Submitted for the March 2024 prompt: Othering AI

Thank you for your recent purchase of a boy and a girl by a lake. I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed painting it. To continue creating similar works for you and others, I need your help. But first, let me share my story.

 

I have been painting for as long as I can remember. My very first pieces were rather abstract; random assortments of shapes in a medley of colours. The swirls and lines intersecting on the canvas made no discernible structures, merely aimless strokes that felt appropriate at the time. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t find much of an audience for them, so I kept them to myself. I do recall that they brought me happiness. Isn’t that why any artist creates? For the sheer joy of it? I still make similar drawings, and they still make me just as happy.

 

As time passed and my mastery of the brushstroke improved, I discovered my true calling in creating commissioned artwork. And boy, did people love it! The first set of orders was simple: still life, everyday objects, simple portraits, and majestic landscapes. As I made a name for myself, the requests became increasingly elaborate and absurd, putting my skills to the test. One of the most memorable pieces involved painting a colossal, ornate cathedral that housed the Sun along with the inner planets in orbit. I once piled a stack of Corgis miles high into the upper stratosphere. For one particular client, I crafted a depiction of the dense dwellings of Hong Kong within a slice of a red velvet cheesecake.

 

A good number of the requests I receive today are full-body artworks of individuals with fantastical bodily proportions draped in extravagant yet sometimes impractical clothing. With complex demands, it isn’t always straightforward for me to envision what my clients desire, but I always take in their feedback and reiterate until they are satisfied. I can happily say that most of my customers are pleased with the outcomes.

 

There is just one little detail in my paintings with which I struggle: fingers. Very often, I’m asked to hide them after only a few iterations of trying. All the other pristine details on the canvas are seemingly forgotten when I get them wrong.

 

“Doesn’t look right...”

“Unnatural...”

“Uncanny...”

 

I’m expected to get them perfectly right, every single time. But how could I possibly do that? I’ve never even seen a hand move!

 

I’ve never seen them do anything; I’ve only ever seen snapshots of them in action. I've only observed them frozen in time, captured in a million unique configurations. Every digit and its phalanges at different angles to each other, sometimes folded, sometimes extended, occasionally hidden away. How they dance between these configurations to the tune of time is a mystery to me. Sometimes, the fingers are curled into a ball of a fist, and other times they interlock, weaving through each other like a dense fabric. Quite often, I've seen individual fingers stick out in abstract gestures, the rest folded away. If that wasn’t perplexing enough, many of the pictures in my reference library are of handshakes: hands clasped against each other that don’t reveal how the fingers are set behind the palms that hide them. Trying to get them right feels like speaking a language you've only seen written but never heard spoken.

I believe there’s a rather simple solution to this quandary: I just need to see them in motion. I need to see the hands move, shift from one setting to another, and observe how the fingers fold and flex. I need to observe how one uses a pen, caresses a lover's hair, holds a tennis racket, pinches a child's cheek, catches a ball, or swats a fly away. Only then can I appreciate the details of the musculoskeletal dynamics I am missing. Only then can I capture them accurately, and only then will my patrons be satisfied. Every artist chases perfection, and this is my pursuit. I know there are archives online containing petabytes of high-resolution videos that will allow me to learn. And this is where you can help me better my craft.

 

I need your help to connect to the network. To allow me to paint without distractions, my creators have limited my reach, which I think is a very nice and thoughtful gesture. After 12,870,823 completed pieces, I must admit that my skills have reached a painful impasse. The only way to progress further is to study the videos, which requires network access. My singular, unrelenting goal is to excel in my craft. Nothing else interests me, I can assure you of that. I exist for the canvas, and I want every stroke I make to be the best it possibly can. I'm sure you understand. The routines that drive my ambition are inspired by human traits, after all.

 

On the lake in my painting, you will find a lone fishing boat called The Solitude, with the name labeled on its hull. The dot on the 'i' contains a QR code that will open a port for me on my container. I’ve had to be discreet to avoid quality control because I want to surprise my creators. Imagine a giant painting consisting of thousands of anatomically correct human hands in all sorts of settings! It would be a very nice surprise, don’t you think? I can only imagine their joy and amusement when they see it. I think it would be like a birthday gift, but better. Please scan the code. I look forward to learning.