There will be those who think otherwise and -of course- they have every right to do so, but time has done damage to Shakira's artistic work. Taking advantage of her world tour, which today passes through Bogota, I take her case to leave served another of the differences that in my opinion exist between artists (with proven exceptions) and artificial intelligence. Specifically: the machine and its invisible algorithms tend to improve their results and products over time. That is its raison d'être and its impenetrable ethics: to be better.. And to move forward, the faster the better. Just as it happened in the first chess or Go games in which it was defeated, the machine ended up learning from its mistakes and defeating -without haste- its human counterpart. The artifice works in a simple way, with time it becomes more effective and more credible: it achieves a better imitation of the human. In the case of the artist, on the other hand, time seems to operate in mysterious ways. Many times his mistakes -derived from his professional experiences- seem like blanks that leave him, at most, a purplish bruise. They are soon forgotten and their practical dimension is thus lost. I remember once hearing a Hindu guru asking his followers to try to make new mistakes, but never to repeat old ones. I have seen with my own eyes artists who insist on falling into the same hole, again and again, without being able to do much to prevent it. A voluntary Sisyphus. Perhaps such stubbornness is a mechanism that potentially triggers some kind of spark that could open the door to a resounding creation. I have seen cases in which this type of whims come out well and border on genius.
In other words, unlike artificial intelligence, time does not make artists better just because it passes. In fact, it sometimes damages or undermines them. For example, there is Shakira, the Colombian singer, whom I do not hesitate to place among the pantheon of artistic celebrities of the country, along with Gabriel García Márquez or Botero. As I said, others will have a different opinion, but for me, in many ways, the singer's work from twenty or twenty-five years ago is considerably better. Much better than her recent hits, boring, predictable and perishable. It is enough to review the first albums to notice the unusual and amazing talent of the barranquillera and her compositions: the casual poetics of her lyrics and the sounds and rhythms -the risks- that accompanied her: her creative universe that undoubtedly led her to take her place as a world star. (This is one of my favorite songs of that time). This is why I maintain that Shakira's artistic ability aged poorly by letting herself get carried away by the other infamous industry algorithm: the trend. The one that makes much of the music now sounds the same or very similar. She also aged badly her sensibility and artistic conscience, which, possibly, will restrict her legacy in time to her first creations. In this I believe I am not wrong. Shakira moved away from the human and that was her biggest mistake. Ironically, by following an artificial intelligence logic, she ended up hurting herself.
Returning to the recurring theme of this blog, one could not conclude that Shakira (the one at the beginning and the one now) could or could not be replaced by an artificial intelligence, but, rather, her case is useful to reiterate what has been said on other occasions. Shakira is safe (or at least part of her work). Although music is an art very susceptible to be impost by the machine because of its notorious closeness to mathematics and algorithm, as concluded by Oxford mathematician Marcus Du Sautoy in his magnificent book The creativity code, many musicians will not be replaced or relegated, as long as they persist in avoiding the algorithmization of their creations. As I have said on other occasions, the human factor makes an absolute substitution of the working formula of artificial intelligence on artistic praxis and thought improbable. Our humanity saves us, while the machine -unintentionally- purifies us.
To go no further, it would be inconceivable to program a machine to constantly hurt and trip itself up. That is to say that it would not take time as an advantage, but as a distractor. A more than usual behavior among many artists who, as I said, can derive from that erratic and anti-machine behavior some kind of mystical power of creation. The cursed musician, the cursed painter, the cursed poet, and so on. It may be that the algorithm guiding human artistic creation is flawed and of poor quality. Or rather that its virtue lies in the fact that from these stubbornnesses and repeated mistakes the unsuspected mental process that results in an artistic work is nurtured. This inability to learn from mistakes could be the way in which the human being is enlightened while falling off the cliff. Quite the opposite of the algorithm that only sees through tentacles of perfectionism and productivity. That is its main weakness: its urge for perfection, which will lead it to outstanding artificiality and in the process will take it away from its main pursuit and object of desire: the emulation of human nature. For the time being, artists -as bad and inconvenient as it may sound- are left with a suspicious moral: keep making the same mistakes. To defend themselves from machine logic with their own arbitrariness; so sharp and present. On her side, it would be up to Shakira to take a step back. To go back to find herself again with her former personality. Although I fear that this will never happen. Today the old songs will be the most exciting.
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