3 ms·

I would like to encourage you to interact with the art & music spaces in your city!

Jensson 2y ago
Sure they exist, but they aren't nearly as established or high status as a century ago. Technology did replace artists, some still do art but they are very few and mostly just do it on their personal time instead of being professional artists. You can still draw your own art even with image generators, they didn't change that. Before automatic photos, automatic music playing etc, people who could play music or draw were highly sought after just to draw and play music everywhere, since there were no alternatives. Technology changed that and today those are dying breeds.
- recursive 2y ago
  The reason music performances aren't as high status as centuries ago is that it's been democratized. The barrier to entry is lower. Anyone can get a mic and amp and start busking on the street corner. I think that's a good thing for humanity at large. Practice of art works better IMO as an avenue for creative expression than it does as a status symbol. This can be done even with no audience at all. Perhaps the audience is all consuming AI-generated work. Status often comes with rarity. There's more art now, and that's a good thing. Some of it has status, but most is just people doing stuff because they can. And that's not a bad thing.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    > The reason music performances aren't as high status as centuries ago is that it's been democratized I'm talking about the median musicians status, not the higher end, that crashed when automatic music playing started to get good. Before then every little village needed to have musicians around for their celebrations and parties, knowing how to play music was respected as a proper profession then unlike now. That goes for all the ornamental pieces that used to be done by craftsmen as well in villages, things like making nice signs or making celebratory furniture or festival clothing etc, all that artistry that common people used to do is now mass produced by machines that just copies a single design over and over. So overall I'd say machines so far massively reduced human artistry and cultural creation. The artisans of old didn't just copy either, humans aren't machines that can perfectly copy so they all put in a bit of themselves in all of their work, that wasn't soulless, and it is now mostly lost.
    - recursive 2y ago
      In the bad old days, the only practical way you could really learn music was to get a patron, or somehow make a living out of it. The barrier to entry was sufficiently high that it was a full-time commitment, one way or another. Today, it's still possible to be a full-time musician, but by far, most musicians have day jobs. You can do music as a hobby. On one hand, high fidelity music reproduction lowered the demand for performers, as you note. On the other hand, cheap high quality music equipment lowered the barrier to entry. Today you can play your piano piece on a sub-$1k electric keyboard that's portable and never needs to be tuned. It even sounds good. My opinion is that, on balance, the net human artistic output is way up. I also have no data to support this. But it just feels right.
      - throw46365 2y ago
        I also think net human artistic and creative output is up and we just don't realise it -- therefore we do not think clearly of the damage generative AI will do to how we feel about the value of our lives.
    - throw46365 2y ago
      > Before then every little village needed to have musicians around for their celebrations and parties, knowing how to play music was respected as a proper profession then unlike now. This isn't really right, I suspect. What is more likely is that before then, lots of people knew how to play some musical instruments, and most were rudimentary. Because music was foundational to cohesion. "Musician" as a profession is really quite new -- as a sibling comment suggests, patronage/donations/tips/busking would have been the only way. But then also it's fair to say that an entire class of reliable musical instruments produced at any kind of production scale is also quite new. Essentially all valved brass and wind instruments are less than about 200 years old in design. The first modern classical guitar is also not much more than 200 years old, surprisingly. The first pianoforte is only 320 years old or so. Many simple folk instruments are this sort of age -- the balaika is at most as old as the piano, the ukulele much younger. Few truly loud melodic instruments existed much beyond 1550; Amati's violin dates to then. Amazingly the rackett, an instrument often used to portray medieval wind music in films, is younger than the violin, and the crumhorn is not much older.

Sure they exist, but they aren't nearly as established or high status as a century ago. Technology did replace artists, some still do art but they are very few and mostly just do it on their personal time instead of being professional artists. You can still draw your own art even with image generators, they didn't change that. Before automatic photos, automatic music playing etc, people who could play music or draw were highly sought after just to draw and play music everywhere, since there were no alternatives. Technology changed that and today those are dying breeds.

recursive 2y ago
The reason music performances aren't as high status as centuries ago is that it's been democratized. The barrier to entry is lower. Anyone can get a mic and amp and start busking on the street corner. I think that's a good thing for humanity at large. Practice of art works better IMO as an avenue for creative expression than it does as a status symbol. This can be done even with no audience at all. Perhaps the audience is all consuming AI-generated work. Status often comes with rarity. There's more art now, and that's a good thing. Some of it has status, but most is just people doing stuff because they can. And that's not a bad thing.
- Jensson 2y ago
  > The reason music performances aren't as high status as centuries ago is that it's been democratized I'm talking about the median musicians status, not the higher end, that crashed when automatic music playing started to get good. Before then every little village needed to have musicians around for their celebrations and parties, knowing how to play music was respected as a proper profession then unlike now. That goes for all the ornamental pieces that used to be done by craftsmen as well in villages, things like making nice signs or making celebratory furniture or festival clothing etc, all that artistry that common people used to do is now mass produced by machines that just copies a single design over and over. So overall I'd say machines so far massively reduced human artistry and cultural creation. The artisans of old didn't just copy either, humans aren't machines that can perfectly copy so they all put in a bit of themselves in all of their work, that wasn't soulless, and it is now mostly lost.
  - recursive 2y ago
    In the bad old days, the only practical way you could really learn music was to get a patron, or somehow make a living out of it. The barrier to entry was sufficiently high that it was a full-time commitment, one way or another. Today, it's still possible to be a full-time musician, but by far, most musicians have day jobs. You can do music as a hobby. On one hand, high fidelity music reproduction lowered the demand for performers, as you note. On the other hand, cheap high quality music equipment lowered the barrier to entry. Today you can play your piano piece on a sub-$1k electric keyboard that's portable and never needs to be tuned. It even sounds good. My opinion is that, on balance, the net human artistic output is way up. I also have no data to support this. But it just feels right.
    - throw46365 2y ago
      I also think net human artistic and creative output is up and we just don't realise it -- therefore we do not think clearly of the damage generative AI will do to how we feel about the value of our lives.
  - throw46365 2y ago
    > Before then every little village needed to have musicians around for their celebrations and parties, knowing how to play music was respected as a proper profession then unlike now. This isn't really right, I suspect. What is more likely is that before then, lots of people knew how to play some musical instruments, and most were rudimentary. Because music was foundational to cohesion. "Musician" as a profession is really quite new -- as a sibling comment suggests, patronage/donations/tips/busking would have been the only way. But then also it's fair to say that an entire class of reliable musical instruments produced at any kind of production scale is also quite new. Essentially all valved brass and wind instruments are less than about 200 years old in design. The first modern classical guitar is also not much more than 200 years old, surprisingly. The first pianoforte is only 320 years old or so. Many simple folk instruments are this sort of age -- the balaika is at most as old as the piano, the ukulele much younger. Few truly loud melodic instruments existed much beyond 1550; Amati's violin dates to then. Amazingly the rackett, an instrument often used to portray medieval wind music in films, is younger than the violin, and the crumhorn is not much older.