BLACKLINE
Vol. IX, No. 49 | May 2025
THE MUSEUM THAT BREATHES IN CODE
By Sterling Graves, The Ghost
They’re building a mausoleum in Los Angeles. Call it a cathedral if you want—they do. But stone’s too honest for this crowd. Try silicon. Try algorithms scrubbed clean with ethical bleach.
Refik Anadol, the city’s patron saint of machine-made mysticism, is erecting the Museum of AI Arts. A for-profit temple, for now. But profit’s just the appetizer. The main course? Your surrender.
He is an internationally exhibited artist and professor at UCLA, Anadol is known for transforming datasets into kaleidoscopic AI-driven installations.
The brochures swear it’ll pulse with “sustainably sourced” code. Its guts will churn in Oregon server farms, far from prying eyes. Green, they croon. Ethical. Blessed. Trained on Smithsonian archives and museum bones—donated, not stolen. Permission slips signed in bloodless ink.
Outside, the city still reeks of last year’s strikes. Writers’ picket signs rot in alleys. Stagehands nurse calluses. But inside Anadol’s new Eden? The machines hum, patient and pristine, waiting for their curtain call.
“AI is not a tool,” Anadol declares. “It is beyond a tool.”
He’s right. Tools don’t dream.
DEVELOPER TANKS & DYING LIGHT
No darkrooms here. No fixer fumes. No trembling hands loading film in the dead of night. No artist forgetting to eat, to sleep, to breathe—just to chase the shot that might crack their ribs open.
Anadol’s walls will drip with generative euphoria. Clouds of data, swirling. Forests of pixels, growing. All of it perfect. All of it sterile as a lab-grown diamond.
He’s no villain, they say. He trains his own models. Preaches “co-creation.” Warns of a “horrible future” if we let the machines run the show.
But here’s the rub: The machines already are the show. They don’t doubt. Don’t bleed. Don’t stay up till 3 AM clawing at a canvas, wondering if any of it matters.
Artists do.
That’s what made them dangerous.
THE FADING EXPOSURE
Anadol’s museum will open with fanfare. Patrons will ooh at the light shows. Critics will drool over the “innovation.”
But somewhere, a painter scrubs oil from their cuticles. A photographer misses the shot, curses, reloads. A poet burns their ninth draft.
The machines won’t care. They’ll just iterate.
LAST FRAME
They call it a museum.
You know better.
It’s a tomb for the tremble in a brushstroke. The gasp in a darkroom. The human stain.
Go ahead, marvel at the code. But remember:
The only thing a machine can’t fake?
The audacity to give a damn.
—Sterling Graves
Filed Under & Disclaimer
Filed Under:
AI Art Controversy · Refik Anadol · Museum of AI Arts · Human vs Machine Creativity · Death of Analog Art
Disclaimer:
This editorial is a commentary piece published by Blackline. While grounded in verified reporting, it is intended to provoke thought, not to serve as a comprehensive news source. Sterling Graves’ views are his own and reflect the spirit of critical cultural analysis.
Graves develops his truths in chemical baths. Find his column in the back pages, where the ink still stains.
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