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"intention-less" - agreed. Lacking in connection with anything human. It feels like a glorified /dev/urandom. I feel empty looking at these. I once wrote a

"intention-less" - agreed. Lacking in connection with anything human. It feels like a glorified /dev/urandom. I feel empty looking at these. I once wrote a program that iterated over every combination of colours of pixels to create every possible image for the specified size - similarly empty.

krapp 5y ago
You feel empty because you know they were generated by an AI. If you didn't know that beforehand, you would probably ascribe intent to them as you would anything created by a human, you would feel something, but only because an algorithm was pushing buttons in your monkey brain. That implies "connection" and "intention" aren't properties of the art or the artist but something entirely manufactured by the viewer.
- golemotron 5y ago
  This so true.
- jl6 5y ago
  Netcraft confirms death of the author.
- ACow_Adonis 5y ago
  no, that's not entirely the case. there is, of course, the technical aspect: the blurred edges, the repeated elements, the relative placement of things and unrelated objects, a kind of statistical uniformity/ non uniformity. this is technical aspect which shows they were generated by machine and a particular implementation of neutral networks/ai. but then there's also the intentlessness that is symptomatic of a lot of modern art, and symptomatic of why a lot of people don't like modern art. these combine both aspects, and both aspects can be talked about and discussed separately. To be sure, maybe one day we'll be able to consistently generate something artistic and convincingly filled with what our minds confuse for intent, but these aren't there and ai isn't currently at that level, and there is a particular property of these that make them feel empty, just like a lot of modern art also feels empty and intentless.
  - krapp 5y ago
    >there is, of course, the technical aspect: the blurred edges, the repeated elements, the relative placement of things and unrelated objects, a kind of statistical uniformity/ non uniformity. this is technical aspect which shows they were generated by machine and a particular implementation of neutral networks/ai. I agree there is a specific signature to this algorithmically generated art that becomes recognizable after you've seen enough of it, but these elements have also been purposely employed by human artists for years, they don't objectively prove something was machine generated. If you didn't know what to look for, you would probably assume “an abstract painting of a planet ruled by little castles” was done by an artist on a digital canvas. And I could absolutely see “The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot” as an album cover. >but then there's also the intentlessness that is symptomatic of a lot of modern art, and symptomatic of why a lot of people don't like modern art. I think you're inadvertently proving my point. AI generated works feel empty and intentless not simply because of their repetition or arrangement but because they resemble modern art, which despite being created by humans is interpreted by many people as empty and intentless. This interpretation isn't a rejection of machine-generated art so much as a rejection of the aesthetics of human postmodernism.

krapp 5y ago

You feel empty because you know they were generated by an AI. If you didn't know that beforehand, you would probably ascribe intent to them as you would anything created by a human, you would feel something, but only because an algorithm was pushing buttons in your monkey brain. That implies "connection" and "intention" aren't properties of the art or the artist but something entirely manufactured by the viewer.

golemotron 5y ago
This so true.
jl6 5y ago
Netcraft confirms death of the author.
ACow_Adonis 5y ago
no, that's not entirely the case. there is, of course, the technical aspect: the blurred edges, the repeated elements, the relative placement of things and unrelated objects, a kind of statistical uniformity/ non uniformity. this is technical aspect which shows they were generated by machine and a particular implementation of neutral networks/ai. but then there's also the intentlessness that is symptomatic of a lot of modern art, and symptomatic of why a lot of people don't like modern art. these combine both aspects, and both aspects can be talked about and discussed separately. To be sure, maybe one day we'll be able to consistently generate something artistic and convincingly filled with what our minds confuse for intent, but these aren't there and ai isn't currently at that level, and there is a particular property of these that make them feel empty, just like a lot of modern art also feels empty and intentless.
- krapp 5y ago
  >there is, of course, the technical aspect: the blurred edges, the repeated elements, the relative placement of things and unrelated objects, a kind of statistical uniformity/ non uniformity. this is technical aspect which shows they were generated by machine and a particular implementation of neutral networks/ai. I agree there is a specific signature to this algorithmically generated art that becomes recognizable after you've seen enough of it, but these elements have also been purposely employed by human artists for years, they don't objectively prove something was machine generated. If you didn't know what to look for, you would probably assume “an abstract painting of a planet ruled by little castles” was done by an artist on a digital canvas. And I could absolutely see “The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot” as an album cover. >but then there's also the intentlessness that is symptomatic of a lot of modern art, and symptomatic of why a lot of people don't like modern art. I think you're inadvertently proving my point. AI generated works feel empty and intentless not simply because of their repetition or arrangement but because they resemble modern art, which despite being created by humans is interpreted by many people as empty and intentless. This interpretation isn't a rejection of machine-generated art so much as a rejection of the aesthetics of human postmodernism.