Essay by Ken Liu: ‘The idea of “Mimesis” or copying from nature, as a core component of art casts a long shadow in our culture, dating from the Greeks even unto the present day. The kind of copying that is valued in art, however, isn’t Walter Benjamin’s mechanical reproduction but rather a kind of recreation of the original that has been transformed by human craft and imagination.
However, the gradual rise of mechanical reproduction via advancing technology to displace human art also has a long history. Are all human arts vulnerable to mechanical replacement? Are some arts more vulnerable than others? I propose to examine a few instances where machines have displaced the human artist to see if I can discern any answers to these questions. This inquiry should be particularly relevant in an age where AI threatens to fundamentally disrupt the arts, obsoleting human artists ranging from actors to novelists, from graphic designers to photographers.
The first copying art I want to focus on is book making. Prior to the introduction of Gutenberg’s press, books in Europe were copied by hand, and guilds of scribes and monks in scriptoria were among the fiercest opponents of this machine that would destroy their profession. Here’s Johannes Trithemius, abbot of St. Martin’s, in his 1492 pamphlet De Laude Scriptorum (In Praise of Scribes), defending human book copiers with great passion:
[The] benefits and advantages of the art of copying […]All of you know the difference between a manuscript and a printed book. The word written on parchment will last a thousand years. […] The most you can expect a book of paper to survive is two hundred years. […] [The scribe’s] labor will render mediocre books better, worthless ones more valuable, and perishable ones more lasting.
To modern ears, this argument sounds preposterous. How can a scribe’s tedious labor, copying letter after letter, make “mediocre” books better or render “worthless” books more valuable? The very idea that manuscript copying is even an “art” feels like nonsense. Indeed, Trithemius seemed to have defeated his own argument by having the pamphlet printed rather than copied by hand so that it could be more widely distributed…(More)”.
