4 ms·

I don’t think you understand what Munch meant.

by dlkf 4y ago

gjm11 4y ago
What do you think Munch meant? I don't know whether there's more context for his quip that makes its meaning more explicit, but it looks to me as if it means: the painter, unlike the camera, is not limited to neutral depiction of actually visible things; a painting can be fantastical (showing some imagined heaven or hell) or can convey emotion as well as literal photons (enabling the viewer to share the artist's own internal heaven or hell). lioeter's comment focuses on the first of those unphotographic possibilities, and as far as that goes it's clearly correct: AI systems like DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are able to make depictions of things that don't actually exist, so that limitation of the camera has been transcended. But the same is happening to the second too. Mundanely, if you ask DALL-E for "a man standing on a bridge, expressing ..." you get quite different (and, I think, appropriate) results depending on whether you finish it with "horror, dismay, and misery" or "contentment, excitement, and joy". But that's also true if instead of "a man standing on a bridge" you put "abstract impressionist painting of a city". These systems do in fact know something about mood and atmosphere and emotion, in the sense that if you ask them for joy or misery they do produce images that communicate some degree of joy or misery. (At least sometimes. I tried asking DALL-E for "abstract impressionist painting of a man on a bridge by a fjord at sunset, expressing ..." and I can't say it made the "joy" ones any more joyful or less miserable than the "misery" ones. Same with "post-impressionist oil painting ...". I tried the same with Stable Diffusion and it also didn't really manage. Score one for Edvard Munch.) They don't seem anywhere close to being able to do that as well as human artists can, though maybe someone more skilled with prompt engineering than I am could get much better results. But they're heading in that direction.

I don’t think you understand what Munch meant.

by dlkf 4y ago

I don’t think you understand what Munch meant.

What do you think Munch meant? I don't know whether there's more context for his quip that makes its meaning more explicit, but it looks to me as if it means: the painter, unlike the camera, is not limited to neutral depiction of actually visible things; a painting can be fantastical (showing some imagined heaven or hell) or can convey emotion as well as literal photons (enabling the viewer to share the artist's own internal heaven or hell). lioeter's comment focuses on the first of those unphotographic possibilities, and as far as that goes it's clearly correct: AI systems like DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are able to make depictions of things that don't actually exist, so that limitation of the camera has been transcended. But the same is happening to the second too. Mundanely, if you ask DALL-E for "a man standing on a bridge, expressing ..." you get quite different (and, I think, appropriate) results depending on whether you finish it with "horror, dismay, and misery" or "contentment, excitement, and joy". But that's also true if instead of "a man standing on a bridge" you put "abstract impressionist painting of a city". These systems do in fact know something about mood and atmosphere and emotion, in the sense that if you ask them for joy or misery they do produce images that communicate some degree of joy or misery. (At least sometimes. I tried asking DALL-E for "abstract impressionist painting of a man on a bridge by a fjord at sunset, expressing ..." and I can't say it made the "joy" ones any more joyful or less miserable than the "misery" ones. Same with "post-impressionist oil painting ...". I tried the same with Stable Diffusion and it also didn't really manage. Score one for Edvard Munch.) They don't seem anywhere close to being able to do that as well as human artists can, though maybe someone more skilled with prompt engineering than I am could get much better results. But they're heading in that direction.