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Art, at least how I understand it, is about sharing emotions and experiences. We know artists (as opposed to programmers) because we are curious about the perso

by fhd2 3y ago

Art, at least how I understand it, is about sharing emotions and experiences. We know artists (as opposed to programmers) because we are curious about the person that put a part of themselves into the thing that evoked some emotion in us or gave us an interesting experience. Software can be a tool to create art (games for example), but mostly it's about problem solving. Sometimes creative problem solving, sure. But listening to a machine generated song is like the ultimate soulless A/B tested local maximum entertainment whose only goal is to make money. We had enough of that without generative AI, it's not gonna get better I wager. I don't care much who wrote the code I'm running or if it was AI generated. There's nothing human being shared there, it solves a problem, and all that really matters is that it solves the problem well.

mostlylurks 3y ago
It is relatively rare, but software itself (not just the resulting program, such as "a game") can be art. Most examples of this focus on using code to communicate something humorous about the culture surrounding software. I cite FizzBuzz Enterprise Edition [0] as a notable example. There's also code poetry, which encompasses quite a bit more than just humor. [0]: https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpriseEdition https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris...
- fhd2 3y ago
  Nice example! I also did some reading in the mean time, and I guess for a 17th century definition of "art", a well-written algorithm that does the job efficiently and is easy to reason about would even classify as art. I quite enjoyed the book "Beautiful Code" for this kind of stuff.
lll-o-lll 3y ago
> Art, at least how I understand it, is about sharing emotions and experiences. We know artists (as opposed to programmers) because we are curious about the person that put a part of themselves into the thing that evoked some emotion in us or gave us an interesting experience. What is art? That’s a rhetorical question, because this is a highly debated topic and the answers have changed over time. There was a thousand years where art could not be separated from religious expression. There was a period where only technical mastery was considered important and the artist relatively unimportant. It varies by culture, time period, and even down to the individual. And once you can agree on something that should be art; there will be disagreements as to whether a particular example is worthy of the title. Is Nick Cave’s “Into my Arms” art? Is the Spice Girls “Wannabe”? Many years ago at the start of my career I was an engineer of the traditional variety working for a Smart Metering company. There was one analog electrical engineer there who I would best describe as a “mad genius”. His designs were constrained to solve a very boring practical problem, yes, but they were also creative, beautiful, and I would argue, art. Yes you need a degree in electrical engineering to appreciate them, but I guarantee that any such engineer would not fail to be moved by the beauty and elegance of his designs. > I don't care much who wrote the code I'm running or if it was AI generated. There's nothing human being shared there, it solves a problem, and all that really matters is that it solves the problem well. Much like with my example of the Smart Meter, the tradesmen installing it could care less about the beauty within. However I do appreciate beautiful elegant code, rare as it is. But name for me any human creative endeavour that is not 99% meaningless, repetitive, soulless drivel?
- fhd2 3y ago
  Fair, the term "art" definitely changed meaning over time and is not quite universally agreed upon. What you made me think is that it's indeed a term where the goal posts are up for moving, just like "AI", the only timeless definition of which I can think of being: "Anything people recently thought only humans can do, but it turned out computers can do them". As for your last question: With games, I see a pretty clear distinction between those designed to quickly make lots of people addicted to the point where they spend as much money as possible, and those that primarily aim to transmit experiences or emotions. Thinking about other businesses, I guess there's also a distinction between the short term revenue optimising ones, and those that focus on delighting the customer. Thinking about it, I should probably also consider that art, as I think parent suggested. Anything that's being created for a primary purpose other than short term revenue possibly. So in summary, I suppose whether or not something is art is better decided based on the intentions of the creator, not the tools they use for creation.

by fhd2 3y ago

mostlylurks 3y ago

It is relatively rare, but software itself (not just the resulting program, such as "a game") can be art. Most examples of this focus on using code to communicate something humorous about the culture surrounding software. I cite FizzBuzz Enterprise Edition [0] as a notable example. There's also code poetry, which encompasses quite a bit more than just humor. [0]: https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpriseEdition https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris...

fhd2 3y ago
Nice example! I also did some reading in the mean time, and I guess for a 17th century definition of "art", a well-written algorithm that does the job efficiently and is easy to reason about would even classify as art. I quite enjoyed the book "Beautiful Code" for this kind of stuff.

lll-o-lll 3y ago

> Art, at least how I understand it, is about sharing emotions and experiences. We know artists (as opposed to programmers) because we are curious about the person that put a part of themselves into the thing that evoked some emotion in us or gave us an interesting experience. What is art? That’s a rhetorical question, because this is a highly debated topic and the answers have changed over time. There was a thousand years where art could not be separated from religious expression. There was a period where only technical mastery was considered important and the artist relatively unimportant. It varies by culture, time period, and even down to the individual. And once you can agree on something that should be art; there will be disagreements as to whether a particular example is worthy of the title. Is Nick Cave’s “Into my Arms” art? Is the Spice Girls “Wannabe”? Many years ago at the start of my career I was an engineer of the traditional variety working for a Smart Metering company. There was one analog electrical engineer there who I would best describe as a “mad genius”. His designs were constrained to solve a very boring practical problem, yes, but they were also creative, beautiful, and I would argue, art. Yes you need a degree in electrical engineering to appreciate them, but I guarantee that any such engineer would not fail to be moved by the beauty and elegance of his designs. > I don't care much who wrote the code I'm running or if it was AI generated. There's nothing human being shared there, it solves a problem, and all that really matters is that it solves the problem well. Much like with my example of the Smart Meter, the tradesmen installing it could care less about the beauty within. However I do appreciate beautiful elegant code, rare as it is. But name for me any human creative endeavour that is not 99% meaningless, repetitive, soulless drivel?

fhd2 3y ago
Fair, the term "art" definitely changed meaning over time and is not quite universally agreed upon. What you made me think is that it's indeed a term where the goal posts are up for moving, just like "AI", the only timeless definition of which I can think of being: "Anything people recently thought only humans can do, but it turned out computers can do them". As for your last question: With games, I see a pretty clear distinction between those designed to quickly make lots of people addicted to the point where they spend as much money as possible, and those that primarily aim to transmit experiences or emotions. Thinking about other businesses, I guess there's also a distinction between the short term revenue optimising ones, and those that focus on delighting the customer. Thinking about it, I should probably also consider that art, as I think parent suggested. Anything that's being created for a primary purpose other than short term revenue possibly. So in summary, I suppose whether or not something is art is better decided based on the intentions of the creator, not the tools they use for creation.