When the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche traced many aspects of theù thought back to a profoundly earthly vision of man, in the book “Human, all too human”, he carved a sharp, nihilistic furrow into the Romantic tradition - a tradition that, for a long time, had flirted with the eternal, the transcendent, and the divine. But when we speak of art, how decisive is the impact of the imperfection of the human hand? Much of classical art was built around an idea of perfection, often superimposed onto the divine dimension; it is no coincidence that, for a long time, the preferred subjects were religious. It took centuries before anyone began to glimpse something authentically fascinating in error, in deviation, in imperfection. The 20th century was likely the apotheosis of this realization: a long sequence of ruptures, dissonances, and revolutions that swept through all art forms, from the visual arts to music, transforming divergence into value. Today, however, living within a civilization permeated by AI forces us to confront new paradigms. The benchmarks regulating our work and the creative models populating the infosphere are increasingly synthetic, polished, and seemingly perfect. This is exactly what we ask of machines: not to make mistakes. But what would happen if, instead, machines began to err? Would we truly be capable of finding an algorithm’s error fascinating, as we do with a ramshackle solo by Nirvana? To what extent are we willing to tolerate imperfection when it is no longer human? Let’s take this reasoning to the extreme. It has been proven that self-driving cars cause far fewer accidents than those driven by human beings. Yet, how ready are we, really, to accept that an algorithm might “decide” to hit a pedestrian, perhaps based on a utilitarian calculation that saves three others? Similar accidents happen every day: fatigue, alcohol, distraction. There are trials, guilt, and responsibility. But if a machine were to make that choice, how much would it jeopardize the entire system of trust upon which the integration of AI into daily life is founded? The same applies to medicine. It is now well-established that, in certain diagnostic fields, machine learning algorithms can identify tumors and pathologies that escape the human eye. Yet here, too, the question remains open: how willing would we be to accept that, even just once, an erroneous assessment might endanger a person’s life? Perhaps because, deep down, imperfection is the defining characteristic of our species. A primordial gift, if you will, from a mischievous deity. Man is born in pain and blood, and lives by spasmodically chasing brief moments of equilibrium, invariably followed by new fractures. This is likely what he seeks in artistic representation as well: not an artificial perfection, but something that resembles him, that betrays him, that exposes him. If one day we were to eradicate every disease, annihilate every microbe, and extend life to hundreds of years, we would perhaps live in an absolute and lethal boredom. And, in all likelihood, no one truly desires such a world. As Bukowski wrote: “We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us”.
