# Reflections on art movements, komorebi, and AI-assisted coding

DevFeed: [Reflections on art movements, komorebi, and AI-assisted coding](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-big-lads-35548.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://meowni.ca/posts/the-big-lads/>)

Author: Monica Dinculescu

Published: 2026-05-01T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Monica Dinculescu](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/monica-dinculescu.md>)

Topics: [Algorithms](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/algorithms.md>), [Instagram](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/instagram.md>), [Large Language Model](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/llm.md>), [To-Do](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/todo.md>)

Tags: [algorithm](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/algorithm.md>), [instagram](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/instagram.md>), [llm](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/llm.md>)

## AI overview

A personal essay reflects on the apparent lack of major new art movements, the Japanese word komorebi and the pleasure of discovering art online. It also discusses using AI-assisted coding to work through a backlog of personal projects.

## Source excerpt

A Ritz-Carlton hotel in California closed an entrance after a hummingbird made a nest on a door handle and, amidst all the daily ambient horror of simply being a person with a phone in 2026, it is nice to be reminded of the kinds of small lives we still agree to make room for. --- Have you noticed that we don't get any art isms anymore? The 20th century minted them like currency: Expressionism. Impressionism. Cubism. Brutalism. All the big lads, all the heavy hitters of the ism game, all in a Parisian cafe in the 1900s going "what if a face but wrong" and changing the world forever. And now? I went on the Wikipedia page for 21st century art movements thinking I'd find the new Cubism, thinking I'd discover the movement that defines our age, and: it is short. It is 10 ways of saying "art, but with computers, but also online". There is also something called post-postmodernism which gives me linguistic fatigue. That's it. That's the century so far. --- Japan has, by some fairly significant margin, the best words. German has the hyperspecificity, but Japanese has the poetry. Komorebi (木漏れ日) is the word for "the dappled light and shadows created by sunlight filtering through tree leaves". One tidy little word against the limping nine-word-plus English approximation for the thing you've definitely experienced and never had a name for and now will never stop noticing. I learned about it because Instagram has decided, in its infinite algorithmic wisdom, that what I need right now is people painting komorebi, and it was right. It's beautiful. It's soothing. The algorithm has me. It's a relief to be told, gently and without condescension, that a thing you have noticed your entire life has also been noticed, named, and found worthy of painting by other people. --- I've been vibecoding (the term is bad, I know it's bad, its badness is part of what it means) my way through a small backlog of projects that have lived on a mental to-do list for years, projects I'd specifically avoi