5 ms·

> Making art is hard. But art is mostly about surfacing the inner world, and only in part about skill. It’s unfortunate that art selects so strongly for skill.

> Making art is hard. But art is mostly about surfacing the inner world, and only in part about skill. It’s unfortunate that art selects so strongly for skill. Not to sound like a luddite, but I do question the idea that the skill gap is merely an inconvenience. I suspect learning how to paint or make music changes something in yourself which teaches you some deeper life lessons. I've heard the phrase (paraphrased): No great work of art was made by a genius, genius comes to you unexpectedly like a gust of wind. It seems that cultivating these opportunities is the most an artist can do, and removing the skill gap seems to be removing the cultivation, the thing that changes you, the essence. There seems to be a few of these inherent deep workings that we as a people keep coming back to, without knowing what they are or how to discuss them (personally at least!). Not to rain on your parade OP, the project looks fun and super useful to a lot people! Just something I ponder on at times.

terhechte 2y ago
This goes opposite to the saying "Experts say it cannot be done; amateurs accomplish it every day.". Sometimes it's good to have someone with fresh eyes looking and something and not be shaped by decades of prior history.
- NavinF 2y ago
  > "Experts say it cannot be done; amateurs accomplish it every day." I love this because I seem to encounter situations like that every day. Who came up with this saying? Recent example: This guy asked a very simple question about something that's commonly done in industry (wiring two power supplies in parallel and balancing the current between them): https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/1g84zd7/using_multiple_usb_psus_in_parallel_to_increase/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/1g84zd7/usi... Literally 95% of the replies in that thread are irrelevant bullshit from "experts" that have no idea how redundant server PSUs work. I replied to some under the same username. Meanwhile another guy successfully wired two 100W USB-C ports in parallel to power an entire PC. He had no idea that the resistance of his crappy wires kept the two smps control loops stable and divided the current evenly between the two ports ensuring that neither one trips OCP: https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1g8pser/let_me_trigger_you_guys/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1g8pser/let_m...
  - baq 2y ago
    I guess there's the armchair expert and the actual, real expert and these two are completely different beasts. I wouldn't feel comfortable with this guy's usb-c setup but probably not for 'it's all going to burn down' reasons, more like 'the connection will get loose somewhere and I'll lose my work'.
    - NavinF 2y ago
      He posted the photos as soon as he got it working; It's obviously not his permanent setup. My point is that he posted it on the same day that ~60 people claimed this was somehow a difficult task.
  - vasco 2y ago
    "Random person on reddit" doesn't qualify as experts.
    - NavinF 2y ago
      Everyone in that thread pretended to be an expert despite being clueless. This is normal, but you'd only notice it if you're familiar. Also see Gell-Mann amnesia effect
  - bambax 2y ago
    > Who came up with this saying? I was not aware of that specific formulation but there's a maxim by Mark Twain that says "They did not know it was impossible so they did it".
  - jijan 2y ago
    Amsyar hensem
    - NavinF 2y ago
      who?
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
Log_out_ 2y ago
? Have you ever read musician interviews: Its like a competition on how much clichee, naivete and reality denying drivel one can compress into 5 minutes. Idealism is not a victimless crime, millions suffer every day because some artist threw a buggy,idealized world model over the fence and the idiocy stuck hypnotizing millions into permanently damaging themselves.
- d0gsg0w00f 2y ago
  There something compelling inside musicians that comes out in their music. Everyone feels it but few can define it. There's a reason they did not choose conversation as their medium.
  - grugagag 2y ago
    Are you talking about stage presence?
    - piva00 2y ago
      Musicians are not necessarily stage performers, there's lots of touching instrumental music where the musician doesn't even do much on stage. Music itself is a language, something undefinable comes from that language that we can't modulate the same way through speech.
Super_Jambo 2y ago
This is why the greatest art is only made by people who grow the plants to create their own paint from scratch...
flir 2y ago
I think he's on the right lines with "surfacing the inner world", but that's why I see this as more wallpaper than art. He's not doing a deep dive into his own psychology and hauling up pearls; none of these images have that property. Does the totality of the project have that property? That would be less clear, but IMO, no. I see it as technically driven, not psychologically driven, although I can see how you could write an artist's statement that claims it was (it's about mirrors, after all, which are hugely symbolic). To be clear I still like it, and if I'd done it I'd be proud of it. But it's more artifice than art. (If I was him, I'd slow the frame rate down, not speed it up - work with the technical limitation, not against it. Have the system only display "good" images, and not update the display until another "good" image is generated. The code that decides if an image is "good" or not would be the most interesting part of the system, and could fairly be said to embody the artist's intent, and so cross (my own personal) threshold into capital-A Art. I'd also experiment with buffering the image stream à la _Light of Other Days_ by Bob Shaw. Oh, and as Halloween is nearly with us, the temptation to occasionally inpaint a figure standing behind the viewer would be massive. Idle thought: to get some stability in the image, would it be possible to have an LLM generate random video filter code, instead of random images? "Write me a video filter that makes the input video look cubist". "...like an oil painting" "...with a Flash aesthetic". etc etc. Every time a filter gets generated that doesn't actively crash, swap to it. No idea if that's feasible or not.)
- Kim_Bruning 2y ago
  It's extremely sophisticated dynamic art.
sandworm101 2y ago
Talk like "surfacing the inner whatever" can impress the masses, for a very short while, but good art requires more. All art has a language, standards that are learned though an artist's development as they learn the needed skills. The mona lisa isn't just a good picture of a person. It is full of details and meaning only understandable to people who have studied paintings. AI can generate a good or interesting picture but it cannot speak the language of painting. That requires actual graft to learn and appreciate. Injecting the paintbrush skills into someone's brain, or into an AI tool, isn't going to make them an artist.
wellthisisgreat 2y ago
> I suspect learning how to paint or make music changes something in yourself which teaches you some deeper life lessons. I enthusiastically support this notion. A simpler, than painting, example would be writing. Sure everyone has a story to tell, and everyone can write, but to make it worth other people's time would take you days if not years of perfecting the craft, as you inevitably learn things about yourself and crystallize your perspectives on this world.

terhechte 2y ago

This goes opposite to the saying "Experts say it cannot be done; amateurs accomplish it every day.". Sometimes it's good to have someone with fresh eyes looking and something and not be shaped by decades of prior history.

NavinF 2y ago
> "Experts say it cannot be done; amateurs accomplish it every day." I love this because I seem to encounter situations like that every day. Who came up with this saying? Recent example: This guy asked a very simple question about something that's commonly done in industry (wiring two power supplies in parallel and balancing the current between them): https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/1g84zd7/using_multiple_usb_psus_in_parallel_to_increase/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/1g84zd7/usi... Literally 95% of the replies in that thread are irrelevant bullshit from "experts" that have no idea how redundant server PSUs work. I replied to some under the same username. Meanwhile another guy successfully wired two 100W USB-C ports in parallel to power an entire PC. He had no idea that the resistance of his crappy wires kept the two smps control loops stable and divided the current evenly between the two ports ensuring that neither one trips OCP: https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1g8pser/let_me_trigger_you_guys/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1g8pser/let_m...
- baq 2y ago
  I guess there's the armchair expert and the actual, real expert and these two are completely different beasts. I wouldn't feel comfortable with this guy's usb-c setup but probably not for 'it's all going to burn down' reasons, more like 'the connection will get loose somewhere and I'll lose my work'.
  - NavinF 2y ago
    He posted the photos as soon as he got it working; It's obviously not his permanent setup. My point is that he posted it on the same day that ~60 people claimed this was somehow a difficult task.
- vasco 2y ago
  "Random person on reddit" doesn't qualify as experts.
  - NavinF 2y ago
    Everyone in that thread pretended to be an expert despite being clueless. This is normal, but you'd only notice it if you're familiar. Also see Gell-Mann amnesia effect
- bambax 2y ago
  > Who came up with this saying? I was not aware of that specific formulation but there's a maxim by Mark Twain that says "They did not know it was impossible so they did it".
- jijan 2y ago
  Amsyar hensem
  - NavinF 2y ago
    who?
- Workaccount2 2y ago

Log_out_ 2y ago

? Have you ever read musician interviews: Its like a competition on how much clichee, naivete and reality denying drivel one can compress into 5 minutes. Idealism is not a victimless crime, millions suffer every day because some artist threw a buggy,idealized world model over the fence and the idiocy stuck hypnotizing millions into permanently damaging themselves.

d0gsg0w00f 2y ago
There something compelling inside musicians that comes out in their music. Everyone feels it but few can define it. There's a reason they did not choose conversation as their medium.
- grugagag 2y ago
  Are you talking about stage presence?
  - piva00 2y ago
    Musicians are not necessarily stage performers, there's lots of touching instrumental music where the musician doesn't even do much on stage. Music itself is a language, something undefinable comes from that language that we can't modulate the same way through speech.

Super_Jambo 2y ago

This is why the greatest art is only made by people who grow the plants to create their own paint from scratch...

flir 2y ago

I think he's on the right lines with "surfacing the inner world", but that's why I see this as more wallpaper than art. He's not doing a deep dive into his own psychology and hauling up pearls; none of these images have that property. Does the totality of the project have that property? That would be less clear, but IMO, no. I see it as technically driven, not psychologically driven, although I can see how you could write an artist's statement that claims it was (it's about mirrors, after all, which are hugely symbolic). To be clear I still like it, and if I'd done it I'd be proud of it. But it's more artifice than art. (If I was him, I'd slow the frame rate down, not speed it up - work with the technical limitation, not against it. Have the system only display "good" images, and not update the display until another "good" image is generated. The code that decides if an image is "good" or not would be the most interesting part of the system, and could fairly be said to embody the artist's intent, and so cross (my own personal) threshold into capital-A Art. I'd also experiment with buffering the image stream à la _Light of Other Days_ by Bob Shaw. Oh, and as Halloween is nearly with us, the temptation to occasionally inpaint a figure standing behind the viewer would be massive. Idle thought: to get some stability in the image, would it be possible to have an LLM generate random video filter code, instead of random images? "Write me a video filter that makes the input video look cubist". "...like an oil painting" "...with a Flash aesthetic". etc etc. Every time a filter gets generated that doesn't actively crash, swap to it. No idea if that's feasible or not.)

Kim_Bruning 2y ago
It's extremely sophisticated dynamic art.

sandworm101 2y ago

Talk like "surfacing the inner whatever" can impress the masses, for a very short while, but good art requires more. All art has a language, standards that are learned though an artist's development as they learn the needed skills. The mona lisa isn't just a good picture of a person. It is full of details and meaning only understandable to people who have studied paintings. AI can generate a good or interesting picture but it cannot speak the language of painting. That requires actual graft to learn and appreciate. Injecting the paintbrush skills into someone's brain, or into an AI tool, isn't going to make them an artist.

wellthisisgreat 2y ago

> I suspect learning how to paint or make music changes something in yourself which teaches you some deeper life lessons. I enthusiastically support this notion. A simpler, than painting, example would be writing. Sure everyone has a story to tell, and everyone can write, but to make it worth other people's time would take you days if not years of perfecting the craft, as you inevitably learn things about yourself and crystallize your perspectives on this world.