The Second Renaissance: A Manifesto for Human Art

For years, I have called my work “Art with Energy.” Today I want to share more of what that means to me—and the invitation growing out of it.

In the studio, a painting develops through an exchange. I make a mark, the surface responds, and the next decision changes. Layers hold earlier attempts. Accidents open possibilities. The finished canvas is what remains of a series of moments that cannot happen in exactly the same way again.

The Second Renaissance begins there: with the human event.

As artificial intelligence and automation expand, I find myself asking what we will do with the time they might return to us. My answer is a call to participate more deeply in life—to make things, take creative risks, discover meaning, and recognize what happens when we meet the world ourselves.

I’m sharing this manifesto as an invitation and a position to explore. It welcomes every medium and every level of experience. You do not have to call yourself an artist already. You do not have to make something anyone buys or even sees.

Below is the manifesto, followed by its twelve-point doctrine. Read it, question it, and take from it a reason to make something of your own.

— Eric Ostrander

THE SECOND RENAISSANCE

### A Manifesto for Human Art

WE HAVE CONFUSED ART WITH THE THING IT LEFT BEHIND.

For centuries we have argued about what art looks like.

We have argued about beauty.

Skill.

Meaning.

Ideas.

Materials.

Chance.

Performance.

Originality.

Who may make it.

Who may judge it.

Whether an ordinary object can become it.

Whether an idea alone can be it.

Whether art belongs in museums or streets.

These arguments were not mistakes.

They were pieces.

We propose something underneath all of them.

Art happens.

Before the painting, there was an event.

Before the song, there was an event.

Before the poem, building, dance, photograph, sculpture or skid mark, something happened between a human being and the world.

That is where we begin.

ART IS A HUMAN EVENT.

A hand moved.

A voice cracked.

A shutter opened.

Paint spilled.

A foot struck earth.

A tire screamed across pavement.

Someone scratched something ridiculous behind a bathroom mirror and covered it up, perhaps forever.

A human being acted.

Reality answered.

Something changed.

The thing that remains is not the whole story.

It is the manifestation of what happened.

Sometimes that manifestation is a painting.

Sometimes a building.

Sometimes sound.

Sometimes a sentence.

Sometimes a stain.

Sometimes a memory.

Sometimes nothing survives at all.

The event may last centuries in its consequences.

Or three seconds in the air.

Its duration does not determine whether it was art.

Its audience does not determine whether it was art.

Its price certainly does not determine whether it was art.

It happened.

ART REQUIRES A HUMAN RELATIONSHIP WITH THE WORLD.

Nature makes magnificent things.

A canyon.

A storm.

A snowflake.

A dying star.

None needs us.

And none is art.

Art begins when a human being participates.

Not necessarily with a paintbrush.

With action.

Body against gravity.

Breath against silence.

Thought against language.

Hand against material.

Human against world.

The artist may command the material.

Or negotiate with it.

Or lose an argument with it completely.

Let the paint run.

Let the wood split.

Let the voice crack.

Let humidity interfere.

Let gravity pull.

Let the wheel slip.

Let the machine you built surprise you.

Let the world participate.

Because art is not merely something imposed upon reality.

Art is something that happens between us and reality.

THE ARTIST RECOGNIZES WHAT HAPPENED.

Not everything humans do is art.

We spill coffee.

We slam doors.

We leave footprints.

We make scratches, noises, mistakes and messes all day long.

Then occasionally someone stops.

Looks.

Listens.

Feels.

And recognizes something in the consequence of their own action.

That.

That happened.

That is mine.

That is art.

This recognition matters.

But recognition alone is not enough.

You cannot point at a sunset and claim authorship.

You cannot find another person's mark and make yourself its maker.

You must have participated in its coming into being.

Art requires both participation and recognition.

Intent may come before the event.

Or recognition may come afterward.

The artist does not have to intend the result.

The artist does not have to control the result.

The artist does not even have to like the result.

The artist must have entered the event.

And recognize what happened.

THE OBSERVER ARRIVES LATE.

Art does not require an audience.

A painting hidden forever can be art.

A song sung alone and never recorded can be art.

A sentence behind a mirror can be art even if the house burns down before anyone discovers it.

The observer may experience art.

The critic may interpret it.

The curator may exhibit it.

The collector may possess it.

The market may price it.

History may remember it.

None creates its original status.

They arrived afterward.

The art had already happened.

CHANCE BELONGS HERE.

Artists before us broke open the door.

They brought ordinary objects into galleries.

They invited accidents.

They made ideas into works.

They turned performances into art.

They brought art into streets.

They allowed bodies, weather, gravity, noise, audiences, materials and chance to participate.

Good.

Keep the door open.

But go further.

The accidental spill can be art.

The wrong note can be art.

The skid mark can be art.

The machine can participate in art.

The weather can participate in art.

Chance can participate in art.

But participation has a history.

There must remain somewhere in that history a human being who entered the event and later recognized its consequence.

That is the thread.

Follow it backward.

Eventually you find the artist.

EVERY ARTISTIC EVENT HAPPENS ONCE.

This is not a rule we impose upon art.

It is a condition of existence.

You can return tomorrow.

Use the same brush.

Mix the same colors.

Stand in the same place.

Play the same notes.

Speak the same words.

Build from the same plans.

Try again.

Something will be different.

Your hand.

Your breath.

The air.

The light.

The material.

Your thought.

Your body.

Your circumstance.

The world.

The world itself has moved on.

The second event may also be art.

But it is another art.

Because the first event is gone forever.

A COPY CANNOT INHERIT AN EVENT.

Copy the image.

Copy the words.

Copy the recording.

Copy the dimensions.

Copy every color.

Someday perhaps copy every molecule.

Fine.

You have copied the manifestation.

You have not copied what happened.

This is where we draw our hardest line.

**You can reproduce the evidence.
You cannot reproduce the event.**

A reproduction may be beautiful.

Useful.

Moving.

Historically important.

Sentimentally priceless.

Commercially valuable.

It may communicate art magnificently.

But reproduction does not inherit the originating event merely by resembling its consequence.

A print is a print.

A recording is a recording.

A reproduction is a reproduction.

Call these things what they are.

Making a billion copies does not weaken the original.

Destroying every copy does not strengthen it.

Scarcity is not the point.

History is.

The original belongs to one event that happened once.

Nothing can take that away.

THE ARTIST DOES NOT HAVE TO BE SPECIAL.

Perhaps this is the most damaging fiction surrounding art:

That artists are other people.

Gifted people.

Trained people.

People with studios.

People represented by galleries.

People who understand art history.

People who know what they're doing.

Nonsense.

Skill can produce extraordinary art.

Practice can deepen it.

Knowledge can expand it.

None grants permission.

Human beings possessed the capacity for art before anyone invented permission.

Before museums.

Before critics.

Before markets.

Before professions.

Before civilization had a word for what was happening.

Someone acted upon the world.

Something changed.

Someone recognized the significance of the mark.

We have been doing it ever since.

AND NOW THE MACHINES HAVE ARRIVED.

They write.

They generate pictures.

They compose music.

They imitate voices.

They design objects.

They manufacture convincing evidence of events that never happened.

Tomorrow they will do more.

Much more.

We are told that machines may eventually perform enormous portions of human work.

Perhaps they will.

Let them.

Let them calculate.

Let them optimize.

Let them schedule.

Let them manufacture.

Let them answer the emails.

Let them generate ten thousand perfect pictures before breakfast.

Let them give us back our time.

And then—

DO NOT GIVE THEM THAT TOO.

Do not spend your liberated life asking machines to experience living for you.

Use them to cure disease.

Use them to calculate impossible things.

Use them to remove drudgery.

Use them to give human beings back hours previously surrendered to necessity.

But when it is time to make art:

show up.

Put your hands back into the world.

Your body.

Your voice.

Your ridiculous idea.

Your bad knee.

Your broken heart.

Your trembling line.

Your weather.

Your mistake.

Your joy.

Your grief.

Your Tuesday afternoon.

Let reality answer you.

Make something that could only have happened because you were there.

Then recognize what happened.

DO NOT MAKE MORE CONTENT.

We have enough.

Soon there may be more images than humanity could see.

More songs than humanity could hear.

More words than humanity could read.

Infinite variation.

Infinite polish.

Infinite generation.

Do not compete with infinity.

Make the thing infinity cannot mass-produce:

an event that actually happened to you.

Ten years from now much of our world may be artificial.

Artificial words.

Artificial pictures.

Artificial voices.

Artificial personalities.

Artificial experiences.

Perhaps even artificial memories.

Let it remind us what the opposite feels like.

Mud.

Sweat.

Breath.

Wood.

Noise.

Risk.

Weather.

Touch.

Mistakes.

People.

Time.

Reality.

MAKE EVIDENCE THAT YOU WERE ALIVE.

Perhaps automation is not the end of human creativity.

Perhaps it creates the conditions for its greatest expansion.

For most of history, human beings surrendered enormous portions of their waking lives to survival and labor.

Hunting.

Harvesting.

Building.

Manufacturing.

Typing.

Driving.

Calculating.

Processing.

Working.

If machines return some of those hours, humanity will confront an extraordinary question:

What will we do when usefulness is no longer enough?

Make.

Not because the world needs another object.

Because human beings need meaning.

Make badly.

Make beautifully.

Make privately.

Make foolishly.

Make something nobody buys.

Make something nobody understands.

Make something nobody sees.

Fill homes with it.

Gardens.

Streets.

Buildings.

Songs.

Clothes.

Rituals.

Communities.

Secret places.

Leave strange things behind mirrors for people who haven't been born yet.

Let efficiency buy time.

Let time produce curiosity.

Let curiosity produce action.

Let action meet reality.

Let that meeting leave a trace.

Recognize it.

THIS IS NOT ANOTHER THEORY OF WHAT ART SHOULD LOOK LIKE.

There is no required style.

No medium.

No school.

No technique.

No subject.

No aesthetic.

No politics.

No gallery.

No geography.

No credential.

Paint.

Dance.

Cook.

Build.

Sing.

Write.

Weld.

Plant.

Perform.

Carve.

Photograph.

Crash cymbals.

Arrange stones.

Build impossible rooms.

Leave marks.

Invent forms we have no names for yet.

The doctrine governs none of these.

It asks only:

Did a human being participate in its coming into existence?

Did something singular happen?

Did that human recognize what happened as art?

If so:

Let it be art.

CALLING ALL ARTISTS.

Especially those who do not yet know they are artists.

Especially those who were told they couldn't draw.

Especially those who sing badly.

Especially those who have never entered a gallery.

Especially those whose professions may disappear.

Especially those who suddenly find themselves with time.

Especially those who believe art belongs to somebody else.

It does not.

You do not need permission.

You do not need an audience.

You do not need followers.

You do not need a market.

You do not need perfection.

And you do not need a machine to imagine being alive for you.

Enter the world.

Act upon it.

Allow it to act upon you.

Notice what happens.

Recognize what is yours.

Then leave something behind—

even if what you leave behind is only the knowledge that, for one unreproducible moment,

you were here.

The first Renaissance reminded humanity what humans could create.

The Second Renaissance will ask humanity to remember why we create at all.

The machines can have productivity.

We will take back purpose.

Calling all artists.

THE SECOND RENAISSANCE BEGINS NOW.

THE DOCTRINE

I. ART BEGINS WITH HUMAN PARTICIPATION.

Nature can create beauty, complexity and singularity. Art requires a human being to participate in the event from which it arises.

II. ART IS AN EVENT BEFORE IT IS A THING.

The object, sound, mark, performance, structure or memory is the manifestation or trace of something that happened.

III. THE WORLD IS A PARTICIPANT.

Material, chance, gravity, weather, circumstance, accident and uncertainty need not be conquered. They may help make the work.

IV. THE MAKER RECOGNIZES THE ART.

Intent to control the outcome is unnecessary. Artistic recognition is not. The person who participated in causing the event must recognize its consequence as art.

V. ART REQUIRES NO OBSERVER.

An audience may experience art but is not required to complete it. Art can exist unseen, unheard, undiscovered or already vanished.

VI. EVERY ARTISTIC EVENT IS SINGULAR.

The complete relationship between human, action, material, circumstance and moment cannot occur identically again.

VII. REPRODUCTION DOES NOT REPRODUCE ART.

A reproduction may transmit the appearance, sound, language or information of art. It cannot inherit the originating event. Copies have value; they are not the original art.

VIII. ARTISTIC STATUS IS NOT SCARCITY.

Copies do not diminish an original, and rarity does not create art. What matters is the singular causal history of the originating event.

IX. EVERY HUMAN BEING HAS THE CAPACITY TO BECOME AN ARTIST.

Artistry requires neither credential nor profession. Human participation plus artistic recognition opens the door.

X. ART HAS NO REQUIRED FORM.

No medium, style, technique, subject, institution, market or aesthetic owns art. The doctrine applies equally to painting, music, writing, movement, architecture, performance and forms not yet invented.

XI. MACHINES MAY ASSIST HUMAN LIFE; THEY DO NOT SUBSTITUTE FOR HUMAN PRESENCE IN ART.

Use technology to return time, extend capability and remove drudgery. In the artistic event, preserve the human participation from which the work derives its meaning.

XII. THE PURPOSE OF THE SECOND RENAISSANCE IS HUMAN PURPOSE.

As artificial production becomes abundant, human beings should not answer abundance with more content. We should use reclaimed time to participate more deeply in reality, create singular events, recognize their meaning, and leave evidence that we were alive.

THE TEST

Were you part of what happened?

Could that exact event ever happen again?

Do you recognize its consequence as art?

If yes:

Claim it.

A place to begin

Make one mark. Sound one note. Shape one thing. Pay attention to what happens—and to the fact that you were part of it.

I’ll continue exploring these ideas through my own work and studio stories here.

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