Why I think AI-generated art is not art

[Harpo]

Well this is what some modern artists are playing with. There was one who taped a banana to a wall recently (did he sell it for a million dollars or so?), and I do remember another, perhaps a few to be honest - this sort of story seems to come up a lot., whose exhibit had been removed by cleaning staff who thought it was just litter from the public going through the gallery that day.

Technically, in my mind. an accidently dropped pen in an art museum would not be art, even if a visitor believed it to be so. It still needs someone to purposefully make it art.

Art can be tricky like that. One of my favourite experiences was seeing the Mark Rothko room at the Tate being redecorated. The Rothkos were propped against one wall while the other walls were being painted, and apart from the paint colour being white there was zero difference in appearance.

 

[BAYLOR]

when I said: think it through, I wasn't speaking with any kind of sarcasm or haughtiness or arrogance I was really suggesting that you think it through because since it is humans that have invented AI and since a and since humans are a product of nature therefore ai is a product of nature?

Indirectly yes.

 

[PETERTHEKNOTTER]

I argued once that the Ford Mustang is a product of nature.
The argument becomes clearer when one looks at houses. Birds nest, mud hut, wattle and daub, log cabin, stacked stone blocks, tudor beams, Meis van der Rohe. It is a linear advance. Where do you cut that l

Apologies if this has been said before but I've only just noticed this thread and currently do not have the time to go through it all.

So some have complained that the AI (never mind that it's not really) is just being fed many other artists work and producing new work based on that (and prompts from the user), and that this removes the right to call it art. It could be argued that student studying art are shown the works of many other artists and analyse the techniques and styles those artists have used to produce that art. Their work is inevitably influenced by this studying, and, aside form the occasional true masters (never mind who decides which ones those are), most will end up as, let's say, jobbing artists. It's only the very occasional one that gets major recognition and the big prices that goes with that. But that does not mean they aren't artists producing art.

There are many new technologies that were initially condemned as not art, photography being the obvious example but also things like film compared with theatre, who's to say that this isn't another such example.

my point exactly...... It's a shame that it would appear humanity is losing its touch with nature and its origin in that nature and also not taking responsibility for its part in altering nature with its artefacts and inventions, (which on the one hand is a form of chaotic creation in the same way that nature for example combines various individuals from species to create new ones with ever so slightly different characteristics which aren't always predictable), especially in cases where it's harmful to humanities' own existence?....

I sometimes think that the kneejerk response to new forms of "creation" that many call artificial is simply a healthy interjection of: let's think this through first and attempt to rejoice in 2020 present-sight rather than regret in 2020 hindsight?...

AI in my opinion is also a tool like any other... and may be used for creating "works of art" or making it pointless to ever again say: "that that person worked hard to get that good and should be credited for it..." thus perhaps devaluing all AI "art".....?

 

[PETERTHEKNOTTER]

Art can be tricky like that. One of my favourite experiences was seeing the Mark Rothko room at the Tate being redecorated. The Rothkos were propped against one wall while the other walls were being painted, and apart from the paint colour being white there was zero difference in appearance.

hope you took a pic of that?...

 

[Harpo]

hope you took a pic of that?...

Sadly not. We didn’t have the modern gizmos in those days. Taking a photo still involved a roll of film inside a camera.

 

[PETERTHEKNOTTER]

Sadly not. We didn’t have the modern gizmos in those days. Taking a photo still involved a roll of film inside a camera.

ah the heady days of nikon f2&3's...hasselblads, rolleicords and photographers gallerys in covent garden...sigh

 

[Vertigo]

ah the heady days of nikon f2&3's...hasselblads, rolleicords and photographers gallerys in covent garden...sigh

Still have mine; one Hasselblad and a couple of Canon 35mms. Would have to give them a good dusting to use now. Maybe should post images in the Old Tech thread!

 

[THX1138]

Olympus XA, Nicon EM, N80 and N90S here.
If all else fails, I have my light meter, then drop a stop.

I would love to have a ONDU 135 pinhole camera. But right now, I made a pinhole hybrid lens for my Nicon 3200 DSLR. With a 5X loop lens up against the pinhole lens and good light metering for the selected ASA, it looks quite nice.

I'm going to play around with it more. (1/4-1/16 sec is a bit hard to hold for a nature shot w/pinhole.)

 

[Harpo]

Here’s another example of “Butisit Art” - Fordite. I like it.

Fordite - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[PETERTHEKNOTTER]

Indirectly yes.

In that case most of nature is indirect since products of everything "natural" are also "natural" eg: a bird's nest; a beaver's dam; the young of every species; flower products like nectar/honey and the myco-network as a natural "AI".....?

 

[PETERTHEKNOTTER]

Indirectly yes.

I agree in general. And I think the same argument can potentially be made about AI's 'creative writing'. Is it art? Is it truly creative?

The way I see it, the output of AI is never excellent and never comes close to matching the best human endeavor (or even competent human endeavor). If I ask it to write me a story it will be unable match anything I can produce myself. Having said that, I wonder if that is really the point To be useful, it doesn't need to be excellent, it simply needs to exceed the abilities of whatever particular individual is relying on it.

For example, when it comes to the generation of art, I recently tried out an image-generating machine (after someone linked to it on sff chrons). The result, at first glance, looked pretty good. Upon closer inspection, it wasn't good at all; forearms out of proportion to upper arms, background perspective all wrong, a few objects that didn't look like anything in particular. It didn't stand up to scrutiny. Having said that, it was still way better than anything I could have produced myself (not being that kind of artist). I might have been tempted to make use of the image for that reason.

Anyway, AI may come to take its place in the spectrum of art. Already, in the human realm, there is good art and bad art (subjective, of course). And already there is plagiarism, copying and art that is highly derivative (‘It’s called stealing’: new allegations of plagiarism against Roy Lichtenstein).

"If I ask it to write me a story it will be unable match anything I can produce myself."....... The same would be true of most humans?, (including those labelled: "Artist"), if I gave them just a few Keywords/phrases like an AI?

 

[Karapace]

Art can be tricky like that. One of my favourite experiences was seeing the Mark Rothko room at the Tate being redecorated. The Rothkos were propped against one wall while the other walls were being painted, and apart from the paint colour being white there was zero difference in appearance.

Indeed. What is art? What makes something art? I would argue that art is representation that draws attention to the thing it representing, be that an object or an abstract idea. Andy Warhol made screen prints of Campbell’s soup cans to draw attention to American consumerism or the banality of consumerism (one interpretation), The Dadaists used found objects to draw attention to the absurdity of art, Yoko Ono and Marina Abramovic performed their transient art inviting audience participation to draw attention to societies attitudes. Art can be vague but central to it is the desire to show or represent. A dropped pen is not art but if the artist deliberately drops it, what then? I feel Jorges Borges was making a satirical comment on this when he wrote “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”. Borges's story is a "review" describing Menard's efforts to go beyond a mere "translation" of Don Quixote by immersing himself so thoroughly in the work as to be able to actually "re-create" it, line for line, in the original 17th-century Spanish. Thus, although identical, Menard’s “Quixote” is “different” from Cervantes’ because Menard thought about it differently while writing it.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

"Art? Why that's a boys' name"

Andy Warhol.