Why I think AI-generated art is not art
- Thread starter SporgyTheReader
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PETERTHEKNOTTER
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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?
True everything is a product of nature... even plastic.
I think AI is a tool (like photography) and how you use that tool can be good or bad.
Running with the photography analogy. Let's say I cannot paint but I can point a camera at a mountain and take a picture. It may be a good picture or a bad one but I am the one chosing the view, the light, the angle etc. Now if I simply took a famous photo let's say Ansel Adams' view of Yosemite and called it my own that would be plagerism out and out. Yet if I took an Ansel Adams and cut it up and did something new with it that would be my inspiration (say Andy Warhol and his can of Campbell's soup. He didn't design the can but he did use the image to say something about the America of his day). At the heart of true art lies intention and originality, even if the image is created from existing images.
I feel a lot of what passes for AI art is actually illustration created from somebody saying "Give me a snowy cottage in the woods" rather than someone saying "How can I use this to say something different?"
Interesting choice of image. Most art histories credit Marcel duChamp with the piece, however in the History of art without men Katy Hessel suggests it was the idea (and creation sic) of Baroness Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven (there's a mouthful) and says "... after the 'readymade' had been scandalously rejected by the Society of Independant Artists, Duchamp penned a rather telling letter to his sister Suzanne, wirting 'One of my female friends, under a masculine pseudonym Richard Mutt, sent in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture.' she goes on to say JL Mott Iron Works, whom Duchamp claimed he bought the urinal from, have no record of the product."
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 line, if indeed you can legitimately bisect it?
The future of AI ? I give you Ai-Da
In addition here are some thoughts from Mad Penguin on the role and future role of AI in writing. Similar considerations to that in art.
www.madpenguin.org
In addition here are some thoughts from Mad Penguin on the role and future role of AI in writing. Similar considerations to that in art.
Can AI write books? - Mad Penguin
Can AI Write Books? Direct Answer: While AI can generate text that resembles books, and even entire novels, the answer […]
www.madpenguin.org
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Harpo
Getting away with it
The “female friend” might also have been himself under his Rrose Selavy alias, or possibly Louise Norton, who wrote an essay on the piece for Blindman No.2 (May 1917)
Harpo
Getting away with it
Harpo
Getting away with it
And for Baronness Elsa herself, scroll down to page 442 here
Interesting stuff.
I am not sure it would be Duchamp (refering to a female alias of himself using a male alias) but stranger things happen. There is also the possiblity that Hessel is trying to create a narative about a female artist being sidelined by a man but you wouldn't really need to go far for that.
The reason I thought it interesting though is that it calls into question not just what is art but where is the art? If we say that Duchamp's act of exhibiting it is art then if he didn't and the artist is unknown can it said to be any different to find a dropped pen on the floor of the National Gallery. Is art just a state of mind in the eye of the beholder.
I discovered a critics discussion on this very subject
Swank
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Just like how food and excrement are both natural, so I ought to eat both?
No, that's a dumb argument.
This lovely documentary on Duchamp may give you food for thought on your question. Very good Youtube channel overall btw.
Spoilers, (if you want watch to the end of the video): I'd say on the dropped pen scenario you put, I'd say it would be art if an artist had deliberately created or curated the 'installation' of the dropped pen. So I believe art requires someone to deliberately create it, to engineer an emotional or conceptual response in a beholder. And also it requires a beholder to view the object/installation.
To give an example of something I would say is not art. If I climb up a hill and take in the view of a landscape around me, I could see it as beautiful and awe-inspiring...but it's not art. (A theist may disagree if they see their creator everywhere and see deliberate creation, but I am not one of those!) If, however, I were to whip out my camera and choose and compose a picture of the view, then such a picture does become art.
So I suppose I'm arguing that if someone chooses an AI image to embody some emotional response or idea and they publish to be viewed, then it is, in this 'Duchamp' sense. They haven't quite created it, other than in the input of terms for the AI to digest, but they will have chosen the image (or 'Readymade' perhaps?) from many (one presumes). This on one level seems lacking in any artistic expertise, but I could argue that there must be a degree of skill required that the "AI artist" needs to find the image that best represents what they want to say.
I'm a philistine when it comes to art but I was invited to an exhibition by an artist that I had helped in creating her own exhibit. When we entered the main hall, I noticed a large scaffold in the centre and said (a bit too loudly) that I thought they should have finshed the building first before running the exhibition. My host whispered to me that it was one of the works on show. A bit like the dropped pen, I suppose.
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.
Elckerlyc
"Philosophy will clip an angel's wings."
In the case of the dropped pen it would require imho a sign labeling it as art, if only to prevent the staff from removing it as litter left by a careless visitor. It is art if it is deliberately placed there to express a certain thought, idea or feeling that caused the artist to act in this way.
You don't have to see it as art, there is no requirement to see things (ie art) as the artist does, nor does it necessarily have to evoke the same thought, idea or feeling.
If an artist uses AI to create a picture, then the AI is just a tool, albeit a very sophisticated one. It is art, though me personally would not rate it as highly as any art created without AI input. It feels a bit cheap. It may exhibit the possibilities of using AI, but says less of the creative imagination of the artist.
As I don't take the I in AI seriously, any art produced by the AI himself without any outside input (except for its programming and its, possibly biased programmers) is rehashing images that have been fed to it. People with 6 fingers is not art (unless deliberately done), but ineptitude. Not knowing or understanding what you are doing cannot be art.
You don't have to see it as art, there is no requirement to see things (ie art) as the artist does, nor does it necessarily have to evoke the same thought, idea or feeling.
If an artist uses AI to create a picture, then the AI is just a tool, albeit a very sophisticated one. It is art, though me personally would not rate it as highly as any art created without AI input. It feels a bit cheap. It may exhibit the possibilities of using AI, but says less of the creative imagination of the artist.
As I don't take the I in AI seriously, any art produced by the AI himself without any outside input (except for its programming and its, possibly biased programmers) is rehashing images that have been fed to it. People with 6 fingers is not art (unless deliberately done), but ineptitude. Not knowing or understanding what you are doing cannot be art.
Vladd67
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I believe with the banana the artist sold a certificate of authenticity so the new owner can now take a banana, duct tape it to the wall and it will be regarded as the original art work.
Hang on. If I tape a banana to a wall does that make me an art forger?
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.
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.
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Glue the pen to the floor, now its art. You are only a forger if you sign the original artist's name to your tape mounted creation. The banana could actually prove to be an interesting piece of art. It starts out as a work in progress. The banana decomposes then dries out and ends up as a solid object which no longer looks like a banana but is now a permanent object.
The question seems to have become will art created by machines be considered to be art. A controller that receives some sort of signal, such as random background radiation, and changes it into a signal that can be fed into an AI art program to make decisions would not need any human input to create images.
I think that hand chipped stone arrowheads are examples of art and have been ever since people started making them. That could open the door for saying that physical money is geometric abstract art because it is simply a physical expression that has meaning.
The question seems to have become will art created by machines be considered to be art. A controller that receives some sort of signal, such as random background radiation, and changes it into a signal that can be fed into an AI art program to make decisions would not need any human input to create images.
I think that hand chipped stone arrowheads are examples of art and have been ever since people started making them. That could open the door for saying that physical money is geometric abstract art because it is simply a physical expression that has meaning.
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Swank
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