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I agree wholeheartedly. As a photographer I am shocked to see other photographers who are AI proponents making the comparison to the beginning of the photograp

by ecjhdnc2025 2y ago

I agree wholeheartedly. As a photographer I am shocked to see other photographers who are AI proponents making the comparison to the beginning of the photography era. (Though it's usually the very bad photographers or those who haven't actually done any reading about the impact of photography on art who make this point) Art's one hope to avoid this parasitism is to move back into the realms of the purely physical, I think (and as a photographer that includes me).

Eisenstein 2y ago
The fact is that it is much like that, because no one then knew what was going to happen and it seemed to them like an existential threat. The mechanism of how it works or its relationship with our previous technology is irrelevant. The comparison is about everyone freaking out because no one knows how this is going to play out. But history has shown time and again that carving out a niche in art by using technology is always fleeting and any security you think you had was illusory. Just looking at Hollywood, you have: (a) transition to sound (b) emergence of televisions (c) transition to color (d) effects revolution (e) digital replacing practical effects (f) digital replacing film Each one of those transitions obsoleted a generation of specialists with niches, yet Hollywood and the people it employs are still doing just fine.
- AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  Which is precisely the point The majority of people complaining are complaining that their “specialness” is being commodified What actually happened was they commodified themselves and their work, in order to gat paid and maintain their position in the world as an “artist” They are now pretending that that what they were doing had more value than it actually does simply because it takes skill and craft and they define themselves by it Guess what, making metal fenders by hand takes a shit load of skill and craft, same with exterior plaster artists same with molding and crowning artistry - 100% of those kinds of workers were replaced perfectly by Machines. You cannot replace demand for art qua art - because you are selling a moment in time of an artist expressing a fully felt emotional release. You can’t buy that because it cannot be created via money. It is a unique and temporal experience that can only be done by one person at one time in the world. you can however, replace demand for art in service to commerce and it is a function of capitalism that that will be replaced because by function, it is in service of promoting a commercial behavior, not the expression of an artist in communicating themselves

Eisenstein 2y ago

The fact is that it is much like that, because no one then knew what was going to happen and it seemed to them like an existential threat. The mechanism of how it works or its relationship with our previous technology is irrelevant. The comparison is about everyone freaking out because no one knows how this is going to play out. But history has shown time and again that carving out a niche in art by using technology is always fleeting and any security you think you had was illusory. Just looking at Hollywood, you have: (a) transition to sound (b) emergence of televisions (c) transition to color (d) effects revolution (e) digital replacing practical effects (f) digital replacing film Each one of those transitions obsoleted a generation of specialists with niches, yet Hollywood and the people it employs are still doing just fine.

AndrewKemendo 2y ago
Which is precisely the point The majority of people complaining are complaining that their “specialness” is being commodified What actually happened was they commodified themselves and their work, in order to gat paid and maintain their position in the world as an “artist” They are now pretending that that what they were doing had more value than it actually does simply because it takes skill and craft and they define themselves by it Guess what, making metal fenders by hand takes a shit load of skill and craft, same with exterior plaster artists same with molding and crowning artistry - 100% of those kinds of workers were replaced perfectly by Machines. You cannot replace demand for art qua art - because you are selling a moment in time of an artist expressing a fully felt emotional release. You can’t buy that because it cannot be created via money. It is a unique and temporal experience that can only be done by one person at one time in the world. you can however, replace demand for art in service to commerce and it is a function of capitalism that that will be replaced because by function, it is in service of promoting a commercial behavior, not the expression of an artist in communicating themselves