We have at least established that very boring pieces, such as Andy Warhol's Empire, Kazimir Malevich's White on White, and John Cage's As Slow As Possible, are not art.
I think you're saying bad art is still art, but I'm unsure what to do with the second sentence. I'm toying with "an encoding of art is not art", which might mean that art has to be available to an audience.
As can a photo of one (sorry, I don't have a good example of that).
And, both a camera and AI are an example of "using a tool to create an image of something". Both involve a creator to determine what picture is created; but the tool is central/crucial to the creation.
When I was about 12 a car crashed in my quiet street (somebody tried to drive it through a concrete fence), so the next day I sat in the street and did an ink drawing of the wreckage with a mapping pen nib. That was excellent art. Then I stole one of the gigantic suspension springs and took it home to use as a stool, which by some silly definitions was also an act of art. But this all evades the original question about whether the actual car crash is art for evoking feelings, or whether art in fact must involve pictures, or human communication, or what. It's one of the impossible definitions, along with "intelligence" and "freedom". I'm a fan of "I know it when I see it".
I would never argue that a painting of a car crash couldn’t be art. It’s funny your bringing up that a camera is a tool for creating art; I also hold photographic art in lower esteem than other kinds of visual art (though I still think some kind of photography can be art).
At a certain point, we need to be realistic about the amount of effort involved in artistic creation. Here’s a thought experiment: someone puts two paintings in a photocopier and makes a single sheet of paper with both paintings. Did that person create art? They certainly had the vision to put those two specific paintings together, and they used a tool to create that vision in reality!
> Here’s a thought experiment: someone puts two paintings in a photocopier and makes a single sheet of paper with both paintings. Did that person create art?
Yeah, it gets really murky there. For that specific thought experiment, I would say it depends on if it's something that people will see and think about and talk about, etc. For example, a collection of pairs of images of people that were assassinated over the years and an image of their assassin would certain get people talking (some in a good way, some bad).
When it comes to effort, I think that's only a factor, too; and not even necessarily a good one. There's art out there like
- Someone taped a banana to a wall (and included instructions for taping another banana to replace it)
- Someone (literally) threw a few cans of paint at a canvas and created something chaotic looking
Both of those things are "low effort" at first glance. But someone spent time thinking about it, and what they wanted to do, and what people might think of it. And, without a doubt, there's people that would refer to both as art.
It's going to be "creativity" (another hazy definition!) rather than effort, though. Photography, often said to be all about framing, seems very low effort. You might take one lucky snap. Then the effort can be claimed to be in years of getting ready to be lucky, which is a fair point, but that displaced effort isn't really in the specific photo. Besides, maybe you're a very happy photographer, loved every minute of learning your craft, and found it no effort at all, just really interesting.
Yeah, photography (editing aside) is about having taste and getting lucky. A good photographer can of course raise their odds of getting lucky, but still. There's some technique in there too, but that's really not all that complicated. That said, I think few things match a good photo. There's something about a photo subject being real that I find fascinating. A photo exhibition does not display the imagination of the photographers, but rather the incredible in the real world.
AI doesn’t make art. The
OP is trying to fit the square peg of their intuitive understanding about the art creation process into the round hole of generating it via AI
Yes, but: when I was young I used to love photorealism and hyperrealism, which is super-smooth-and-shiny art that conceals its process in order to awe simpletons. Then I bought an airbrush, and then true color computer graphics happened, and soon after that I began to appreciate brush strokes and the texture of pen marks and the idea of the personality of the artist's hand. But that doesn't mean the process-hiding stuff is non-art, or even bad art. What's wrong with creating an amazingly convincing illusion, wasn't that always the goal, historically? Also there are no prizes for effort, and if your artwork is only struggle, I don't want to see it. Unless you're really badass about it.
I really like Cory Doctorow’s description of why it feels empty, quote:
“Herein lies the problem with AI art. Just like with a law school letter of reference generated from three bullet points, the prompt given to an AI to produce creative writing or an image is the sum total of the communicative intent infused into the work. The prompter has a big, numinous, irreducible feeling and they want to infuse it into a work in order to materialize versions of that feeling in your mind and mine. When they deliver a single line's worth of description into the prompt box, then – by definition – that's the only part that carries any communicative freight.”
OK, but then there's the possibility of reestablishing the bandwidth by selecting the output. If the artist selects one AI image from hundreds, that's like photography, or collage, or "found sculpture" if you can dig it. Then we can do away with the need for hundreds of versions by saying that the artist selected this image from among all the assorted sights seen during the day to frame as art and present to the viewer, and that's just like picking a preferred version from among hundreds, and thus is just like crafting an image. Tenuously. (This falls apart because the selectivity of the selection isn't good enough, I guess. But the process - throwing away bad ideas as you go along - is just like drawing.)
Sort of. It’s like selecting from hundreds of versions of a letter of reference that word the same three bullet points slightly differently. It still feels empty to me, but I guess that’s personal.
art without will is like street vomit: it might be pretty but it's just lumps of old content arranged how you'd expect. less than food; more a waste than a triumph. and it always smells the same.
the street vomit photographer is offering a bit more art through his choices but I can already see he makes poor choices
The math puzzles like this are supposed to show deep mastery. I assure you that you don’t need DP in 99.999% if cases as well, but idiots are still asking house robber.
If the blame were solely on the user then we'd see similar rates of deaths from gun violence in the US vs. other countries. But we don't, because users are influenced by the UX
Somehow people don't kill people nearly as easily, or with as high of a frequency or social support, in places that don't have guns that are more accessible than healthcare. So weird.
This is also why I kind of hate it when rich people say that money doesn't make you happy. It's true, it doesn't but if you don't know how to pay for your next meal or worse your kids next meal, or you're sick and can't afford good care, then money does make all the difference.
In mathematical terms money might not be sufficient to make you happy, but it's a necessary condition indeed.
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