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Adam Dalliance

@gumwars Yep. Sounds like we do indeed disagree.

Art is what artists do, far from being in the eye of the beholder, the beholders are generally ignorant proles who wouldn't know art if you smacked them around the face with it. 😆

An artist may use whatever they find, including large pixel models, but just typing out a prompt and selecting from the results isn't expression or feeling.

It's not art, it's just iconography.

29 Jun 2023 at 17:01 | Wall-to-wall | Open on boing.world
8 comments
Gumwars

@pre As a point of discussion, and evidence pointing to the oddity of your statement, take Mark Rothko's work as an example. Saying simply that "Art is what artists do" begs the question, what is art, exactly? Rothko is known for absurdly simple work, nothing more than blobs of color on canvas. No knowledge of anatomy, nature, color, or any of the skills commonly associated with the masters convey, even in deconstructed or abstract expression. (continued p1)

29 Jun 2023 at 17:06 | Open on mastodon.social
Gumwars

@pre (p2) Why is AI generated imagery not a valid tool? What makes it less important, less authentic than people literally standing behind a jet engine flinging paint onto a canvas? We are looking at the first steps towards anyone being able to share what they see in their mind to the world. If this isn't a valid form of creation, then art as a medium of visual expression needs to be redefined.

29 Jun 2023 at 17:10 | Open on mastodon.social
Adam Dalliance

@gumwars If an advertising executive asks David to draw Pepper drinking a lovely can of cola, does that make the advertising executive an artist?

If you want to call these AI images art, then it's far to ask "who is the artist?" in that case.

I can see an argument for the artist being the people who produced all the training data, or maybe the team that built the model.

But definitely not the person who just typed a prompt.

They can maybe be the executive producer or something, but not the artist.

@gumwars If an advertising executive asks David to draw Pepper drinking a lovely can of cola, does that make the advertising executive an artist?

If you want to call these AI images art, then it's far to ask "who is the artist?" in that case.

I can see an argument for the artist being the people who produced all the training data, or maybe the team that built the model.

29 Jun 2023 at 17:32 | Open on boing.world
Adam Dalliance

@gumwars
The prompt itself may be art, an expression born of the suffering and emotion of the prompter who wants to tell a story.

But the image isn't art, the image is just a mashup caused by the flow of electrons in response to the art of the prompt, rather than the passion or rage of a human being being human.

29 Jun 2023 at 17:37 | Open on boing.world
Gumwars

@pre You still haven't answered the question underpinning this matter; what is art? Before we can put to bed if AI generated images can be art, or not, you need to define art itself. It isn't fair to say AI art can't exist if you can't define what art is to begin with.

29 Jun 2023 at 18:09 | Open on mastodon.social
Adam Dalliance

@gumwars Yeah I did, I said it's what artists do.

Lying in bed all day can be art if an artist does it.

Good art is born from human passion and experience, it's an expression of their frustration and pain and joy and curiosity.

Which are all things that the machine hasn't got, and which preclude it from being an artist, and so preclude it from making art.

That's these machines that are just mashing up pixel technique anyway. It may be possible one day to build a machine which can experience joy and curiosity and longing and which is about to express that.

But these machine's aren't it.

The art of AI images is in the prompt writing, and I would rather read the prompt.

@gumwars Yeah I did, I said it's what artists do.

Lying in bed all day can be art if an artist does it.

Good art is born from human passion and experience, it's an expression of their frustration and pain and joy and curiosity.

Which are all things that the machine hasn't got, and which preclude it from being an artist, and so preclude it from making art.

29 Jun 2023 at 18:14 | Open on boing.world
Adam Dalliance

@gumwars

And an artist may use these machines in their work. If they have a story to tell, and illustrate the story with photographs or a collection of pebbles or a film of a plastic bag floating, or the pixels that fall out of a pixel grinder that's all cool and legit.

But the art is in the story there, the human communication, mind to mind, not the pebbles or pixels.

29 Jun 2023 at 18:23 | Open on boing.world
Gumwars

@pre So, you're saying it's art if and only if an artist does it. Then who is and who can be an artist? I've got more than a decade of professional training as a classical artist, but I work for a railroad, am I an artist? Is what I do through stable diffusion art, while a layperson doing the same isn't? Do you see how arbitrary your definition is?

29 Jun 2023 at 19:13 | Open on mastodon.social
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