Prognoz Pogodi And The Future Of Art

This very very cute stuffed anthropomorphic computer is called Colby the Computer. This particular version (bis) is a rendition by hyperreal artist Prognoz Pogodi, using an array of mysterious AI tools including ElevenLabs and Kaiber Superstudio. There is an incredibly comprehensive overview of Pogodi's previous social media activity and artistic endeavours written by Shel Raphen. I will be referring to this text extensively so I recommend a short skim before continuing. The objective of this article is to first provide a review and (mostly positive) critique on Prognoz Pogodi's more recent work. The second concerns the future of art in a world of hyperreality and simulacra.

Colby is the - titular - mascot of the 1990s cheesy Christian TV show Colby's Clubhouse. As per Wikipedia, Colby has the entirety of the Bible "programmed" into his memory. The show itself isn't very noteworthy, it aired on Saturdays from 8:00 to 8:30 PT on the televangelist owned Trinity Broadcasting Network, and often featured life lessons about God and how to respond to "contemporary" situations as per the enlightening Lord's way. You can easily find episodes on YouTube. If you do, you will notice that the original Colby doesn't look identical to (bis) Colby, who is an AI generated version. CathodePlyer made a 3D Blender model, faithful - lol - to the original, available on ArtStation. Pogodi's AI generated version looks more like a Barney suit than the original, and has the words - 科比 - written on his screen, Chinese for Kobe or Colby. Xiaohongshu!

It is now appropriate, I think, to explain what is it exactly that Pogodi does. Prognoz Pogodi is a Self Media: a TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter account that posts absurd Reels. We will delve into the specifics later, but it essentially consists on characters, one of such being Colby, narrating videos of assorted origins in English, with overlayed Chinese and/or English captions. The character is physically present in the video, with their voice and appearance being AI generated. As the grammatical category implies abundance, there are other performing protagonists in Pogodi's creation. The one that brought them 1 most relevance was Fiveish, a five dollar bill, mascot to an Orthodox Jewish kiruv organization called Oorah. You will now notice the conspicuous Abrahamic knot that couples these characters together. Following the YapDollar fiasco 2, Pogodi introduced Gerbert, the puppet mascot of a - you will never guess - Christian show called Gerbert. It is August 20, 2024. From the YapDollar thread we can find Pogodi's reddit account i24News. They reveal in one comment that a considered replacement for the esteemed Fiveish could have been Elmo's father Louie. Pogodi opted to continue both the puppet and the religious subtext with Gerbert. Colby was introduced on September 27, 2024, whom you all now know and adore. This Colby looks quite a lot like the original.

We are now of course missing a muslim puppet to complete the trifecta. Maybe Adam's World? Maybe Prognoz respects aniconism. We know that Brother Colby aka Omar had a Muslim spiritual awakening that shook his beliefs to the (multi) core. We also know Colby and Gerbert tackled the hurtful use of the n-word within the context of Islam in the very famous Quran Corner. By now I hope you have seen at least a couple of these videos. Pogodi's hyper Decadent Post-Internet style re-represents jarring artificallity: beautiful untrue beings and sayings of anxious design. Tracing back their accounts, especially on reddit, we can find that Pogodi is a devout follower of the Cum Town podcast and all their fellow ironic associates. The Cummiverse (The Adam Friedland Show, Red Scare, etc) podcasts have over their unfortunate existance recieved many quirky guests, some of whom end up in Pogodi's videos. They are, images of themselves, imitations cretaed on human instruction by inhuman devisings. In a society in which both the rate and speed of consumption accelerate, the seventh art cycles back to its original forms via indeterminate flashes. Our minds percieve the outside world through screens who seek to imitate the nature of thought: infinitesimal sensations and images. And, building a bridge, religion is the primordial image - nobody has seen or talked to their gods. Whenever we converse with divinity, we converse with the image we have created in place. The gods are the images where we find them in. Where we place them. As I will explain later, images are crucial in our understanding of this type of undertaking. It is then not a surprise, no wonder, that religious figurines are protagonists of the ironic social media fabrications of Pogodi.

I want to delve depper into the artform. Pogodi usually takes original Reels - recipes, farm life hacks, etc. - from various sources, TikTok or Xiaohongshu, and extracts the script of said video. If the original video is in chinese, then they translate the script into english. I suspect and agree with Raphen that Pogodi tampers with these a little to make them seem more spontaneous and rile. They then have these fun characters recite the script, Colby, Gerbert, Dasha, Steve Harvey, OJ Simpson, Eric Adams, the NYU guy, and other characters from Cummiverse bits. On top of the video you will find captions for what they are saying in chinese, and usually english captions as well. These videos are all parts of a compilation called the Prevue Guide Channel (PGC). I am particularly interested in reviewing a subset of videos from this collection. On April 4, 2024 3 we were introduced to (bis) Colby in a video that reveals that the Annunaki removed chromosome number two, and fused it together with two telomere caps. I want you to notice a couple of things. This (bis) Colby has only ever appeared in these types of videos, and another one that I will mention later. The common theme here seems to be awakening. All sorts of conspiracies are involved, usually involving consciousness, aliens, planes of existance, spiritual unity, and other esoteric machinations. Much like their other videos, these scripts are not of original deisgn. However, all of these videos have been taken from english speaking conspiranoids and charlatans. I have downloaded four sets of examples so you can see what I mean. The tone of the original videos and the Pogodi replications is very different.

My girlfriend loves to tell me that great artists steal all the time. I have always thought this to be good practice. She owns Steal Like An Artist by A. Kleon, and we once tried an unsucceful poetic exercise by taking lyrics from songs that we like as verses. This was a complete failure, but no matter. All of art is self referential - think of intertextual literature: Ulysses, Borges, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, etc - and to create is to reinvent what has already been created with the lense of contemporary context. Jonathan Lethem writes "The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism". This phrase is taken from Mark Twain's 1903 letter to Hellen Keller. And yet, its meaning is transformed into something else: a different purpose. It is evident that Pogodi's main quality as an artist is the original soundtarck produced in all their videos. Everythings seems to indicate this is human made. A lot of these short, original songs are available on streaming platforms. The music is jarring, eery, and beautiful still. Yet, very few commend or interact with the real - human artistry behind these videos. Why? Maybe most don't notice. There exists an irrational distaste concerning everything AI related, but many videos making its use go viral, and clearly Pogodi has the approval of a non-trivial niche community. What is the difference between company/techbro SLOP and inventive visions that are by and large welcomed by the Internet? The answer is extremely simple: transformative intent. People are not stupid. It is not the same to be ironic, in the way the PGC is, than to be genuinely serious and try to make a trash ass, goofy ass, soulless AI movie or commercial that displaces humanity. It is this, that causes discontent, it is obvious that robotic gentrification of artistic labour will be repudiated by the subset of the proletariat composed of creatives. Cutting Minecraft blocks or clouds does not supplant human jobs 4. Coca-Cola, Marvel, and others firing artists to create the biggest pile of dogshit you have ever seen in your life do displace jobs. DC Barker (tic) said this better than I ever will "The issue is not AI art itself, but that AI art is trying to imitate the non-AI art or world. AI art should do something novel, transcendent, not recapitulate human production. The negative reaction is thus more about the production of a simulacrum, not the innovative itself". It is then very clear why Pogodi, and other AI artists fit this novelty.

On the content inteself, there are additional underpinnings as to why I value Pogodi's work especially. People commenting usually will say these videos are sleeper operative activations, or induce psyschosis - schizophrenia, or comparable observations. They (the audience), by believing this video will cause psychosis, are retroactively diagnosing psychosis to the society were these are original thoughts from the people who posted first (the bottom row). Many of the originals have more views and exposure than the PGC copy. It is then, not the nature of the message that is indivually psychotic, but the semiotics of its presentation that generate improbable unease. Colby (bis) is a copy without true original, who speaks the words of those experiencing altered perceptions of reality, already engrained in the simulacrum. The symbol predates its meaning. For example, the idea of socialism is perfect competition in contemporary discourse. Or, the hightened presence of hypercontrarians, idiots like Dasha switching to Trump because of the image. Clearly the idea is irrelevant. This society of symbols is born to the speed in which content is created, where also the rate of consumption goes up, and thus the image is processed instantly and defines a cultural instant, over any text or music or video that require attention and discernment. Colby, the copy, is in reality the original through its creator. There is a double steal in this sense, from the idea that the Red Scare podcast is a psyop, one would think thatPrognoz was inspired by this idea, and then the interest in the psychosis is natural. This is not the case. Pogodi has been schizoposting all their life. It is then another retroactive action, the second steal is making videos that present themselves as psyop, feigning inspiation from such content, when the original thought is the creator themselves. We of course do not know why Pogodi is like this.

Leftist symbols + Nword video + behind the scenes video. Who is Prognoz? i24 news reddit account Anthony Morrison, who seems to be the spiritual grandfather of figures like Gary Vaynerchuk or Tai Lopez, who themselves influenced the likes of Andrew Tate. How similar are these people to the dirtbag left podcasts? There is no intuitive resemblance. Can i like pogodi if theyre not the same ideology as me? The role of chinese ideology, geopolitical situation with us. political undertones.

What happens to reality when the symbols it worships do not have a referential origin? Baudrillard describes hyperreality as a meticulous replication of the real, through reproductive medium. For instance, I am more enamored with the pictures and videos and portrayals of x celebrity than the person themself. What AI presents in text or audiovisual outputs is not reproductive but transformative This picture is not a picture of Colby the costume from the TV show. It is a picture of Colby, the animated product of a prompt by Pogodi, edited to perfection over different backgrounds. What is there left but to create a new reality, to rebel against the real, when the cyclical nature of progress is revealed. C'est désormais la carte qui précède le territoire.

The artist is not the one who creates the work.

Public perception is negative. Drake CLB, kdiddy, being attributed revolutionary ideas. GOATS are commerciable but do it again, so not dance monkey but yes tay swift. Losers whose biggest achivement is a 1.9k thousand reddit comment on r/aviation talking about quality over quantity as if they have a single clue. prognoz genius by making it all about the image. art reflects society, its not about the nic emusic, or the content (bc if it was wed just watch og videos) its about the image on top. Contrarianism appears in culture especially in rebellious youth -> gen Z hates sex and is super puritan while still believing themselves to be against their elders bigotry -> against boomers + against the image of woke millennials creates a cultural oxymoron that mirrors the capitalist condition: ie it is both true that is not immoral to eat an animal vs it is immoral that meat factories exists (waste and poor allocation). Pogodi regularly interacts with followers in the comments, thus not only presenting an image to society, but allowing it to become real within the walls of the viewer's mind. We are all invited to participate, we are all friends of Colby and Gerbert and by taking the other's words, we are in a sense talking back to the self in communion.