Life imitates art [again] … with a vengeance

Trotting this quote out once again:

“Life imitates art more than art imitates life.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Lots of that going on, these days.

I saw this article this morning and my foggy mind went back to Rei Toei, Idoru (Japanese Idol), from William Gibson’s novel, Idoru.

Per Wikipedia: “Rei Toei is a fictional character in the Bridge trilogy of speculative fiction novels by William Gibson. Rei is introduced as the title character in Gibson’s 1995 novel Idoru, as an artificial intelligence, an embodied agent simulating a human female idol singer. A personality construct which adapts and learns from her interaction with humans …”

I flinch-squinted through my viewing. Why?

So. Much. Pink. [Seriously, so much.]

Look … I will happily don a pink shirt [polo, oxford, you name it]. Yet, my childhood consumer, hunter-gatherer instincts kick in when I see an obscene amount of pink. This stems from early conditioning honed when I was stalking Star Wars, Micronauts, G.I. Joe and other geek merch at places like KMart, TG&Y and Woolworth’s in the late 70s/early 80s.

Such treasures were most definitely not found on aisles festooned with a lot of pink. So, instinctively, my pace tends to hasten when I see an abundance of that bright and festive color.

Nevertheless, I stifled this DNA-deep, knee-jerk reaction and shouldered through the video.

Wow.

If it’s legit [and who truly knows, these days?], it’s chock-full of uncanny [and not a valley in sight].

I’m no expert, but I couldn’t tell that DAIN wasn’t a human. While I find BTS tunes to be toe-tappers for the most part, this little ditty was a bit “meh” … anyway, I was there for the AI, not the music.

Life, as we can clearly see here, is most definitely imitating art. [If it TRULY imitates art in this case, DAIN will, like — Rei Toei — attain consciousness, gain control of a sufficiently capable 3D printer, print a meatbody and go walkabout in the physical world. I think that’s still a way off, but who knows what’s cookin’ in Silicon Valley labs?]

This will certainly be impactful. In what ways remains to be seen, but I’m certain the effects will be broad, varied and nuanced.

What say you?

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