Over the last few years, I’ve been slowly indoctrinated into the cult of physical media. There is no shortage of YouTube video essays made by 20-somethings living in Brooklyn that rave about the cultural, philosophical, aesthetic and moral value of dvds, records and film photography. And it’s hard not to agree with them. Get your first turntable and a few hand-me-down records from your dad and all of a sudden you're smoking cigarettes, wearing denim and writing articles like this.
I would like to take the video essayists argument a bit further, though, and discuss how physical media is also important as a cultural, artistic and deeply human response to the threat that artificial intelligence (AI) poses to creativity and art.
In August, I let my housemates know that I’d be bringing a stereo system for our living room: a turntable, CD player, receiver, amplifier and speakers. I encouraged them to bring any compatible music they owned.
Now our walls are covered in records. Many more records and CDs remain in crates on the floor, each a reflection of their owner's tastes. And as a consequence of their use, rotating in and out of the turntable, on and off the wall, they have become jumbled up and mixed around. The needle skips when people walk heavily on the floor; older records crackle and pop; sleeves get dusty and require some care. This kind of macro-entropy, unique to physical media, is important. Unlike the pristine Spotify playlist, this music is messy and human, it wears time and it shows off its use.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves; we are far from a real meaningful movement away from digital media. I must admit, I still listen to Spotify through my headphones while walking around campus. Clearly the boombox has yet to make its return. It’s true that the physical media industry overall is in recession, especially compared to the global behemoth that is streaming. Still, trends over the past decade or so have been clear: young people are starting to embrace physical media again, largely in response to the dominance of streaming industries.
At the same time that young people around the world have been spinning records, developing film and gaming on grainy Cathode Ray Tube TVs, musician Xania Monet hit the billboard and signed a multi-million dollar record deal. This would not be an interesting occurrence if not for the fact that Xania Monet doesn’t exist. Monet is not a person and much less a musician; it is a bodiless and brainless product of AI. In a similar vein, the derivatively named band “The Velvet Sundown” recently revealed to their 1 million monthly Spotify listeners that they too are a product of AI. Their name, transparently appropriated from the 60s art-rock band “The Velvet Underground,” is perhaps a perfect indicator of the kinds of artistic strides being made by AI. That is to say: none.
But beyond originality, the capacity of artificial intelligence to produce at, or beyond the level that humans are capable of, is not completely new, and the value of such an ability is far more nuanced than many would have you believe.
Netflix’s new series “El Eternauta” has been in the news this year for being the first show on the streaming service to use AI. In this case, generative AI was used to speed up and lower the cost of VFX creation and processing, an industry that has already long been dominated by computation and has left practical effects far behind. Is it a good thing that the financial bar for entry into film and video production is lower? Can AI be of genuine help to smaller creators who are also willing to maintain artistic integrity? The answers to these questions aren’t clear. AI might have a synergistic role to play.
What is scary to me is not simply the ability of AI to match or far exceed a person’s capacity for production. What is concerning is the willingness of many people to absorb AI so deeply into the heart of the creative process. What is concerning is the eagerness of corporations to capitalize on a cheap, infinitely productive and hollow “artist” and invest in it millions of dollars, with total disregard for the artistic process and a lack of respect for their audience. Businesses are not new to “consumerizing” art, but this kind of transgression is one that so fundamentally offends the bond between human experience and human expression that it presents a new kind of problem.
AI in art is a cultural concern as well as it is a technological one, and our culture's rediscovered love for physical media might be an unconscious response to this threat. The messiness of my stereo setup is real; the scratches on the records are human and carry in them decades of listening and love. AI might be good and getting better at producing, but it lags behind when it comes to creating. Keep an AI song as a digital file and it could remain indistinguishably human; prompt Chat GPT to create music that is real, music that you can touch and hold, music with a story and history, music that warps in heat, and it will fail miserably.
Physical media might be able to work as the perfect membrane, letting into our culture the uses of AI that synergize with human artists while keeping out the threat of total takeover. This is about keeping art human and for humans. It’s about keeping art and the process of creation and consumption sacred and in harmony with the human experience, as it has always been.
Anthony Cinquina '25.5 (he/him) is an Arts and Culture Editor.
Anthony has previously worked as a contributing writer to the Campus. He is majoring in English with a minor in Film and Environmental Studies. Beyond The Campus, Anthony works as a writing tutor at the CTLR and plays guitar for a rotating cast of bands.
