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> What would our world look like if almost all art was compressed into sensibilities and values that flatter software engineers? I suspect then artists would c

> What would our world look like if almost all art was compressed into sensibilities and values that flatter software engineers? I suspect then artists would create art that goes against these trends. I don’t know much about art but I know there are sort of two kinds of art. Commercial art meant to be sold or to sell something. That stuff follows a lot of advertising trends and gives us stuff like Material Design and Marvel movies that all feel the same. That art is relatively uninspiring but it’s not really meant to be inspiring. That stuff will be significantly affected by AI because AI art is cheap and it looks kinda okay and it’s easy to copy popular styles. And then there’s art made by weird artists that buck trends and try to make some kind of statement that isn’t really being said. (Horrible over generalization but hopefully you get my meaning.) That art will thrive in a world where most commercial art is even more soulless than it already is.

kazinator 4y ago
Stable Diff will easily out-imagine most of the "weird artists" out there; they are in fact the first victims, rather than the last holdout.
- prohobo 4y ago
  I agree, but only in the assumption that "weird artists" are not actually unique, but delusional. This is an opportunity for real artistic innovation to find a foothold, but first we'll have an existential crisis.
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    My use of weird in this sense is tautological. I’m supposing you have to be in some sense weird in order to create art that moves people. This weirdness is what allows the creator to see what we’re all seeing in a slightly different way which makes their art meaningful.
    - prohobo 4y ago
      My only problem with what you're saying is that you seem to be coming from the perspective that there already is some kind of influence of artists that buck trends, or push the boundaries of art today, or simply provide a new perspective. I'm much more cynical, or idealistic, in that I don't believe that's the case. My argument is that currently we have no such artists, or they're buried under rubble. We do have a lot of people who claim to, or are claimed to, be pushing the boundaries of art, but they actually don't have any effect at all. What we have is a lot of smoke being blown up people's butts, when the truth is that we're culturally stagnant. Going to the Tate Modern in London is like a masochist challenge to see who can emerge from it with enough energy to say things like "wow, that's cool" and desperately try to find one piece of art where they can say "that's my favorite, it really made me think". I can tell you that personally I've already said these things about some AI generated art with real enthusiasm. I still have one AI painting burned into my brain because it showed something really new to me. That's why I believe it's exactly those ambitious artists who will be hurt the most, at first. It'll be a painful realization that they can't hide from anymore, and only then will truly "weird" artists emerge.
      - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
        My partner is an artist. It’s just something they do at home, for their own benefit. They post some of it to instagram as well, but they don’t have a lot of followers. Their art is deeply meaningful. It relates to what they’re going through at any given time. What they’re feeling. Most of it is in their personal journal that they don’t usually show off. When I do get to see it, I find it moving. It’s very abstract but each piece carries emotion in a way I’d never be able to reproduce. I met a guy on the street. He’s homeless. Lives in his van by a tent city in Oakland. He wasn’t selling his paintings or anything. I dropped off some donations to these folks and got to talking with this guy. I saw his art in his van and asked to see it. It was really deep stuff emotionally. He put a lot in to it. And you know someone pushed to the sidelines who finds his best option is living in his van with folks at a tent city is going to have some interesting thoughts on the human condition. I have a few friends that DJ for music at clubs. Nothing big. They’re doing it out of passion. It’s a local scene. People appreciate them. They get paid a small stipend but it’s not about that. They want to connect with people through music. It’s about creating a moment and dancing. I remember when the local radio station lost the DJs on air that fielded calls from listeners, selected music they wanted to hear, and provided some personality for the station beyond just playing a series of tracks. They got replaced by a playlist of music. I don’t know who created the playlist or who decided how to change it day to day. I stopped listening to the station. I have never been to the Tate Modern. But there are weird artists out there making art because they feel they need to. For themselves mostly, and for others too. They have something to say, or something to explore. Stable diffusion is a wonderful tool. I’ve installed it locally on my desktop and I’ve spent countless nights prompt engineering and playing with the results. It’s really going to help artists find new ways of expression. But the human artist using the tool is what channels meaning from real life in to the medium. We may in some ways find ourselves working alongside the AI as it gets more capable. We may find ourselves in partnership with the algorithms. But human artists - the weird ones on the streets or at home making secret collages in their journals - they have a story to tell which will never go away. Those people cannot be replaced by Stable Diffusion. My partner makes collage with old photos they find from the second hand store of people they have never met, combined with cut outs of construction paper and pieces of art that come through the mail from online artists through a weekly mailer. It is the process of creating the art that has meaning for my partner. And it’s done with paper and scissors. Maybe some day they will print out some AI generated art and include it in a collage. But they will never stop making collages.
- airza 4y ago
  I could not agree less.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  It’s not about having the most imagination. It’s about imagining something that means something. When people have some common life experience that is difficult to describe, that’s where the best artists can create something that speaks to the heart in a way other people understand. Stable diffusion is completely incapable of generating something like that on its own - something that speaks to something we all feel but struggle to describe. Yes a human can use SD to generate art that does have this meaning, but in that case the deep meaning comes from the mind of the human creating the prompt and selecting the output. SD may surprise us in interesting ways, but ultimately powerful art relates to the human experience in a way that algorithms will never fully understand.
  - kazinator 4y ago
    Mostly, the meaning of art depends on who is looking at it. When encountering an art piece for the first time, we should give that meaning priority and only then receive "spoilers"; the stories about the creation of the work which may be unrelated to how we experience the work. Under Stable Diff, the same prompt can generate countless images which are substantially, even completely different from each other. Nobody would guess they are from the same prompt. Speaking of guessing about prompts, people are not always able to guess prompts; a common question is "what prompt did you use?", especially from people who don't yet understand that you need the exact seed value and version of the model to reproduce that image. The very dimensions of the image influence the content too, and some other parameters. You could blindly generate or select text for a prompt (meaning that you don't read the prompt and don't know what it is), feed it to Stable Diff, and obtain some images which invoke a meaning that you could allow to unfold without the interpretation being influenced by the prompt. The prompt isn't all that important; it sets a general thematic direction in that there will be identifiable elements in the result which are related to the prompt. Someone who believes they have a good prompt, and are after a specific result may have to generate hundreds of images with that prompt to just get one good image which matches their intent. Plus there are inpainting techniques and whatnot. Basically the prompt doesn't encode a specific, detailed meaning.
    - TaylorAlexander 4y ago

kazinator 4y ago

Stable Diff will easily out-imagine most of the "weird artists" out there; they are in fact the first victims, rather than the last holdout.

prohobo 4y ago
I agree, but only in the assumption that "weird artists" are not actually unique, but delusional. This is an opportunity for real artistic innovation to find a foothold, but first we'll have an existential crisis.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  My use of weird in this sense is tautological. I’m supposing you have to be in some sense weird in order to create art that moves people. This weirdness is what allows the creator to see what we’re all seeing in a slightly different way which makes their art meaningful.
  - prohobo 4y ago
    My only problem with what you're saying is that you seem to be coming from the perspective that there already is some kind of influence of artists that buck trends, or push the boundaries of art today, or simply provide a new perspective. I'm much more cynical, or idealistic, in that I don't believe that's the case. My argument is that currently we have no such artists, or they're buried under rubble. We do have a lot of people who claim to, or are claimed to, be pushing the boundaries of art, but they actually don't have any effect at all. What we have is a lot of smoke being blown up people's butts, when the truth is that we're culturally stagnant. Going to the Tate Modern in London is like a masochist challenge to see who can emerge from it with enough energy to say things like "wow, that's cool" and desperately try to find one piece of art where they can say "that's my favorite, it really made me think". I can tell you that personally I've already said these things about some AI generated art with real enthusiasm. I still have one AI painting burned into my brain because it showed something really new to me. That's why I believe it's exactly those ambitious artists who will be hurt the most, at first. It'll be a painful realization that they can't hide from anymore, and only then will truly "weird" artists emerge.
    - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
      My partner is an artist. It’s just something they do at home, for their own benefit. They post some of it to instagram as well, but they don’t have a lot of followers. Their art is deeply meaningful. It relates to what they’re going through at any given time. What they’re feeling. Most of it is in their personal journal that they don’t usually show off. When I do get to see it, I find it moving. It’s very abstract but each piece carries emotion in a way I’d never be able to reproduce. I met a guy on the street. He’s homeless. Lives in his van by a tent city in Oakland. He wasn’t selling his paintings or anything. I dropped off some donations to these folks and got to talking with this guy. I saw his art in his van and asked to see it. It was really deep stuff emotionally. He put a lot in to it. And you know someone pushed to the sidelines who finds his best option is living in his van with folks at a tent city is going to have some interesting thoughts on the human condition. I have a few friends that DJ for music at clubs. Nothing big. They’re doing it out of passion. It’s a local scene. People appreciate them. They get paid a small stipend but it’s not about that. They want to connect with people through music. It’s about creating a moment and dancing. I remember when the local radio station lost the DJs on air that fielded calls from listeners, selected music they wanted to hear, and provided some personality for the station beyond just playing a series of tracks. They got replaced by a playlist of music. I don’t know who created the playlist or who decided how to change it day to day. I stopped listening to the station. I have never been to the Tate Modern. But there are weird artists out there making art because they feel they need to. For themselves mostly, and for others too. They have something to say, or something to explore. Stable diffusion is a wonderful tool. I’ve installed it locally on my desktop and I’ve spent countless nights prompt engineering and playing with the results. It’s really going to help artists find new ways of expression. But the human artist using the tool is what channels meaning from real life in to the medium. We may in some ways find ourselves working alongside the AI as it gets more capable. We may find ourselves in partnership with the algorithms. But human artists - the weird ones on the streets or at home making secret collages in their journals - they have a story to tell which will never go away. Those people cannot be replaced by Stable Diffusion. My partner makes collage with old photos they find from the second hand store of people they have never met, combined with cut outs of construction paper and pieces of art that come through the mail from online artists through a weekly mailer. It is the process of creating the art that has meaning for my partner. And it’s done with paper and scissors. Maybe some day they will print out some AI generated art and include it in a collage. But they will never stop making collages.
airza 4y ago
I could not agree less.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
It’s not about having the most imagination. It’s about imagining something that means something. When people have some common life experience that is difficult to describe, that’s where the best artists can create something that speaks to the heart in a way other people understand. Stable diffusion is completely incapable of generating something like that on its own - something that speaks to something we all feel but struggle to describe. Yes a human can use SD to generate art that does have this meaning, but in that case the deep meaning comes from the mind of the human creating the prompt and selecting the output. SD may surprise us in interesting ways, but ultimately powerful art relates to the human experience in a way that algorithms will never fully understand.
- kazinator 4y ago
  Mostly, the meaning of art depends on who is looking at it. When encountering an art piece for the first time, we should give that meaning priority and only then receive "spoilers"; the stories about the creation of the work which may be unrelated to how we experience the work. Under Stable Diff, the same prompt can generate countless images which are substantially, even completely different from each other. Nobody would guess they are from the same prompt. Speaking of guessing about prompts, people are not always able to guess prompts; a common question is "what prompt did you use?", especially from people who don't yet understand that you need the exact seed value and version of the model to reproduce that image. The very dimensions of the image influence the content too, and some other parameters. You could blindly generate or select text for a prompt (meaning that you don't read the prompt and don't know what it is), feed it to Stable Diff, and obtain some images which invoke a meaning that you could allow to unfold without the interpretation being influenced by the prompt. The prompt isn't all that important; it sets a general thematic direction in that there will be identifiable elements in the result which are related to the prompt. Someone who believes they have a good prompt, and are after a specific result may have to generate hundreds of images with that prompt to just get one good image which matches their intent. Plus there are inpainting techniques and whatnot. Basically the prompt doesn't encode a specific, detailed meaning.
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago