist or whatever. you're kind of like it's a really like misunderstanding of like human nature. It's like like narrative is

You

not evil. And I think there has been this casting away, and with

hasn't we haven't lost it. We're constantly absorbed by narratives, but our our public space is defined by very they're very shy to impose or to devote any kind and also to devote any kind of to to form collective stories, which because that involves that also

Yes.

breaches an idea of individuality. And I think but I think people are longing for it. I think people long for it. I've lots friends who are you know in my generation,

Who are much more interested in like collectives and groups and and history and things like that. I think I think we it's Zumas are quite Zoomers, I am a Zoomer, are quite sort of a bit more interested in that. and our societies have been so sterile in that regard. One of the key insights is that, and there's a wonderful essay by a man called Samuel Hughes in

Mm-hmm.

a b a magazine called Works in Progress, is that the story of the loss of ornament is not one of

Economics. the there's long thought that the reason why people don't produce public sculpture or ornamental buildings is because they were too expensive. But actually that wasn't the case. It was a cultural phenomenon where, as I said to you before, in modernism it was cast out. And then but

Hmm.

once you break the line of craftsmanship, it really dissipates. And also the right the people say the rising labor costs caused

The Loss of Ornament. But actually, if you look at 19th century ornamentation, it's so much of its machine produced. And by the way, the one of the things that really inspired not quite fast was actually a trip to Birmingham. In Birmingham, which was a great industrial power in the 19th century city, there are all these amazing ornamental buildings. It's all machine done. And it was a real realization that why are we not using AI to make beautiful things?

Mm.

That this was the 19th century. But it was cast out by the by bondists, and they you know, and

I think that the it absolutely looks like a return. I think there is we are due a return to much more confident and narratival displays of things. I feel it really strongly in the air, actually. in in a in a small way with Dove Tiles, but but in many other things. I do think that but yeah, you're you're absolutely right. We do we have this sort of absence, but I think that with the coming of both robotics and also the artificial intelligence both accelerating the power and the capabilities of artists.

We look forward to an extremely interesting and I think hopefully narratival and ornamented and lively art. I think that the break, we are at a time of break, of rupture, very strongly. This is

Hmm.

huge, what's happening. And I do not think, just like we have huge breaks in the 19th century, I think that we will have a very different future and hopefully a very different aesthetic future.

in the next ten, twenty years. But I I would say, at least as a put last point, I think that the the most I think that what we've done is rooted things and provided a sense of continuity and humanity and history. and I think that the best AI usage will make us feel more won't make us feel sort of totally kind of utterly re replaceable and no longer like, you know

It won't have a sort of Cthulhu like qualities, like Shogov qualities. It will be used as a tool to kind of bring back in this in this vertigo of abundance a sense of place and of belonging. and you see that in so many different ways. There's this like a small thing with AI, like you can it can now speak in any different language, right? So you this w we've had a a a culture where it was dominated by America and maybe Europe to a degree, where these languages sort of just permeated across the globe. That's no longer that that doesn't translation is no longer needed.

So are we gonna see a kind of a proliferation of of kind of very specific things? I think possibly. So I I hope so. And yeah, anyway, that's my view.

I I think that is a very good point to close. thanks, Jack, for being part of this. your company is not quite past. Really recommended

Yes.

to for everyone to have a look. Thanks again.

No problem. It's been an absolute pleasure. And stay in touch.

Thank you. Thank