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Not trying to denigrate the amazing technical skill needed to make this thing, but from the point of view of someone who makes art, this is a pastiche image mak
by kengor 7y ago
Not trying to denigrate the amazing technical skill needed to make this thing, but from the point of view of someone who makes art, this is a pastiche image maker. I have yet to see AI generate anything that's not a combination of existing images and techniques.
Probably wading into murky philosophical waters here but I reckon art needs to be more than a nice 'arty' looking image to be considered any good. If you are going to make Art that is worth the capital 'A' on the front, then it has to mean something.
However I suspect the days of actually making Art are in the past. We're on to something else now. Not necessarily better or worse, just different. Art is an old idea, not entirely relevant any more.
- eshaysadlay 7y agoWhen did art ever require purpose? Who decides what is and isn't art? Very tricky path to trod down.
- jp555 7y agoI thought one of the ideas was to build into this a way to let people pick the good stuff. Which is to ask if Audiences are never wrong?
- qzxvwt 7y agoit isn’t possible to create something that doesn’t serve a purpose. what “good” artists and other art professionals have that makes them experts is 1) an understanding of this fact, then 2) knowledge of semiotics and history among other related areas that afford as deep an understanding of potential meanings as possible — this is the tricky part, because it requires real work
- valentinvieriu 7y agoIn this case, you decide. You click that Favorite button and it's a decision you make. The AI artist has a set of rules that learned from the previous trained art pieces, but the final shape, and the final decision is yours. You like it or not, and it's quite personal too.
- iakh 7y agoNot trying to denigrate artists, but as somebody that admittedly doesn't appreciate art, I'm still not sure how artists aren't just pastiche image maker themselves. Based on your comment, I'm not entirely clear what the difference is
- hug 7y agoCan this machine, beautiful art though it may make, look at the work of the cubists and spontaneously generate Gehry? Without Mondrian, would it find beauty in clean abstract lines and sharp angles? Can it, by itself, come up with the concept of neoplasticism and implement that, in any way, to create a new beautiful artwork? Would the AI, not for Klimt, have an appreciation for how casually erotic the female form can be? Does it, yet, have this appreciation? I don't know, and I'm sure it doesn't either.
- nineteen999 7y ago> I don't know, and I'm sure it doesn't either. Even more pertinently, it doesn't care.
- tartoran 7y agoI might stretch it further that it can’t even care because the machine does not have the capability to care.
- nineteen999 7y agoI think to the average human, that was implicit in my comment, but for the benefit of the machines, it's good to spell it out.
- craftinator 7y agoWell said. I actually do appreciate many forms of art, but I feel that many artist (that I know) are just a mixture of regurgitators and expert salesmen. They make something random, then come up with a backstory that makes it somewhat interesting. This AI can out perform them, without the need for the ingenuous hook story.
- mattkevan 7y agoAll art (and innovation, really) is about combining existing things in new and unexpected ways. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a machine or person that creates the end result, the art is in the process. It’s just that with machines and deep learning we can try more variations in a much shorter period of time. No more waiting to see whether that bunch of disaffected art students sitting around drinking absinthe and smoking strong cigarettes come up with anything good, get a bunch of computers to do it in a fraction of the time - and with far less angst.
- tacheiordache 7y agoThose computers don’t really think. Whatch what you wish for, future might just look like that.
- thomk 7y agoI agree with you. I think the reason AI hasn't made anything but derivatives is in part because machines are not sentient. 100% of AI is machine learning, there is no heart or conscience. However art is anything that moves you and the paintings on this website are most definitely moving to me. I find them terrifying and a lot of that has to do with the fact that a machine made them. There isn't anything really grotesque there. (Grotesque is a blend of horror and empathy. Horror is a scary guy in a mask holding a bloody axe or things jumping out at you. Grotesque is a person maimed.) This site has, in my opinion, art that is nauseatingly scary. It is scary in part because its soulless and part because it's a mirror of how a machine sees humanity. Regardless of how it was made, it moved me therefore from my perspective: It is art.
- weerd 7y agoThere really is something nauseating or repulsive about this. I've had the same feeling with other ML generated images. It's alien and familiar at the same time.
- thomk 7y agoIt reminds me of this nightmare that was making the rounds a while back: https://sea.mashable.com/culture/3430/people-cant-figure-out-what-the-hell-is-happening-in-this-photo https://sea.mashable.com/culture/3430/people-cant-figure-out...
- tartoran 7y agoIt is only familiar because it was trained on familiar work.
- Fnoord 7y ago> 100% of AI is machine learning, there is no heart or conscience. And, because AI implies heart and/or conscience, ML is a much better term because it is more accurate and describing.
- thomk 7y agoVery well stated
- gdubs 7y agoI’ve been exploring this space and find myself thinking of Andy Warhol. I would definitely consider him an artist. A great one even. But his work was quite different from Picasso. Warhol had a factory. His silkscreens were often done by assistants. It said something about the Modern Industrial Age. His work raised questions about authorship, authenticity, etc. I found myself thinking about similar things when I trained a neural net to make art: who’s the artist? Me, or the machine?
- nabla9 7y agoThat art moves person who sees it is more important than how original it is. Originality is how artists signal to their peers and scene their value. It's relatively modern concept. Art existed before originality was considered a value and it probably exists after the originality stops being an issue.
- qaq 7y agoI have yet to see 99.999% of artists "generate anything that's not a combination of existing images and techniques". As mere mortals are not in a position to hang the works of 0,0001% that can this AI art can be a reasonable alternative.
- davidajackson 7y agoWhat if I make the argument I think this art is more beautiful, because of the interesting way it was generated? Relevant quote from Feynman about art: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/184384-i-have-a-friend-who-s-an-artist-and-has-sometimes https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/184384-i-have-a-friend-who-... I like art too and make some myself (musical). But I happen to think art is just what each viewer thinks of it. I don't know enough about visual art to know whether this is a "pastiche image maker", though I suspect AI won't make that for long, if it is.