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While these results are certainly impressive, it's hard to say that they're aesthetically or artistically "good." I played around with Photoshop filters a bunc

While these results are certainly impressive, it's hard to say that they're aesthetically or artistically "good." I played around with Photoshop filters a bunch when I was younger -- there are (or used to be) a good handful of "artistic" filters, imitating watercolor, pointillism , ink drawing, etc. These style transfer results are reminiscent of nothing so much as those effects: they look superficially appealing, but have the same blind, dead quality. Maybe this is an indictment of "style" as it's typically understood? A certain brush technique does not an artwork make.

romaniv 10y ago
The moderately impressive part of these algorithms is the fact that they can "learn" a style from just one image. However, in reality they are not nearly as universal as these papers make them seem. Pretty much all my attempts to use these algorithms resulted in garbage with ugly artefacts. Which, actually, was pretty informative, since I saw exactly what kinds of features they pick up. I am disappointed that these blog posts don't include any "failed" images of that sort.
TulliusCicero 10y ago
More than likely you're just biased because you know ahead of time it was done by a computer. We could probably take one of the images, present it in the right context, like in an art gallery where we pretend that it was created by some fictional up-and-coming artist, and people would love it instead.
- bertiewhykovich 10y ago
  People will love all sorts of stupid shit if it's put in a gallery. (Commentary on that phenomenon is, in fact, an entire art movement -- readymades.) There are two questions we should be asking here: 1) Does a positive gallery reception indicate artistic value? Presumably not. 2) If we assume that these style transfers have artistic value, is it similar to the value of the original paintings? This is a more difficult question, but the answer does seem to be "no."

romaniv 10y ago

The moderately impressive part of these algorithms is the fact that they can "learn" a style from just one image. However, in reality they are not nearly as universal as these papers make them seem. Pretty much all my attempts to use these algorithms resulted in garbage with ugly artefacts. Which, actually, was pretty informative, since I saw exactly what kinds of features they pick up. I am disappointed that these blog posts don't include any "failed" images of that sort.

TulliusCicero 10y ago

More than likely you're just biased because you know ahead of time it was done by a computer. We could probably take one of the images, present it in the right context, like in an art gallery where we pretend that it was created by some fictional up-and-coming artist, and people would love it instead.

bertiewhykovich 10y ago
People will love all sorts of stupid shit if it's put in a gallery. (Commentary on that phenomenon is, in fact, an entire art movement -- readymades.) There are two questions we should be asking here: 1) Does a positive gallery reception indicate artistic value? Presumably not. 2) If we assume that these style transfers have artistic value, is it similar to the value of the original paintings? This is a more difficult question, but the answer does seem to be "no."