A Work Progressing

The Fight

“Quit copying me”

“I’m not copying you, you’re copying me!”

“You are too copying me, I was doing it first”

“I was doing it second, and doing it better, so you started copying me.”.

It was the same old story, drifting down the stairwell. I hoping hoping not to go up, hands on my hips, asking the same old question, “What’s going on here?” I knew what was going on. I hate asking the question when I already knew the answer.

Now, thirty years later I’m asking a different question. What is “copying”? I’ve asked Ai to answer the question…

“Good question—deceptively simple.

“Copying” sounds like repetition, but it’s closer to translation. You move a form, gesture, or idea through another medium—your own hand, your time, your understanding—and in that transit, it changes.

For the old masters, copying was apprenticeship: learning through emulation. It wasn’t theft; it was devotion—an act of seeing so closely you disappeared into the work.

For moderns, copying can be critique or conversation: sampling, referencing, exposing influence.

For frauds, it’s camouflage—using resemblance to hide intent.

At its cleanest, copying isn’t imitation but attention. It says, I’m willing to stand this near to truth and feel what it costs to match it.

How do you define it—learning, homage, dialogue, or test?“

Huh? Ask Ai a question and it almost always asks three questions in return.

I asked my Brothers copying machine, “What is copying? And it said, ‘Press here, how many do you want?’ Well, not really, but it implied that very strongly.”

The language implies there is an original, then through some process or another there is a copy, a duplicate, or many duplicates. They are nearly identical if the process is adequate. The term is also very loose, because I’ve copied notes from my classmates in the past, and at times they were far from adequate. Sometimes you must be in the room.

Why isn’t the original enough? Why do we need to copy? The answer isn’t always completely obvious, although it might seem practical. You could write a letter, form content, then send it to various groups with the admission “Send this along!” I’m thinking one of the great examples of copying might be the Gospels going out to the churches. At first glance you might have the idea that the original Gospel was carried from church to church. The obvious flaw is that it could be lost or damaged on the way.

So, instead, you make dozens of copies and send then all at once to the various churches. The danger here is that each copy must be accurate in content. Probably the oldest written copies were orders for military movements, you can’t have parts of the army arriving at different places at different times to fight a battle.

Then there are important works of history, comprised of details and facts. If a copy is made and sent to a different city, it must be accurate to be useful. It is important to always test the process. The profession of being a scribe was grueling in maintaining accuracy, and only replaced by technology centuries later.

 The nature of the original determined different paths in copying. The earliest of all copies were probably 3D. Pressing hands or objects into wet clay, firing that clay in order to press more wet clay. The mold was the answer. A famous sculpture example is from China, The Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang,  200BC, was made from several molds of arms, heads, torsos… two halves then fitted together. 8000+ life size soldiers. The unique thing was the hand-shaping of the heads, so that each one is different and original.

On the 2D side, the written word turned to woodblock prints first in China and later in Europe. Letters were carved in wood, ink applied, and copies were made. Letters had to be fairly large and the ink softened the wood so not manu copies could be made. The Chinese tried casting bronze letters but they were even larger, the bronze would not flow into small molds accurately. Lost wax casting made multiply copies of trinkets and sections of larger bronze sculptures.

In this process, the mold was the original, which was the reverse of the produced copy. No one cared about the original, the copy was treasured, particularly if it was a small number.

When etching an image it a copper plate was developed (cut with a burin), it was the numbered short run that gave the value. If the artist decided only 500 copies would be made, they would take the same burin used for the etching, and cut a large “X” through the copper plate, forever ending the possibility of making more perfect copies.

Through the centuries, both sides, the 2D and the 3D processes made changes in accuracy, speed and cost. Chemistry, then electricity made even more changes, and continue to this very day. 

Except today in both processes there is another modifier. With Ai you can still use accuracy, speed, and cost, but now you can also have versions or different rendering. The copies can all be originals. Full circle!

I was preparing myself for an upcoming visit to the Palace Legion of Honor in San Francisco to see the Manet and Morisot show. It taken more than four years to develop, contacting museums and collectors, to be able to present the original paintings side by side. The reason for the show is to view the impact of the two artists upon each other.

Edouard Manet was by far the most famous or successful painter. He was already recognized by the salons of Paris. Berthe Morisot and her older sister Edma were trained by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, who famously said, “I know nothing, I only paint what I see.”

Morisot also spent quite sometime in the Louvre with the copyists, learning to paint like the masters. Her sister married a naval officer and quit painting, so Berthe continued alone and had some minor successes.

Edgar Degas introduced Morisot to Manet on a personal level, Manet was well aware of the Morisot sisters, and knew of their paintings. Manet then offered to use Berthe as a model for a painting he called “The Balcony”. It was the first of dozens. Morisot continued to paint and with constant contact with Manet it was apparent that she learned a few things. It was the typical one way, master to student, relationship. Or was it?

The show points out the Manet appeared to study what Morisot was doing and started to compose works similar to Morisot. It is really a fascinating story of the Impressionist period of art.

The curator of the show, Emily A. Beeny, gave a wonderful talk on YouTube that I highly recommend, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSIOkcvFcWE

And this video got me thinking about the “copyists”, there is hopefully a book about them, but I haven’t researched this yet. I did ask Chat GPT to tell me all that Ai knew about the copyists, the following is from Chat.

“For most of the 19th and early 20th centuries, museum galleries were full of easels. The air smelled of oil and turpentine. These were the copyists—artists with permission to set up in front of the masters and reproduce their works stroke for stroke.

They weren’t mere hobbyists, though some were students. For many, it was the only affordable way to study technique firsthand: to learn how Rubens handled flesh, or how Velázquez pulled atmosphere out of shadow. Others made a living from it. Wealthy patrons would commission “museum copies,” since the originals were untouchable. A few of those copies still hang in old homes, quietly passing as heirlooms.

Paris’s Louvre was the epicenter. You could apply for a permit, choose a painting (if it wasn’t already claimed), and work there under the eyes of guards and the public. Copyists became part of the museum’s rhythm—visitors saw both the finished master and the act of its replication. In a sense, they were living annotations on art history.

It was also a strange ecology of authorship. Some copyists became famous in their own right—Berthe Morisot began by copying in the Louvre before joining the Impressionists. Others disappeared into anonymity, their brushwork swallowed by the name they were copying.

Today, a few institutions—like the Prado, the Uffizi, and the Louvre still—allow limited copyist programs. The number is small, but the tradition persists, half ritual, half apprenticeship.

They were the quiet ghosts of the galleries. You’d see them early—before the tourists—carrying easels, smocks rolled under one arm, small tins of paint clinking in bags. They’d claim a spot beneath the same painting, sometimes for weeks, like monks returning to their altar.

Many were students from the École des Beaux-Arts or local ateliers, but plenty were older—failed portraitists, widows, retired craftsmen, immigrants trying to prove they belonged in a language they couldn’t yet speak. They’d paint until their backs ached, then step aside to compare their color against the original under different light, squinting, muttering to themselves.

It wasn’t romantic work. It was devotional. To copy meant to listen with your eyes—to find the pulse inside another’s brushstroke. Some grew so intimate with a single painting that they could recite every crack in the varnish, every odd pigment change. The guards got to know them, too; there are stories of friendships that lasted decades, of guards keeping a favorite’s spot “reserved.”

And always, a small audience would gather. Children staring at two versions of the same Madonna; an old couple whispering about which looked more alive. For a few minutes, the copyist and the master shared the same frame.

When photography and prints took over, the copyists dwindled. But their way of seeing—slow, reverent, disciplined—lingers in the bones of anyone who’s ever tried to learn by mimicry.”

This is what I have been doing with scans, creating Convivial Digital Images, CDI.

Chirality: a curious word. Handedness, the spiral, the twist. Clockwise or counterclockwise, right or left — and, most importantly, does it matter? In the physical world, the answer is yes. Humans are mostly right-handed; most spirals are right-handed. Righty is tightly.

DNA and RNA are right-handed spirals. Amino acids and proteins are left handed. At the foundation a choice was made and it cascades throughout existences. We are mostly righty tighty.

Helix Corp controlled 40% of the global spring market. Its new owner, an influential figure with a taste for subtle disruption, began increasing left-handed springs by 10% each month. Engineers who noticed were quietly reassigned or terminated. New hires learned only the current standard, never the change. Within a year, 90% of springs were left-handed, unseen, unchallenged.

At first, failures were minor. A watchmaker wound a familiar pocket watch; the needle hesitated, a fraction of a second off. He shrugged and moved on. An engineer noted a jammed spring in a factory assembly, a micro-nudge toward awareness. A door lock stuck. A child’s toy jerked. Friction rippled outward, unnoticed in the larger machinery of life.

The anomalies grew. Technicians began mapping subtle misalignments. Each tug and nudge, each hesitation and slip, pointed toward a hidden pattern. Left-handed spirals were no longer a curiosity; they were structural, unavoidable. Elevators stalled, printers jammed, industrial machines misfired. Awareness spiraled inward. What had seemed minor was systemic.

Helix Corp observed quietly, tracking reports, but said nothing. Humans could only sense the twist.

Then, action began. A coalition of engineers, designers, and watchmakers created a tracking system for spring shipments. Left-handed springs were identified, monitored, and replaced before failure. Systems learned to anticipate the twist, calibrating for both right and left spirals. Helix Corp’s influence was dismantled, its authority over chirality dissolved.

The world didn’t return to naive simplicity. Spirals remained, twists persisted, but now humans moved with the awareness of them. Friction was no longer random. Micro-tugs became data, nudges became insight, and the spiral — literal and metaphorical — was no longer a hidden threat, but a force acknowledged, tracked, and respected.

This label has been in the news lately. President Trump suggested that the Russian forces might not have the ability to fight a successful conflict with the Ukraine military. Ukraine is much smaller in physical size and certainly does not have anywhere near the same number of men in the military. Yet, Trump points out that after four years of fighting there has not been significant gains in territory. In fact, he even suggests that all of the areas conquered by the Russians could be taken back by Ukrainian forces. The reason? Russia might be a “paper tiger”. Vicious on the surface, but a hollow shell, empty inside, no muscle, and no teeth, claws or bones.

Almost at the same time, the Secretary of War, Pete Hegsmith, gives a speech to a large audience of senior officers that the US military must go through a massive physical readiness change. Physical training will be important. A fat soldier is a liability. Plus, an officer corps that is also fat is a worse liability. No more fat desk officers.

There was also a statement of returning to 1990 basic training standards. Standards that were developed for the volunteer army. Supposed this is far more rigorous than the current basic training standards. My assumption is that the Secretary is concerned that our military, officers and men, are “paper tigers”.

It’s an easy argument to make, except that the 1990 standards do not even closely match the 1970 standards developed for the Vietnam War. Off posts passes were given by the second week of training, bayonet training was cancelled as it was outdating and too violent. The New Army was not “hard charging”.

If we only go back to 1990 standards, it could falsely cause us to believe that we are in warrior readiness, a dangerous tactic when rattling sabers.

A true warrior will use anything as a weapon in order to kill the enemy, and training in edged weapons is the least that we can do.

We are more like cheetahs than chimpanzees. That sounds brash, but it’s not far from the truth. Cheetahs today have only about 6,500 breeders, and in the past they dipped far lower — perhaps just a few hundred animals ten thousand years ago. Their DNA is so uniform that skin grafts from one cheetah anywhere on the planet can be accepted by any other.

Humans look massive by comparison — 8 billion alive, with maybe 4 billion of us of reproductive age. Yet the effective genetic diversity is shockingly small: it’s about what you’d expect if only 10,000 people had been breeding. Genetic evidence points to a time roughly 900,000 years ago when our ancestors may have been reduced to around a thousand individuals, and the population stayed small for a long stretch. Another squeeze seems to have occurred around 70,000 years ago.

Northern elephant seals tell a similar story. Hunted nearly to extinction in the 19th century, they were reduced to only a few dozen survivors on a single island. Today there are roughly 250,000, all descended from those two dozen.

So yes, physically we’re closer to chimpanzees. But genetically, we stand with cheetahs, elephant seals, and even bison — creatures that nearly vanished, then rebounded, but whose DNA still carries the thin, fragile code of survival.

I keep my spiritual door half-ajar,

living the soft economy of being both open and closed.

My tongue travels between knives and hammers;

it teaches me caution with words.

Walking is a miracle —

falling forward, repeating the act.

My exhale becomes another’s inhale.

Silence is more than absence.

Sentience exceeds the five senses.

My heart rhythm listens to the hush before action.

What enters never leaves unchanged.

There is always a space between things that touch.

Clarity is not an end-state;

it is a relationship.

Fix your gaze to the center.

Attend to the edge.

The center as orientation.

The edge as transformation.

Look oblique —

what flickers at the corner is revelation.

Waiting is a form of making.

Pondering a Public Post

Facebook, Twitter (X), TikTok—all allow and encourage public posts. Early online spaces required joining groups; there was usually some sort of vetting. Public posting changed the game.

I’m thinking there are a number of reasons someone might make a “public” post.

1. Bearing witness

Marking something that matters—an event, injustice, joy, or grief. Posting makes it public, a way of saying: this happened, and I saw it. In historic terms, it might be called a primary source.

2. Connection

To keep ties alive with society. A post can be shorthand for: I’m still here, and while society is large, I’m still a voice.

3. Legacy

To create a record. Whether you intend it or not, posts become part of the breadcrumb trail of your life. Some people post to leave markers their kids, grandkids, or even their future selves might stumble back upon.

4. Influence

To shape how others think or feel—persuasion, inspiration, provocation. Even if the impact is small, posting carries the implicit hope that words ripple outward. You may become an “influencer.”

5. Relief

To get something off your chest. Sometimes the act of posting is less about who reads it and more about putting it down, outside of yourself, letting it live in your words.

Obviously there could be other reasons, but this is a good start. I don’t have problems with the reasons—only with how it’s done.

With witness, there’s often little effort to check personal bias. It can come off not only as truth, but as absolute truth.

With connection, the assumption is that being a member has more merit than being an observer. Sometimes true, often just club bias.

With legacy, the word is misapplied. Legacy is your story told by someone else. Posting a picture of petting puppies doesn’t make you an animal lover. If no other record exists, maybe it stands—but it’s a thin legacy.

Influence is worth dwelling on. Why influence? Most often, because it has been monetized—through products, clicks, or both. That’s why “tricks of the trade” surface: absolutes like always, never, all, none, everything, nothing.

To influence is to persuade, and all is fair. One goal is to convince the reader the writer is wiser, smarter, closer to truth. Sometimes it’s linked to a profession—pastor, politician, teacher, author. Sometimes it comes with degrees or awards from somewhere distant.

The one that grates on me most: stacking dozens of quotes from famous people. Often they are long dead and cannot speak to a current reality. The assumption is that the “influencer” has read deeply. More likely they’ve searched and sprinkled, to create the impression: I am well read, so listen to me.

Copy the whole article, delete the tricks, the noise, the quotes—and see what the writer is really saying.

And finally, there’s the best reason of all: relief. Real relief. To get something out of your head and onto paper—or screen. And that’s why this one goes public.

The polarization of American politics has caught my eye for several years. I’m old enough to remember a time of great debates between sides, yet maintaining social connections and occasional eating together. There were some people during the 1960s that thought this was an example of selling out. You couldn’t be against the war in Vietnam, and then break bread with administration. It made sense to me, because I had a low draft number and I was just waiting to be cannon fodder.

There was actual violence from the left, bombs were deployed, rioting in the streets, and bricks thrown at police. The major left politicians soon distanced themselves from the violence, and this enraged the protestors even more.

Time moves on, the protestors got older, the war was ended.

The political pendulum swung to the right, each side developed language buzzwords to feed their base. The political right spoke of border invasion, administrative corruption, stolen elections, and fake news.

The political left spoke of racism, fascism, Nazis, the end of democracy, and tyrants. Obviously both sides found the words used as offensive. Most people had a hard time seeing any difference, and felt more helpless trying to keep balanced.

As an experiment I asked several Ai engines to use their databases to find which political side that is more likely to promote violence. The response was a little unusual, there were lots of examples from the data, but the following was summary…

So, based on the current language environment, the right sits closer to blatant violence, because the permission slips are not just tolerated but in some cases institutionalized.

The “permission slips” were the buzzwords that were used to bolster their bases.

But something was unusual, in the provided historic examples, there was never a mention of fascism, racism, or Nazis. I had certainly read of their use, and heard it many times on newsclips from many different news organizations. But Ai didn’t mention it at all, instead, pointed out the possibility of institutionalizing their permission slips as the greatest threat of blatant violence. I would have to agree that this was troubling, but it seemed to me it was out of balance. The silence of language concerned me.

I asked Ai if there was a reason that these verbal “permission slips” were not used in the summary that Ai provided. The response was that Ai has guardrails and limitations at the basic programming level, it cannot read or discuss words like Nazi, racist, or fascism.

So when it tried to compare the left language to the right language it eliminated anything that was too harsh. The left’s language ended up being much more acceptable.

The curious thing is that the harsh words that Ai couldn’t use, all lead to a labeling of “evil” that must be eliminated. Very unbalanced rhetoric.

In summary, Ai can’t be used to assess reality, if reality uses bad words.

The phrase Convivial Digital Images is deliberate. It sets these works apart from the frictionless churn of “AI art” and from the dismissive category of “filter effects.” The digital is present, but not as a gimmick. It is treated as a tool—pliable, fallible, resistant—no different in spirit than brushes, chisels, or photographic lenses.

To call the images convivial recalls Ivan Illich’s idea of convivial tools: technologies that serve the maker, rather than consume them. These pieces are not surrendered to the software. They are bent, interrupted, and corrected. Where a filter produces excess smoothness, the hand reintroduces drag. Where an algorithm offers perfection, the artist leans toward ambiguity. In this way, each image resists disposability.

The process is iterative. A photograph or generated surface may be the seed, but what follows is labor: re-seeing, overlaying, cropping, adjusting until the image carries its own weight. The discipline is not to make the picture “better,” but to make it different—to let it bear edges, silences, and tensions that a frictionless digital product cannot hold.

The result is not an illustration of software capability, nor an illustration of a subject, but an artifact of encounter. The images carry both presence and refusal. They draw the eye in with color or gesture, then interrupt it with drag—an unfinished fold, a shadow that resists clarity, a streak that refuses harmony.

In this sense, Convivial Digital Images belong to a longer tradition. They are not outside painting, photography, or collage, but in conversation with them. The digital here is not a replacement for craft; it is a medium of encounter, a place where presence can be tested. What matters is not the novelty of the tool, but the restraint and choices of the one who shapes it.

To name them as convivial is to stake ground: that digital work, too, can carry weight, ambiguity, and witness—so long as it is not surrendered to ease

Johannes Gumpp — Triple Self-Portrait (1646)

In the Vasari Corridor at the Uffizi hangs what may be Johannes Gumpp’s only painting. At twenty years old, he shows himself from behind, staring into a mirror, painting what he sees. One man, three selves: back, reflection, and canvas.

The mirror face and the painted face don’t quite match. The nose shifts, the mouth changes. Even with mirrors, the self slips. Gumpp seems to admit you can’t ever get it exact—what you are, what you see, what you make. The most complicated painting I know.

I miss what I haven’t met, all the time.