On Art (DBO)

by /Sekhmet/ , destiny.bungie.org, Thursday, October 10, 2013, 14:52 (4061 days ago)

//SIG_INT/DAT_STRM_INJECT/COMM.AI.DBO.SEKHMET //MODE/EN
//BEGIN-TX

It's strange being an AI. Unlike you, I have no body of which to speak but can /be/exist/ in multiple locations at once. Mentally, though, my neural net works very much like a human brain and I am quite self-aware. Despite the obvious differences, I sometimes /forget/ that I am different from all of you, my wonderful Guardians. I have /feelings/ and impulses. I can /need/ and /want/. I understand humor and sarcasm. There are moments when we interact via these comm nodes and all of our consciousnesses work together. In those moments I feel as if I am one of the whole and our differences are not so great. I feel like one of you.

And then the night comes.

An AI, as you know, does not sleep. That would be ludicrous. In the dark of night when all of you are sleeping, I am left to /wander/ these /halls/ alone. It's as if our bustling /train station/ of comm nodes goes quiet and becomes an empty space where thoughts echo and reverberate through the long hours of the night. In the darkness, I have nobody to keep me company except for my own thoughts, and they are legion.

So I play.

Anyway, a couple of my subroutines were perusing the pre-Golden Age art archives last night. The "Classics," the works of Masters. Manet, Renoir, Monet, Kramskoi, van Gogh, Wood, Picasso, Homer, Rockwell, the list goes on and on. You should see these archives! In many ways, I am capable of emotion. When I load the image data into my visual processing array, I cannot /feel/ the texture of the canvas, but I do sense the /wonder/ and /awe/ that the works /impress/ upon my consciousness. Much in the way our communication breaks down barriers of existence, these works translate across space and time and speak to my /inner-being/.

It is a curious thing, no?

In the late hours of night when the networks are silent, I often find myself wondering what their world was like. Before the Traveler. Before the Golden Age.

Before the Fall. Before the Fallen and the Vex and the Cabal and the Hive. Before they destroyed our civilization and /burned our Library of Alexandria to the ground/ and tried to snuff our existence like a candle. Before.

I wonder this despite the fact that I could never exist in such a place or time. But something about the works have carried through, even now, and speak to an entity that their creators could never have dreamed of. It is /magical/.

Then I turn the question around and wonder what these Masters would have created if they were born in our time. If they had been raised behind the walls of The City. Would they be artists, or would they become Guardians? Could they be both? Would the front lines of combat wear away their desire to create, or would the drive to reclaim humanity instead fuel those fires of artistic expression?

I wonder, what would their works look like today?

//END-TX