I'm an artist and if I want people to be able to access my work I have to do boring stuff to make that happen. I'm thinking of technical stuff like (as a painter) taking good quality photos of my work, fixing colour accuracy of those photos in software, writing code to process images into various sizes etc. Sometimes browsers change and I have to go and change my websites accordingly. But it doesn't have to be technical, artists might spend time organising exhibitions, making canvases, sourcing materials.

Yes, as an artist the whole point is to keep exploring and creating. But unfortunately you still have to do things like pay bills and go to the toilet just like "the others".

This stuff goes alongside and is complementary to the creative work. None of it is present in my mind when I'm working on a painting because I'm in the zone. But if you want to do something with your work other than letting it sit in storage you have to do the other bits too. Thinking you shouldn't have to do any of this extra stuff is prima-donna-ish in my opinion.

I don't think the artist is evil, it does sound like particularly annoying stuff for him to have to deal with. But as an individual user I personally never want any sound or video autoplaying on a website, ever, for any reason. Give me a button to click. For extra non-hatred, don't use a dark pattern.

I understand that creators might say "if you're on my site you're there for the full experience". This is what everyone who ever builds anything thinks though, that their thing is the exception, it really is ok just in this one case. No sorry, this is the internet, all someone has done to end up at your site is click a link, they might not know what it is, maybe they're listening to an amazing album on their great sound system via their computer and don't want it interrupted by bleeps. They might be at work, or surfing in bed with somebody asleep next to them.

I guess the new Chrome policy will be ok for most people but it's going to be yet another annoyance for me. I seem to never fit into the way AI/ML does its predictions and rather than save me a click it usually ends up making me click more as I try to tell it how wrong it is and then try to coerce it into doing what I want. I'm going to hate the future.

Who in this thread has said anything about being evil?

Art needs maintenance just like everything else if you want it experienced beyond the time of its initial debut. Depending on the art, sometimes more, sometimes less. Not really a 9-5 thing unless maintaining others' art is your full time job.

This particular case is more akin to a game engine update changing some APIs, or perhaps akin to converting some archaic RealMedia material to modern formats. The art in question having software as medium matters a lot.