The Art of the Glitch. The Accidental Magic that AI Misses.

Leo Fender was a radio repair man from southern California who saw that the future of music was in the electrification of instruments. As the founder of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, he created the iconic Telecaster and Stratocaster guitars. 

In 1951, Fender released the first commercially successful electric BASS guitar. It was intended to solve the problems experienced by players of the big, bulky acoustic double-bass. Rock and roll was still a few years away but bass players needed an instrument that could keep up with the loud drummers and horn sections of the big bands of the day. 

But in the classic case of cart before the horse—there were no bass amps to complement this new bass. So Fender and his team got busy and one year later released the Fender Bassman amplifier. It was designed specifically for the electric bass… and it was a dud.

Bass players just couldn’t get into it. Sure it was loud enough, but bass notes need to be pure and clean. The problem with this amp, and many amps of the time, is that they got their juice from vacuum tubes. If you turned it up too loud, by nature it would get noisy and distort. In fact if you went to a music store in the 1950s, the salesperson would likely say “Yup, great amp, but don’t turn it up past 5—get’s real noisy—distorts.”

One day, an adventurous guitar player decided to plug in to the Fender Bassman amp and see what it would sound like with a regular electric guitar. It sounded great. And the best part? When you cranked the knob past 5, it would distort in the most beautiful, gnarly, musical way—The Art of Noise.

Leo Fender's world had shifted. This BASS amp suddenly became popular for electric guitar players who were edging into a new kind of rebellious music. Over in the UK, it was extremely popular for a new set of musicians who were embracing the “ROCK” part of rock and roll. Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Pete Townsend, the Stones, and countless others. Jim Marshall, a London music store owner, couldn't keep up with demand. So, he cloned the Bassman, creating the iconic "Marshall stack". Without Leo Fender’s failure and Marshall’s genius to seize the opportunity, rock music history would be very different. No Hendrix, AC/DC, Sabbath, stadium rock, Swedish death metal, punk rock, etc.

AI is about “failing forward” and trying to achieve an ideal through a series of prompts and algorithms. Human creativity is born from happy accidents. We make mistakes and then figure out what to do with them…

Cheese: “Oops honey, left the milk out too long… forgot… it’s rotten… oh wait, that’s yum.”

Wine: “Now where did I put those grapes… oh dang… fermented, Yum.” 

Jazz: “Oops forgot the sheet music… better improvise. Cool daddy-o.”

AI relies on calculated algorithms. Humans find beauty in imperfection (think of the Japanese art forms of wabi-sabi and kintsugi), which AI cannot grasp because AI is "artificial" intelligence, focused on pre-determined ideals and algorithms—math.

Humans make mistakes. Humans love mistakes. Computers just compute. 

Creativity is about instinct, intuition, passion, emotion, experience, and consciousness. That’s what formulates real intelligence.

I started my career as a graphic designer in 1983. One year before Apple released the Mac. So I am a designer that has designed before the computer and throughout its evolution as a creative tool. Back then, if you wanted a logo or an ad… sure… give me a couple of weeks… I’ll get back to you… I’ve got a think about it, make some sketches, order some type…change my mind… talk to a photographer, illustrator… discuss, refine… etc. It took Michelangelo 4 years to complete the Sistine Chapel…for Christ’s sake! 

Today, I routinely get asked to make stuff within a few days, sometimes even within a few hours. Make it faster, oh and lets make it cheaper if we can. What is the end game of all that? If faster and cheaper is where technology takes us, what happens to BETTER? My Mac doesn’t make me better. It just makes me faster and cheaper. Spending time in my brain makes me better, not on my keyboard. At some point you get so cheap that you no longer have value. At some point, you won’t need me or my slowly percolated and perfected ideas. We’ll have an app for that.

But technology, like fast food, gives you the illusion of fulfillment. Really, it just takes your money, triggers exactly the right endorphins, and gets you addicted to things like bad sugars and bad fat.  

How fast food dulls your palette from real food experiences, so too AI can atrophy your brain—because we’ve asked a machine to do the hard parts of thinking. The hard journey of failure, patience, and discipline paves the way to creativity—creativity cannot exist with shortcuts.

Yes, I’ll admit that AI is a great tool and yes—16 paragraphs in—I’ll admit I even used it to condense this rambling diatribe. But AI can be a dangerous tool if we give it too much swing. It’s not like a hammer. Being able to use a hammer doesn’t make you a carpenter. But we are asking and expecting AI to be both the hammer AND the carpenter.

The industrial revolution promised that machines would take away the menial tasks so that humans would have more time for creative pursuits. For invention and art. What happens to humanity if we also hand over those precious things to machines—those things that make us human—personal creative expression, ideas borne from brilliant mistakes—art? What then becomes our purpose?  

There are around 18 versions of the most famous painting in the World. Scholars argue that perhaps more than one “Mona Lisa” was actually painted by Da Vinci. Most of these Mona Lisas were painted in and around Da Vinci’s time. You see, it was a very popular exercise to emulate the masterpiece for students of Da Vinci and other contemporaries. Same pigments, similar brush strokes. All these versions datable to around the same time that Da Vinci lived. Of course, no recently living being has ever met Da Vinci to ask him which one was actually his. So we’re not even sure that we have the right one hanging in the Louvre. The original was stolen in 1911 and then recovered a few laters—we think. 

But none of that stops 10 million people every year from standing in line to see that particular one. Does it matter if it was actually by Da Vinci or not? Nope. Because It’s not about the painting itself, it’s about Da Vinci himself. The painting is just a symbol of his genius. You go because you can say you saw a Da Vinci! If word got out that they lost the original again, but not to worry, that an exact replica, exact brush strokes, exact pigment formula, exact everything was put in its place—generated by AI, of course—would anyone still visit it? No. So it’s not about the art, or the ARTIFACT—it’s about the artist. The human who made the art.

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