4 ms·

I used to sell art in an upscale art gallery. People bought pieces rarely for aesthetic, but mostly for the story. They want to feel a connection to human great

• bicijay 3y ago
  Hmm im gonna disagree here. This song is actually good and veery similar to other 100s of hip hop songs released daily.
• morkalork 3y ago
  Drake is a child actor from a well off family. There's nothing authentic about him or any other top pop artist from autotune to ghostwriters. Their stories are of music label hit factories.
  • nradov 3y ago
    It's like how Kid Rock tries to project the image of a redneck shitkicker when in reality his father was a wealthy car dealership owner and he grew up in a suburban mansion. But the image sells and the fans are loyal.
    • qikInNdOutReply 3y ago
      Remember how he pandered to entrepaneurs before that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyYI957ge4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyYI957ge4c
  • jletienne 3y ago
    idk about well off, his mother was an english teacher not a hedge fund exec. nothing wrong with hiring people. If you dislike autotune and pop music, i think that’s valid. but it’s really a function of artists responding to consumer preference. there are plenty of high quality niche artists who don’t have the mainstream appeal or success
    • haliskerbas 3y ago
      Nothing wrong with hiring people. But if the song is about the story and you don’t mention someone is writing it for you, how am I supposed to know if drake actually has a side girl with an iPhone 5s that has a cracked screen which she uses to respond immediately? A widely rumored but undisclosed ghostwriter brings the authenticity into question.
  • tel 3y ago
    The optimistic side of me hopes that AI commoditizing this sort of manufactured art will help to ultimately reduce its value to larger audiences. My pessimistic side suggests that it only means that larger audiences will come to admit that they're actually interested in something other than the music. AI is going to make the pinnacle reality TV.
  • mahathu 3y ago
    > Their stories are of music label hit factories People who listen to this genre still care about them (the stories).
• satellite2 3y ago
  Because an upscale art gallery also sells -at least tacitly- resell value. While listening to music, at least when alone, only requires an appreciation for the music itself.
  • awb 3y ago
    I agree that this piece can be appreciated, but that’s about it. In terms of making money or reaching fame anywhere near the level of the original artists, I think it (and all AI generated art) will come up extremely short because it’s essentially a forgery. To buy concert tickets, T-shirts, posters, etc. you need a story.
• Kiro 3y ago
  I'm don't think the same holds true for music. I don't even know who the artists are for many of my favorite songs. I couldn't even say what most of them are called without my playlists in front of me.
  • awb 3y ago
    Sure, I can go appreciate an unknown artist’s work as well. But when it comes to buying decisions, wether it’s fine art or a concert ticket, the most money is made by selling a story. For example, if the music was enough, promoting music would look like playing a recording of songs in public places. But instead it looks like artists talking to reporters, posing for photo shoots, back stage access and producing theatrical music videos.
    • Kiro 3y ago
      > promoting music would look like playing a recording of songs in public places It is. Radio used to be it but now TikTok is the biggest promotion platform there is and those clips don't even show the name of the artist (since it's always some kind of bootleg so the credit usually points to some random username). Most music events I go to are raves where I've often never heard of the DJs beforehand. I couldn't care less about authenticity, creator-consumer connection or story. I think it's just two different ways to appreciate it, and I'm not sure "authenticity is important" is as common as you make it out to be.
  • gilleain 3y ago
    I think it's a mixture for me. I can certainly enjoy some music just as pleasant noises, or even as meaningful to _me_ rather than the meaning that the maker put into it. For example, I've always loved 'Cloudbusting' by Kate Bush which (like many of her songs) is a tiny bit silly, and not for everyone. However one day I looked up the lyrics and found that it's about Wilhelm Reich (orgonne energy) and his relationship with his son. As a result, some of the lyrics became much deeper for me, and I liked it more. I guess I don't care who a musical artist 'really' is for that authentic authenticity in their music. Do I care who Sting is as a person - his relationships, or activism? Do I care if Richard D James owns a Daimler Ferret Mark 3 Armoured Scout Car? Probably not, when it comes to their music.
• bookofjoe 3y ago
  But what if even the artist declares a work to be a forgery only to find that in fact it is genuine?
  • gilleain 3y ago
    ... and what if a bunch of experts declare that the works are genuine, only to find they were wrong? :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren
    • bookofjoe 3y ago
      Indeed: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/10/07/vermeer-at-the-national-gallery-in-washington-dc-declared-not-the-real-thing https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/10/07/vermeer-at-the-na... https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/think-you-can-spot-a-fraud-this-80-million-art-scam-fooled-experts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/think-you-can-spot-a-fraud-t... >There are experts who say half the art sold at auction is fake. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/art-authentication-forgery-jean-michel-basquiat/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/art-authentication-forgery-jean... >So, in a sense, every Beltracchi painting is an original. He just lied about who painted it. He says [he] forged a hundred artists and can do just about anyone. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/art-forger-wolfgang-beltracchis-multimillion-dollar-scam/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/art-forger-wolfgang-beltracchis... >For nearly three decades Ken Perenyi made a small fortune forging works by popular 18th- and 19th-century artists like Martin Johnson Heade, Gilbert Stuart and Charles Bird King. >Then in 1998, Mr. Perenyi says, two F.B.I. agents showed up on his doorstep, curious about a couple of paintings sold at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, ostensibly by the maritime artist James E. Buttersworth but actually his own meticulous creations. >Over the next few years, he says, the F.B.I. continued to keep a close watch on him at his bayside bungalow here, tracking his work and where it sold, and talking to his friends and associates. Though the authorities never charged him, the scrutiny pushed Mr. Perenyi to develop what he calls “a new business model”: openly selling his faked oils as the reproductions of the finest masters. >Now they are bought by Palm Beach decorators, antiques dealers, professionals, business executives and others who want the look of cultured gentility without the price tag. >Are they sold as authentic by the people who buy them? >“During the first few years of trying to market and sell my paintings legitimately, I couldn’t say where they went or what people did with them,” Mr. Perenyi, 63, said in an interview at his home. >His forgeries, he says, financed an extravagant lifestyle that included European trips, exclusive restaurants, Versace couture and “total freedom.” He says they brought him into contact with mob enforcers, the lawyer Roy Cohn and Andy Warhol, who, he says, bought one of his forgeries, a John F. Peto. >... Mr. Perenyi, who is open in discussing his life as a swindler, is safe in the knowledge that the statute of limitations for his forgeries has passed. >Mr. Perenyi estimates that hundreds of his fakes remain in circulation. Occasionally he glimpses one (“It’s like bumping into an old friend”) in an auction catalog or in a magazine. “I miss the addictive thrill of fooling the experts,” he said. “It was great sport for me.” >A spokesman for Christie’s said that the names of consigners are confidential but noted that a work Mr. Perenyi refers to as his own, a rendering attributed to Heade of two hummingbirds that was sold in 1993, is in the artist’s catalogue raisonné, the definitive compendium of his work. The difference between Mr. Perenyi’s legal business and his criminal one is that now he makes clear his paintings are reproductions, even though they have the artist’s signature. Fraud applies only when someone actively misrepresents a copy as an original. >Mr. Perenyi said other clients did not want to speak with a reporter because they present his works as the real thing. >Authentic paintings attract collectors for a variety of reasons: an artist’s vision, a venerable reputation, investment potential or the ineffable mystique of the genuine. High-end fakes sate a different sort of desire: aesthetic cachet at a fraction of the price. >Spreading half a dozen of his Guardi replicas across the living room floor, Mr. Perenyi said he developed his artistic technique on his own and learned the forensics by working for a restorer and a frame maker when he was in his 20s. Through extensive research and trial and error, he figured out how to simulate the telltale signs of age: the distinctive spider-web cracking in the paint, the tiny dots of fly droppings, and the slimy green look of old varnish when viewed under ultraviolet light. One of his best, he says, was a Heade-style passion flower that Sothebys sold as a new discovery in 1994 for $717,500. A copy now hangs over his fireplace. https://archive.ph/TfvAz https://archive.ph/TfvAz
• zigman1 3y ago
  Yep, I completely agree. If anything, the worth of human generated art is only going to increase. The only potential disruption I see is in music as pure entertainment. Just open up YouTube trending and you can quickly understand that the everyday listeners taste is... well, not really demanding. Top commercial artists already have an army of writers and producers milking the pop music structure, in this case we will probably see the explosion of even more uninteresting pop jingles. However, as you said, authenticity and connection between the artist and the audience. There is a billion and one song writers singing and writing about heartbreak, few of them made it, for reasons not always related to the quality of the music itself.
• deleted 3y ago
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• juancn 3y ago
  But music is different in the age of streaming, I don't really care for the artists, I either like the song or not, most of the time I have no clue who they are or what they look like.
• danogentili 3y ago
  Absolutely agree, I felt the same when trying out GPT, making it write a story. While it was technically impressive, I lost interest after the first few lines, simply due to the lack of an actual, human author behind the story.
• deleted 3y ago
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• bbwbsb 3y ago
  I agree narrative (and contextual) elements are critical to aesthetic enjoyment. It can be nigh-impossible to effectively judge a work of art purely on technical merit, as people desire and expect it has 'something to say' - a pragmatic purpose. However, many of our narrative characters already are at least part-fiction. I mostly agree with you, but I also suspect that generated art could be attached to narrative characters in a shared fictional cultural anthology to achieve the same end. For example, if someone created a FakeDrake character, and wrote stories about them, and a following around FakeDrake popped up, that character would serve a narrative function and the work of that character could be perfectly authentic. One might expect that the work being secretly produced by a human instead of machine would be viewed as a form of inauthenticity.
• kevinventullo 3y ago
  I can assure you that when I add a Drake song to the party playlist, it’s because the song is a bop, not because I want to feel a deeply emotional human connection with Aubrey Graham.
  • awb 3y ago
    100%, but I'd argue that the song is a bop because: 1) people know the beat or the artist's voice 2) people know the song because it was promoted to a wide audience 3) it was promoted to a wide audience because the artist had talent (hopefully) plus a compelling image / story that was sold to producers, investors, record labels, DJs, etc. There are examples of extremely talented musicians playing in public spaces and few stop to listen: https://www.classicfm.com/artists/joshua-bell/violin-busking-washington-subway/ https://www.classicfm.com/artists/joshua-bell/violin-busking... > In total, Bell made $52.17 (£42.18). And this includes a $20 note from someone who recognised him. Banksy demonstrated this effect too by selling original artwork for $60 in NYC and almost no one bought it: https://www.thedailybeast.com/banksys-biggest-trick-yet-selling-his-art-on-the-street-for-dollar60 https://www.thedailybeast.com/banksys-biggest-trick-yet-sell... > At 6 p.m., he closes the table, making only $420 for the day. A limited edition print of Love Is In The Air -- the image of the man throwing a hand grenade of flowers, which was stationed on the center of the table -- sold for $249,000 at Bonham's last June. > It’s the classic example of art without the frame—and it raises the important question: how much does our experience of art rely on context? > We linger on The Mona Lisa because it’s framed in the Louvre, behind bullet proof glass and protected by security guards. Outside the Louvre, we walk right past framed copies of the same painting. Context is everything.
• mnky9800n 3y ago
  Historicity gives things meaning where they have none. It's the certificate that matters.
• jacooper 3y ago
  You really overestimate the people who care about the singer or the lyrics, most just care about the beat, that's it.