In this precious and imperfect world, we are seeking to build artificial intelligence as a separate life form even while searches are made for evidence of alien voices ‘out there’.
It is timely, then, to ask what it is that makes us human and alive.

For me the answer is painting – an activity very like gardening, music-making, collecting, theatre, or any of the many other signs of our cultural life – things to which we give hour upon hour of devoted care, measuring neither cost nor duration, just the quality of the experience gained. The satisfaction is in the doing, and witnessing what emerges from our ‘work’.
This is something that humans do.