A New Essay and ARC Giveaway

Hello! I hope your April is going as well as possible. I’m working away on the second Julia Z book and having a blast. She’s very good company (well, a bit surly and reserved until she warms up to you).

I have two updates to share with you this time.

What the AI Prompts in You

There are a lot of takes on the future of art in the age of AI, but I think mine is a little different from most of the others I’ve seen. In “The Cinematograph and the Noematograph,” published by Big Think, I lay out why I think AI is a new medium that has yet to find its proper expression.

A notable feature of contemporary AI art experimentation is that while we’re often excited by the process, we’re just as often bored by the result. Despite all the headlines promising that AI will write better books than humans, I can’t find a single AI-written novel that has delighted readers. Not one. … This suggests that AI, as an artistic medium based around playful inter-subjectivity, will be more about process than outcome, more about participation than consumption, more about the doing rather than the beholding. Some of the best AI art experiences are about what the AI prompts in you, rather than what you prompt the AI to do.

I don’t think AI art is going to replace the kind of human art I find interesting, nor do I think it will remove the motivation for humans to create art. I am, however, excited about what new genres we can invent with the subjectivity-capturing machine, just as we invented so many new genres with the camera, an actuality-capturing machine.

ARCs for All That We See or Seem

I have ARCs (advance reader copies) for the first Julia Z novel! These look like trade paperbacks (soft covers) and are virtually identical to the final book, except they’ll have some uncorrected typos and such.

So, for my newsletter subscribers only (thank you for your support), I will give away three ARCs.

To enter the giveaway, simply write an email to me at ken@kenliu.name with the subject “ARC for Julia Z” and include your shipping address. Put in a reason (fun or serious) for why you’d like a copy. You can send in your entry any time from now until May 1st. I’ll pick the winners shortly after that.

All the email entries will be deleted right after the giveaway.

One copy will be reserved for an international reader, chosen at random. Another will be reserved for a US-based reader, chosen at random. The third copy will go to the reader who wrote a reason that struck me in some way.

The giveaway is a small token of my appreciation for all my newsletter subscribers. Engaging with readers is the second-best part of my life as a writer (the best part will always be doing the work itself).

Thank you, and more news soon!