6 ms·

This only re-enforces what I already believe; that most critics — and especially art critics — mistake what they don't understand for deeper meaning. There is a

by ghusto 4y ago

This only re-enforces what I already believe; that most critics — and especially art critics — mistake what they don't understand for deeper meaning. There is a snobbery in the art world that arises from a lack of self-confidence, resulting in an emperors-new-clothes situation. So an image like this — which by the way, I will admit I find on some level beautiful and interesting to look at — which doesn't have any intention behind it, is thought to probably be be some kind of deep art.

bilekas 4y ago
I'm inclined to agree. I like the image, its pleasing to me. So that's all I personally care for. There seems to be a debate though over 'what is art?' more-so than anything else as alluded to in the article : > Still, as long as new artistic tools emerge, the "Is it art?" debate will likely continue as long as there are people to have the discussion. For me the question is moot.
- tommiegannert 4y ago
  > There seems to be a debate though over 'what is art?' The question matters deeply to those trying to make art tradeable. Their business is about maintaining scarcity (a.k.a. non-fungibility), so they'll spend up to some portion of their profit margins on gatekeeping and defending terminology.
  - fbn79 4y ago
    Making a parallelism with Fountain by "Duchamp". Duchamp is the Artist not the company that designed and produced the urinal. The same way the Artist is the person that summoned the AI to get that picture.
    - beardyw 4y ago
      Fountain very particularly didn't try to be something it wasn't and didn't win a prize. It was genuinely disruptive to the concept of what is art. This is almost the opposite - something folks here say they would hang on their wall. But that would apply if it was a copy of someone else's picture. To some extent that is what it is. Not sure in that case it should win a prize.
    - andybak 4y ago
      You mean by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven? :) https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2014/11/01/did-marcel-duchamp-steal-elsas-urinal https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2014/11/01/did-marcel-ducham...
  - isitmadeofglass 4y ago
    The people defending art aren’t the artists. They don’t care about the sanctity of the annotation. They create stuff that people value and buy, it doesn’t matter to them if people call it art or anything else. The people up in arms are the critics, the gallery owners, the rich kids who collect items made by people good at making interesting stuff. Because if art isn’t special, if it doesn’t have some deep rooted special meaning that transcends reality. They are not better than the sports commentators and shopkeepers they so desperately try to elevate themselves above.
- lancesells 4y ago
  It looks like a nice image of concept art you would see on Deviantart or maybe the cover for a sci-fi book. I typically consider images used to sell other products "content" and not "art". In this case it was intended as "art" so it's therefore art. That said, I think it's uninspired and derivative and does nothing for me. It does seems "skilled" in the sense that there's a decent use of anatomy, lighting, and composition. So on first glance it's a pretty image which might be all someone wants and to each their own. I would love to see the high-res image though to see if it holds up in the actual details. AI tools seem to have a hard time with actually making sense in the details and has a really hard grasp on things like hands (which are difficult for humans).
  - pgcj_poster 4y ago
    > there's a decent use of anatomy All of the arms in the scene are melted stubs. The subject in the middle has what looks like an insect's leg jutting out of her waist. > I would love to see the high-res image though to see if it holds up in the actual details. It clearly doesn't. The judges probably thought that there was something cool about the visual weirdness of the piece—which indeed there is. However, it's much less interesting when you know that the melting arms aren't the artist intentionally playing with form—it's just a machine not knowing what arms are.
    - lancesells 4y ago
      > All of the arms in the scene are melted stubs. The subject in the middle has what looks like an insect's leg jutting out of her waist. I think you're right but it's so hard to see in the Ars pic.
me_me_me 4y ago
There was a big stunt few years back in modern art scene. A locally famous guy was showing and selling modern art painting by his upcoming protege, it got some traction and interest from buyers and critics. Then he revealed it was a chimp throwing paint at canvas. (Especially modern) art scene is the emperors-new-clothes situation + speculation + tax avoidance blended together.
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  Now, that is performance art. :) There is something to the "the emperor has no clothes" situation, but also, there is more than that to art.
lynndotpy 4y ago
> which doesn't have any intention behind it Except that it does. > "I have been exploring a special prompt that I will be publishing at a later date, I have created 100s of images using it, and after many weeks of fine tuning and curating my gens, I chose my top 3 A human made the '100s of images', and finessed it down to get what they're looking for. Then, this human picked their favorite. Presumably the human also named this. There's plenty of human intention here.
- ghusto 4y ago
  Not what I meant by intention, I meant intention in the individual pieces. In other words, the intention of the AI, not the user using the AI.
  - jhugo 4y ago
    The AI is just a tool they used to produce an image. They could have written another type of computer program and produced something that would be called, for example, generative art. The headline is clickbaity; a human won an art contest with a piece of art that was the output of a computer program.
  - obstroperous 4y ago
    This is like saying I used Paint Shop Pro in the 90s and applied a Gaussian blur and you asking "what is the intention of the computer program." There is no intention. It's a technology, not an active agent in society.
- taylorius 4y ago
  If that human had hired 5 painters to paint images (instead of the AI), told them what to paint, and refined his instructions to them over the production of 10 rounds of canvases - would anyone consider that human to be the artist? He's a client.
  - kruuuder 4y ago
    Yeah that's the point of the discussion, the lines are blurring. In your example, you cannot deny that the client has done at least some amount of artistic work, too. If you insist that they are 100% client and 0% artist, then let's look at other situations: What about an art director at a video game company? 0% artist?
itronitron 4y ago
This is the type of image that is commonly found on paperback book covers. The figures and setting suggest a rich backstory to entice someone to buy the book, there is no deeper meaning to be gained and no self-respecting art critic would waste their time on this.
- JackFr 4y ago
  The grey tells me you're being downvoted, but I couldn't agree more. That being said, were this actually painted by a human it would display a high level of technical competence with brushes and paints.
tsol 4y ago
People keep trying to read into this as a reflection of the art world, but it was only a State Fair art contest. It's kind of interesting but no surprise that it doesn't have the most rigorous entry process. They probably based their rating on how detailed and unique the artwork is-- and Midjourney is known for making very complex and detailed scenes.
mrtksn 4y ago
I think this is a wrong interpretation. If you think about it, the we convey meaning is through "compressing" the meaning as light and sound in a way that once received it will trigger meaning in similar to us organisms. Essentially, for us to transfer knowledge, the receiver end also needs to be trained to decode it and that's why it's impossible to have meaning transfer to a party that is not ready to understand it. Math equations mean nothing to a person not literate in math and a relationship advice means nothing to a person who never had one(can be capable to misinterpret it though) but also depend on who said it in what context. Your mother saying "I love you" is completely different from your SO saying "I love you", despite having the exact same structure no matter if its transferred through sound, ink, electronic display or braille. This means, the light patterns that we call image mean completely different things depending on who created them. The art critics or curators don't simply look at the image and understand something from it, they know the artist they know the trends they know the word on the street and they try to understand how the artwork fits in all this. The same straight line image made by Picasso, made by Dali, made by a toddler and made by AI would have completely different meaning and value. Most tech nerds have no decoders to decode artistic meaning and as a result they will look down on not only critics but also artists. Sometimes meaning can be conveyed by analogies but for that the artistic counterpart needs to special effort.
exitb 4y ago
I wouldn't assume that all AI creates is devoid of any meaning. The meaning can be there, copied off the source material is the same way it copies brushes, themes and other features.
fleddr 4y ago
Or this deeper meaning having no meaning or relevance. I once was in a modern art museum featuring an enormous room. In one corner were 3 beach chairs. That was the art. The curator encouraged me to think deeply about the piece, its meaning, its intent, the artist behind it. Yes, I'd call that snobbery.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  I don't think anyone is saying it doesn't exist.
bArray 4y ago
> This only re-enforces what I already believe; that most critics — and especially art critics — mistake what they don't understand for deeper meaning. To be fair to the AI, I believe it was trained on both real life and other art of high visual quality - I wouldn't be surprised if it has actually encapsulated deeper meaning without the developers intention to do so. > So an image like this — which by the way, I will admit I find on some level beautiful and interesting to look at — which doesn't have any intention behind it, is thought to probably be be some kind of deep art. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I believe meaning is also the same. Many poems for example have been misunderstood from the poets original meaning, but that doesn't stop it being meaningful. Music is much the same. Just because the AI didn't have intention when creating the art, doesn't mean that it didn't capture it. Nature didn't have intention of deep meaning over millions/billions of years, yet we can take a photo that has deeper meaning than the subject matter itself. With the photo you may argue "the artistry is from the composition process", but one can argue that the person generating the AI art also went through a selection process, and chose three pieces that they found compelling. I don't think AI art being chosen proves anything about critics. We have, also, not seen the competition either, and cannot come to _any_ conclusions about the result.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Part of the art world is trying to understand what the artist means, sometimes there's a deeper meaning and sometimes not, and that's part of the fun of art interpretation. You just have to try to fine tune your BS alert.

by ghusto 4y ago

bilekas 4y ago

I'm inclined to agree. I like the image, its pleasing to me. So that's all I personally care for. There seems to be a debate though over 'what is art?' more-so than anything else as alluded to in the article : > Still, as long as new artistic tools emerge, the "Is it art?" debate will likely continue as long as there are people to have the discussion. For me the question is moot.

tommiegannert 4y ago
> There seems to be a debate though over 'what is art?' The question matters deeply to those trying to make art tradeable. Their business is about maintaining scarcity (a.k.a. non-fungibility), so they'll spend up to some portion of their profit margins on gatekeeping and defending terminology.
- fbn79 4y ago
  Making a parallelism with Fountain by "Duchamp". Duchamp is the Artist not the company that designed and produced the urinal. The same way the Artist is the person that summoned the AI to get that picture.
  - beardyw 4y ago
    Fountain very particularly didn't try to be something it wasn't and didn't win a prize. It was genuinely disruptive to the concept of what is art. This is almost the opposite - something folks here say they would hang on their wall. But that would apply if it was a copy of someone else's picture. To some extent that is what it is. Not sure in that case it should win a prize.
  - andybak 4y ago
    You mean by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven? :) https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2014/11/01/did-marcel-duchamp-steal-elsas-urinal https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2014/11/01/did-marcel-ducham...
- isitmadeofglass 4y ago
  The people defending art aren’t the artists. They don’t care about the sanctity of the annotation. They create stuff that people value and buy, it doesn’t matter to them if people call it art or anything else. The people up in arms are the critics, the gallery owners, the rich kids who collect items made by people good at making interesting stuff. Because if art isn’t special, if it doesn’t have some deep rooted special meaning that transcends reality. They are not better than the sports commentators and shopkeepers they so desperately try to elevate themselves above.
lancesells 4y ago
It looks like a nice image of concept art you would see on Deviantart or maybe the cover for a sci-fi book. I typically consider images used to sell other products "content" and not "art". In this case it was intended as "art" so it's therefore art. That said, I think it's uninspired and derivative and does nothing for me. It does seems "skilled" in the sense that there's a decent use of anatomy, lighting, and composition. So on first glance it's a pretty image which might be all someone wants and to each their own. I would love to see the high-res image though to see if it holds up in the actual details. AI tools seem to have a hard time with actually making sense in the details and has a really hard grasp on things like hands (which are difficult for humans).
- pgcj_poster 4y ago
  > there's a decent use of anatomy All of the arms in the scene are melted stubs. The subject in the middle has what looks like an insect's leg jutting out of her waist. > I would love to see the high-res image though to see if it holds up in the actual details. It clearly doesn't. The judges probably thought that there was something cool about the visual weirdness of the piece—which indeed there is. However, it's much less interesting when you know that the melting arms aren't the artist intentionally playing with form—it's just a machine not knowing what arms are.
  - lancesells 4y ago
    > All of the arms in the scene are melted stubs. The subject in the middle has what looks like an insect's leg jutting out of her waist. I think you're right but it's so hard to see in the Ars pic.

me_me_me 4y ago

There was a big stunt few years back in modern art scene. A locally famous guy was showing and selling modern art painting by his upcoming protege, it got some traction and interest from buyers and critics. Then he revealed it was a chimp throwing paint at canvas. (Especially modern) art scene is the emperors-new-clothes situation + speculation + tax avoidance blended together.

actionfromafar 4y ago
Now, that is performance art. :) There is something to the "the emperor has no clothes" situation, but also, there is more than that to art.

lynndotpy 4y ago

> which doesn't have any intention behind it Except that it does. > "I have been exploring a special prompt that I will be publishing at a later date, I have created 100s of images using it, and after many weeks of fine tuning and curating my gens, I chose my top 3 A human made the '100s of images', and finessed it down to get what they're looking for. Then, this human picked their favorite. Presumably the human also named this. There's plenty of human intention here.

ghusto 4y ago
Not what I meant by intention, I meant intention in the individual pieces. In other words, the intention of the AI, not the user using the AI.
- jhugo 4y ago
  The AI is just a tool they used to produce an image. They could have written another type of computer program and produced something that would be called, for example, generative art. The headline is clickbaity; a human won an art contest with a piece of art that was the output of a computer program.
- obstroperous 4y ago
  This is like saying I used Paint Shop Pro in the 90s and applied a Gaussian blur and you asking "what is the intention of the computer program." There is no intention. It's a technology, not an active agent in society.
taylorius 4y ago
If that human had hired 5 painters to paint images (instead of the AI), told them what to paint, and refined his instructions to them over the production of 10 rounds of canvases - would anyone consider that human to be the artist? He's a client.
- kruuuder 4y ago
  Yeah that's the point of the discussion, the lines are blurring. In your example, you cannot deny that the client has done at least some amount of artistic work, too. If you insist that they are 100% client and 0% artist, then let's look at other situations: What about an art director at a video game company? 0% artist?

itronitron 4y ago

This is the type of image that is commonly found on paperback book covers. The figures and setting suggest a rich backstory to entice someone to buy the book, there is no deeper meaning to be gained and no self-respecting art critic would waste their time on this.

JackFr 4y ago
The grey tells me you're being downvoted, but I couldn't agree more. That being said, were this actually painted by a human it would display a high level of technical competence with brushes and paints.

tsol 4y ago

People keep trying to read into this as a reflection of the art world, but it was only a State Fair art contest. It's kind of interesting but no surprise that it doesn't have the most rigorous entry process. They probably based their rating on how detailed and unique the artwork is-- and Midjourney is known for making very complex and detailed scenes.

mrtksn 4y ago

I think this is a wrong interpretation. If you think about it, the we convey meaning is through "compressing" the meaning as light and sound in a way that once received it will trigger meaning in similar to us organisms. Essentially, for us to transfer knowledge, the receiver end also needs to be trained to decode it and that's why it's impossible to have meaning transfer to a party that is not ready to understand it. Math equations mean nothing to a person not literate in math and a relationship advice means nothing to a person who never had one(can be capable to misinterpret it though) but also depend on who said it in what context. Your mother saying "I love you" is completely different from your SO saying "I love you", despite having the exact same structure no matter if its transferred through sound, ink, electronic display or braille. This means, the light patterns that we call image mean completely different things depending on who created them. The art critics or curators don't simply look at the image and understand something from it, they know the artist they know the trends they know the word on the street and they try to understand how the artwork fits in all this. The same straight line image made by Picasso, made by Dali, made by a toddler and made by AI would have completely different meaning and value. Most tech nerds have no decoders to decode artistic meaning and as a result they will look down on not only critics but also artists. Sometimes meaning can be conveyed by analogies but for that the artistic counterpart needs to special effort.

exitb 4y ago

I wouldn't assume that all AI creates is devoid of any meaning. The meaning can be there, copied off the source material is the same way it copies brushes, themes and other features.

fleddr 4y ago

Or this deeper meaning having no meaning or relevance. I once was in a modern art museum featuring an enormous room. In one corner were 3 beach chairs. That was the art. The curator encouraged me to think deeply about the piece, its meaning, its intent, the artist behind it. Yes, I'd call that snobbery.

stjohnswarts 4y ago
I don't think anyone is saying it doesn't exist.

bArray 4y ago

> This only re-enforces what I already believe; that most critics — and especially art critics — mistake what they don't understand for deeper meaning. To be fair to the AI, I believe it was trained on both real life and other art of high visual quality - I wouldn't be surprised if it has actually encapsulated deeper meaning without the developers intention to do so. > So an image like this — which by the way, I will admit I find on some level beautiful and interesting to look at — which doesn't have any intention behind it, is thought to probably be be some kind of deep art. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I believe meaning is also the same. Many poems for example have been misunderstood from the poets original meaning, but that doesn't stop it being meaningful. Music is much the same. Just because the AI didn't have intention when creating the art, doesn't mean that it didn't capture it. Nature didn't have intention of deep meaning over millions/billions of years, yet we can take a photo that has deeper meaning than the subject matter itself. With the photo you may argue "the artistry is from the composition process", but one can argue that the person generating the AI art also went through a selection process, and chose three pieces that they found compelling. I don't think AI art being chosen proves anything about critics. We have, also, not seen the competition either, and cannot come to _any_ conclusions about the result.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Part of the art world is trying to understand what the artist means, sometimes there's a deeper meaning and sometimes not, and that's part of the fun of art interpretation. You just have to try to fine tune your BS alert.