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I can't speak for everyone, but the reason I personally find generated images completely uninteresting from an artistic standpoint is that they are low-effort.
by mkaic 3y ago
I can't speak for everyone, but the reason I personally find generated images completely uninteresting from an artistic standpoint is that they are low-effort. I appreciate art because a human sacrificed time and effort to make it. As a general rule of thumb (with exceptions, of course), the more time and effort an artist sacrifices to make a piece of art, the more I find that art interesting, especially if the artist is highly skilled.
I don't think that AI art is fundamentally uninteresting (I am a machine learning researcher, so I think it's rad), or that it can't be used as a tool to make great art. I just think that the final image is not the point of art. The point is that a person practiced for hundreds/thousands of hours to develop a creative skill and then spent several more hours painstakingly applying that skill just to create the image. If AI is incorporated into a high-effort, high-skill process, I don't have an issue with it.
- 1auralynn 3y agoPeople have varying definitions of art. Mine is more about communication and changing perceptions, I couldn't care less about time spent. I know artists from both camps.
- jack_riminton 3y agoAlso interesting is the time spent making marks vs. thinking about it I know Matisse kept several works in his studio for many many years pondering and struggling with what to do with them and the actual mark-making was very rapid e.g. The Red Studio painting
- mkaic 3y agoAnd this is why I began my comment with "I can't speak for everyone!" Art is so subjective that it would be rather silly of me to try to make a bold, authoritative statement about its nature. I definitely understand your perspective to some degree, and wish you the best :)
- jack_riminton 3y agoI suppose that's the crux of it, I'm a formalist (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/f/formalism https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/f/formalism) whereas a lot of other people appreciate the back story or narrative more
- gilleain 3y agoThe problem I have with the 'effort' theory of value - which I also used to use! - is that you can take it to absurd conclusions. For example, a beginner painter will take much longer to make the same painting as a master; so judged on effort, it should be better? Or if I make a minature cathedral out of matchsticks, then it might take me decades - is that therefore more interesting artistic output than a sketch that Picasso (say) made in one smooth line that took minutes? Of course, a reasonable answer is that it is some combination of effort, aesthetics, personal choice, and fashion. Maybe it's like a recipe where the balance of these ingredients has to be right.
- jack_riminton 3y agoThere's also the aspect of the time it takes to learn to draw/paint well, sometimes the simplest-looking things take the longest to learn "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child" - Picasso
- webmaven 3y agoTo a certain extent, your argument is mitigated by considering the cumulative effort of learning to produce art, AKA "knowing where to hammer", AKA "it took a lot of hard work to make this look easy".
- gsk22 3y agoIf we incorporate cumulative effort, then the original assertion that AI art is low-effort falls flat. In fact, since AI is trained on a much bigger data set than humans, AI art is in fact higher-effort than human-made art (and therefore, according to the GP, more interesting).
- JohnFen 3y agoThat seems like a pretty huge stretch to me. I don't think it's valid to count the effort in developing and training AI as part of the effort to produce the art.