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There should be no Computer Art (1971)

97 points by glimshe 1y ago

whynotmaybe 1y ago
> I find it easy to admit that computer art did not contribute to the advancement of art. But a banana sticked to a wall with some tape did! I'll stick to the best definition of art that I've heard : "if it gives you an emotion, it is art".
- auggierose 1y ago
  I guess shitty code is art then.
  - groestl 1y ago
    "p" == 0; (shitty type systems as well?)
  - SirHumphrey 1y ago
    Esoteric programming languages could be considered art - perhaps the only difference is intentionality.
- onthedystopia 1y ago
  One is made by a human for other humans. The other is a randomly recognized pattern built from the stolen art of millions, and has no intended audience (because it itself is incapable of consuming art). I also want to emphasize the "banana sticked to a wall" complaint is an often right wing stance to devalue art. Art can be emotional, but not everything that creates emotion is art. In time I think we will work out a better definition of what constitutes art. One that excludes generated images and videos and emphasizes the human connection of artwork.
  - ivape 1y ago
    First, I’m going to upvote you because I’m tired of this grayed out censorship bullshit that goes on in this site. I really wish there was a way to set a setting that makes it clear idgaf about downvotes, don’t gray shit out. Second: One is made by a human for other humans. The other is a randomly recognized pattern built from the stolen art of millions, and has no intended audience (because it itself is incapable of consuming art). There is something that fits that definition, which is nature. Some actually believe it’s a divine expression and does indeed have an intended audience (us). That’s a weird belief, but your argument is actually quite sound if you believe in God. If you don’t, then your argument falls apart because so much of nature is art, so much so that art is often based on it. If the Grand Canyon is randomness, yet it appears clearly beautiful to us, and is the source of inspiration for Art, then we can say that this new form of random pattern generator is also another source, one we can take inspiration from. There will be sticklers that will create a delineation between nature and art, which ultimately is quite arrogant because it will apply one specific characteristic to art, that being art is a specifically human creation.
    - strken 1y ago
      Download the Stylish extension, open your browser's console, check out the classes in the HTML, and change the CSS. You can make your own setting in about five minutes unless you're using a locked down platform like iOS that doesn't let you run your own code easily.
    - zzzeek 1y ago
      > I’m tired of this grayed out censorship bullshit that goes on in this site. I really wish there was a way to set a setting that makes it clear idgaf about downvotes, don’t gray shit out. but that would interrupt my tech bro flow with uncomfortable things I've decided nobody should read. that simply wont do, sorry
    - mossTechnician 1y ago
      One need not apply a "human" characteristic to define something as art, only the characteristic of intent. Perhaps that's better suited for GP's definition, which I otherwise find agreeable.
- ralfd 1y ago
  Pornhub is art?
  - SirFatty 1y ago
    No, pornhub is a website.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- andybak 1y ago
  The banana stuck to the wall isn't as dumb as it sounds. Look up the story behind it. I read an argument that it's a clever bit of satire on NFTs and the idea of "owning a piece of art". Does that make it art? Dunno. Don't care. It makes it interesting which is a more useful category.
  - wongarsu 1y ago
    It is a physical version of the insanity that are NFT pictures. It is a piece of art that is perfectly fungible. Anyone can stick a banana on the wall. And in fact the exhibits of this piece of art are a banana taped to the wall by some random employee. The only thing making it unique is a certificate by the artist that assures you that a banana taped to the wall in that specific exhibition is an art piece by the artist. Just like NFTs are fungible jpegs presumably made non-fungible by a blockchain entry. I think it's brilliant commentary. And even if you have never heard of NFTs it poses questions about what qualifies a piece of art as unique or an original
    - dingnuts 1y ago
      an NFT is a record of ownership. if you have no enforcement mechanism it's meaningless, but nobody makes jokes about fungible data files when we're talking about copyright. if you tied an NFT hash to a legal contract then you could actually enforce ownership of those fungible jpegs and the right click copy people would be just as in violation of the law as someone who walks out with your employer's software sources and jpegs don't actually have anything to do with NFTs other than being used as representations of them by grifters, ruining a useful technology by poisoning the representation of it in minds like yours because a distributed record of software ownership would threaten the app store monopolies. ok that's conspiratorial but it would explain it..
      - Retr0id 1y ago
        If NFTs only become useful when tied to a regular legal contract, why not just use a regular legal contract?
- tialaramex 1y ago
  I prefer: The unnecessary, done on purpose
  - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
    i've held a personal definitional aspect of art to include "many, but not all, forms of expression by humans that are unnecessary for mere survival" but this is a lot more succinct :)
- brookst 1y ago
  The duct taped banana has caused far more emotion than the last decade of Marvel movies.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- cainxinth 1y ago
  “Art is anything you can get away with.”
- bookofjoe 1y ago
  >Who’s Laughing Now? Banana-as-Art Sells for $6.2 Million at Sotheby’s [November 20, 2024] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/arts/design/cattelan-banana-sothebys-auction.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/arts/design/cattelan-bana... https://archive.ph/vs3g3 https://archive.ph/vs3g3
- hydrogen7800 1y ago
  If not for a PBS documentary on surrealism, I wouldn't have considered the existence of meta-art; art as commentary on art. The example I remember was Ceci n'est pas une pipe.[0] That sounds a bit like the banana taped to the wall. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images
- zzzeek 1y ago
  that's not a good definition. if I go hiking and look at the mountains. that gives me an emotion. But is it art? it's just the actual planet. No human created that. Art requires human intention to be art.
  - falcor84 1y ago
    You're just disagreeing without offering an explanation - why was the original not a good definition? As I see it, art is in the eye of the beholder. Splotches of color made by Jackson Pollock and those made by my 3 year old don't differ in their intent (I assume both equally want to express themselves), but in the way that we view the work. I for one don't see any issue with treating a beautiful mountain vista as "a work of art", regardless to whether I believe it was intentionally created by a personified god, or by an RNG in the simulator that's rendering this corner of the universe, or anything in between. I see art.
    - zzzeek 1y ago
      > You're just disagreeing without offering an explanation - why was the original not a good definition? because a pretty mountain is not art? sorry that's not obvious?
      - jstanley 1y ago
        That's not obvious. It's obvious to you, because your definition of "art" requires it to be man-made. But you can't use the fact that non-man-made things can't be art to argue that non-man-made things can't be art. It only works on people who already agree.
        totallykvothe 1y ago
        A table is not a chair because a table is not a chair. A mountain is not art because a mountain is not art. You're free to use words wrong if you want, but that doesn't make them not wrong.
- banannaise 1y ago
  The banana would be interesting art if the concept hadn't been done a million times before. This iteration is just a cash grab (and/or publicity play). Which does, to an extent, make it interesting again, so what if it's a commentary on the cash-grab nature of contemporary ar--okay I'm logging off.
  - frereubu 1y ago
    Reminds me of the Damien Hirst piece that I love and hate equally. A platinum cast of an 18th-century human skull encrusted with diamonds that had an asking price of £50 million, which was bought by a consortium of people that include... Damien Hirst. He's always been great at titling his work - the fact that it's called For The Love of God, a phrase that I use regularly when I'm exasperated by something, is the icing on the cake. Just unbelievable self-referential, self-dealing chutzpah.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  > I'll stick to the best definition of art that I've heard : "if it gives you an emotion, it is art". I think it's necessary, but not sufficient. So I kinda like my better: It's art if (and to the extent of) people generally agree it's art. Sounds tautological, but it isn't[0]. Of course, not everything is art. There are some aspects typically - but not always - present. Whether something gives you an emotion is one. Whether it has a deeper story behind it is another. Whether it's something that you can bond over with other people, or a shared experience, yet another. But none of those are required to be present. Art is ultimately a consensus opinion. -- [0] - In fact, most of our civilization is built on ideas that exist only as long as most people expect most other people to believe them. Examples include: money, laws, countries, corporations, even the concept of society itself.
  - hex4def6 1y ago
    That feels unnecessarily restrictive. Does Jiro and his sushi constitute an artist and his art? Let's say yes, and let's say most people today agree with this. They're cosmopolitan enough to recognize the sophistication and craft. This definition therefore defines it as "art". I would say if you told the average Brit living in the UK in the 1950s that there's a guy that's really good at slicing up raw fish, you might get a different average answer. So I don't think art is dependent on the conclusion viewer, but on the intention of the author. If they arrange rocks just-so, because they enjoy the shadows they make at noon, I think that's art.
    - TeMPOraL 1y ago
      > So I don't think art is dependent on the conclusion viewer, but on the intention of the author. If they arrange rocks just-so, because they enjoy the shadows they make at noon, I think that's art. That still depends on the conclusion of the viewer, because intent exists only in the heart of the creator. We can guess at it, or choose to trust the creator when they say what their intent was, but we cannot independently see and evaluate it. Then, other people can disagree with us on what the intent was. You say Jiro is is an artist, I say he's just building a fake persona to market his fish-slicing business. I think there is no quality of "art" that's inherent to the work; I see art as purely social phenomenon.
- gspencley 1y ago
  > I'll stick to the best definition of art that I've heard : "if it gives you an emotion, it is art". Stubbing my little toe gives me an emotion, is that "art"? lol I would suggest that art is a method is communication. One philosophical definition that I've often used is that "it is a selective recreation of reality in accordance with what the artist considers to be essential." When viewed through the lens of how art might be a useful tool for human survival, it allows us, as rational animals, to communicate highly complex topics in a condensed, straight-to-the-point manner. Morality tales and other stories, paintings, statues, theatrical plays ... all serve to communicate something. To circle back to computer-generated "art", I would say that if the computer-generated artwork has a human programmer who was trying to communicate something through the software and its output, then I could consider it to be "art." It is not the computer producing the art, it is the human being who is programming or otherwise directing the computer through an intent to communicate something. If you leave a computer alone, and using some kind of random entropy it just so happens to produce an image of something because that's what the random generator landed on, then it's not art. There was no intent to communicate. And in the example of computers visualizing some natural phenomenon (the article mentioned an oscilloscope as an example), then it is no more "art" than the image projected into the eye from a microscope since there is no recreation. It is, in that context, a tool for observing reality as it exists, rather than a medium of communication intended to express an idea.
  - zeroCalories 1y ago
    The art of the deal is when I feel good about being scammed.
  - nullsmack 1y ago
    idk, what did stubbing your toe make you feel. what did it say to you. what did the universe put into it?
- exe34 1y ago
  > "if it gives you an emotion, it is art". Even if it's made by chatgpt? A lot of carbon-chauvinists believe only meatbags can make art.
  - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
    what a weird false dichotomy. i don't think many definitions of art include non-human animals.
    - TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal-made_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal-made_art
    - exe34 1y ago
      > what a weird false dichotomy In what way?
- immibis 1y ago
  Don't forget "Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue" too - a huge rectangle of mostly red, which angered someone enough to try to destroy it, proving that someone was, in fact, afraid of red, yellow and blue.
- kendalf89 1y ago
  Art is the product of someone expressing themselves. It requires personhood and it requires intent to express one's self. Therefore, unless you grant an autonomous AI personhood it can't create art. However, one could use AI as a tool to express themselves and that would be art. But that's where I admit the line gets blurred.
  - FraterSKM 1y ago
    > Art is the product of someone expressing themselves. While I agree, unfortunately to the majority of people, "Art" simply means "something that makes me feel something". Whether that thing was generated by a human or a machine makes no difference. In my experience most people, when consuming art, hardly think about where it came from/who made it/why they made it, simply on the feelings it evokes with themselves. And as we have seen through outrage algorithms, computers are quite good at figuring out how to create emotional states in humans.
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      I feel that on the other side of the spectrum is where things like idolization and parasocial fandom lies, so in my view, this is not unfortunate at all. There are many flavors of this I can recall. One is voice acting in anime. I'd read episode discussion threads, and people would keep namedropping and discussing the voices behind the characters. Striked me and continues to strike me as just an extremely odd thing to do. As if these folks would go out of their way to ruin the immersion for themselves. Still, I don't mean to judge: they enjoy themselves whatever way they prefer. Or recently I had a discussion with a coworker on being a fan of musicians and bands. He brought up an example that really surprised me: "so called fans will stare at you like a deer at headlights when you ask them: oh you're a fan of Linkin Park? what's their drummer called?". Or how there were so and so "cool" stories about some rock n roll musicians. These are beyond weird to me: I like (some of) their music, not them as individuals. I know nothing about them, nor do I really wish to or think I would be able to. (But then I'm also no "fan" of any musician in the sense my colleague described his idea of that: I feel completely uncompelled to be familiar with the entire discography of a band/artist, and especially to be obsessed with one in general.) But maybe this is a generational difference. In any case, I'd be really hesitant to characterize this as just straight "unfortunate". There's also a swath of cases where the expression in question is only a little more if even that than just a demonstration of someone's aesthetic or ideological preferences. I'm not sure how much art is in there - if someone were to call those expressions shallow, I'd likely agree. In which case, I'm not sure there's much to find unfortunate on this; it's only as unfortunate as much interest you (can) have in that person.
- spankibalt 1y ago
  [flagged]
mcv 1y ago
> There is no need for the production of more works of art Really? Was art finished in 1971? These sort of very dated articles by people misunderstanding history can be funny, but this particular claim stands out as unusually weird.
- dcminter 1y ago
  Oh, you think that's a weird view...? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_L... Not that I think anyone much bought the thesis at the time either.
  - mcv 1y ago
    Yeah, I didn't either. I also recall reading somewhere that at the end on the 19th or start of the 20th century, a lot of scientists thought that physics was nearly "done". It seems to be a recurring idea that the current state must surely be the final culmination of something. Like us being the end product of evolution.
throw93849494 1y ago
There should be no tax incentives and deductions to trade art.
- brookst 1y ago
  What incentives are there that don’t apply to any other asset like real estate or jewelry?
  - schmidtleonard 1y ago
    Why should real estate and jewelry be tax incentivized?
    - brookst 1y ago
      Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn’t. But either way the more honest conversation is about assets rather than cherry picking one example as if there’s something special about it.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  Name one that exists.
  - richardwhiuk 1y ago
    Capital gains tax loss is the usual mechanism I think.
detourdog 1y ago
My cousin went to RISD in 1972 after graduation she started hanging around MIT eventually studying under Negroponte before the formation of the media lab. After graduation she worked as a computer animator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter She is in the photo at the terminal working on the last starfighter. She has been creating computer art ever since. She has often expressed confusion and disillusionment with the field. She is often unsure if she or the computer is the artist.
- api 1y ago
  Photographers have always had similar sentiments, but if you look at artistic photography versus random or amateur photography the former is definitely an art form. Nearly all art except singing and dance is made with tools. In many cases tools define the art form.
  - brookst 1y ago
    Even signing and dance use tools, they’re just biological and under sophisticated neural control. It takes at least as much work to train vocal cords and breathing as it does to train muscles to use a paintbrush.
  - glimshe 1y ago
    Dance generally uses tools too, but they are more subtle and better integrated. Clothes, props, lights and even the stage can be seen as tools to achieve dance's aims. Singing can certainly use tools too. Auto tune and special microphones. Perhaps you mean to say that neither require tools.
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      > Singing can certainly use tools too. Auto tune and special microphones. Not just electronic tools: archictectural acoustics are often a tool in vocal performance.
  - jrm4 1y ago
HenryBemis 1y ago
> I find it easy to admit that computer art did not contribute to the advancement of art. (We = humans) We made the tweets. We made the paintings. We wrote stupid things on Reddit (or the smarter things). We photographed nature. We built LLMs. In a way, what LLMs are doing is derivative/product of 'our' (and nature's) work. It's like adding 4 ingredients to the blender, blend it for only a few seconds, and you get variation. If you put 4 similar ingredients and you blend again for the exactly same amount of seconds you will get something similar but not the same. LLM is a blender :)
- brookst 1y ago
  LLMs are probably better compared to a fully equipped chef’s kitchen: a suite of powerful tools that can be used to make sublime fare, or just to burn a nice steak to a crisp.
skrebbel 1y ago
> There is no need for the production of more works of art, particularly no need for “computer art” I mean, if you're against new art in the first place then the rest kinda follows from that right? This article is like titling an essay "Against Chelsea" and then halfway subtly dropping that, well, actually, you hate football in general and people should stop playing it.
coldcode 1y ago
People have said similar things about artists throughout history. Oil Paint? Non-religious/mythical subjects? Impressionism? Fauvism? Cubism? Modern Art? Etc. Throughout art history people have often not valued the new, but only the existing. Beaux-Arts de Paris in the late 1800's was the premiere art school in Europe training traditional artists; yet many eventually turned to impressionism, etc. and abandoned the old styles. I do "computer art" today and go in directions that are new. If all you do is what came before, everything including art will stagnate. Evolve or die is not just for biology.
- mc32 1y ago
  Depends. Ancient Egyptian art didn’t evolve that much and it remained for millennia as current without the feeling that it ‘stagnated’. There is nothing that says things need to eternally evolve. There is some advantage in some systems in evolution, but not all systems and not for every species and not even for man.
  - whism 1y ago
    I’m not sure your assertion regarding ancient Egyptians’ feelings on art trends of their time can be tested :P People create with what is at hand — this includes ideas, not just physical media. In my opinion, suggesting there is society-wide progress (or lack of it) in art is silly, like suggesting the same for fashion or cooking. Exploration, technical evolution, yes. And progress in ideas, in society? Of course!
  - detourdog 1y ago
    You are correct good art never goes out of style. The question about Egyptian art is more difficult than it seems. Almost all the artifacts are the ones that could survive 1,000s of years and is quite sophisticated. What we don't get a good sample of is woodworking which is much easier to manipulate. The difficulty of stone work has a built-in limiting factor. The Egyptians also had Ptah the god of creation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptah
- 4gotunameagain 1y ago
fjfaase 1y ago
There are but a few classical traint artist that started to use computer programs to produce art. One of them is the Dutch artist Peter Struycken. See pstruycken.nl for his art works. In his last works, that focus on colour, he used software to find arrangements of squares with no recognizable patterns as not to distract the viewer from the subject of his works, the interaction of carefully selected coloursm
gjm11 1y ago
My impression is that the author's underlying position, which happens among other things to lead him to the conclusion that "there should be no computer art", is that art should be subordinate to politics. "There is no need for the production of more works of art [...] Aesthetic information as such is interesting only for the rich and the ruling. [...] Thus, the interest in computers and art should be the investigation of aesthetic information as part of the investigation of communication. This investigation should be directed by the needs of the people. [...] We should be interested in producing a film on, say, the distribution of wealth. Such a film is interesting because of its content; the interest in the content is enhanced by an aesthetically satisfying presentation." That is: to the author, the purpose of art is simply to enhance the presentation of something whose primary purpose is political. It may be that the author's position isn't specifically about politics as such: he might say, rather, that art should be subordinate to morals, that making art is only valuable in so far as it furthers some other goal that has value in itself, which might or might not be political. But the specific examples in this article are political. The author does evidently have some other more specific reasons for being skeptical about "computer art". He says that "the repertoire of results of aesthetic behaviour has not been changed by the use of computers" (which might be true, or might be false now but have been true in 1971, but he offers no evidence or arguments for it). He says that "outsiders from technology" are invading the art world without understanding its political situation and "surrendering to the given 'laws of the market'" rather than rebelling against commercialism as real artists should. He says that technology in general, and computers in particular, worsen "the alienation of the artist from his product". Two of these reasons are also political but do engage with the specifics of "computer art" as such. But I think his main reason is the overarching super-general political one: there should be no computer art, because there should be no art as such, because there should only be anti-capitalist political activism which will sometimes use art as a tool. So far as I can tell, the guts of this argument -- art, in practice, is driven by the rich and powerful, artists should reject this and focus on serving the greater need to overthrow the system with those rich and powerful people at the top and replace it with something fairer, therefore such-and-such an idea in art-as-such is a distraction -- could be transplanted without loss to any moment in the history of art and any particular artistic idea or technique or movement. Maybe that or something like it is right, but my bet is that in practice the human race is enriched by having some people in it who create art because they love creating art, for whom other concerns are secondary. (Having said all of which, so far as I can tell the author is basically correct about "computer art" not having contributed much aesthetically, and if he'd written more about that it could have been very interesting. And he might be correct about technology increasing the separation between artists and what they produce, and about that being a bad thing, and if he'd written more about that it could also have been interesting.)
tempaway43563 1y ago
The same author was on twitter until recently giving his take on AI https://x.com/CarlCanary/status/1479567776272498693 https://x.com/CarlCanary/status/1479567776272498693 There are people around who successfully predict new modes of creativity when humans and AI will be working together. Seriously: “working together”. Not: “humans using software”. One such software is called “Botto”. An artist is its inventor. https://x.com/CarlCanary/status/1480107734087479296 https://x.com/CarlCanary/status/1480107734087479296 I read, there are machines that take an input text to generate images from it. That’s meant to be surprising. Haven’t programs always been texts? You mean, natural language texts are different? So what? Isn’t there Natural Language Programming? I've got to say though, I dont think his takes were very good
keiferski 1y ago
Commenting about recent events, because that's why probably why the link was posted: I think AI art is actually going to make gallery-based individual contemporary art objects more valuable, because they are unique things that cannot be replicated. There are only so many paintings by Picasso, or Kiefer, or Hockney, and even if you could copy them down to the atom, the chain of provenance would still basically make the copies worthless and the originals invaluable. This extends even to smaller contemporary artists that aren't world-famous names. And it also means that digital / computer art is probably never going to sell for much money, at least directly as an art object. At the end of the day, it's essentially simple supply and demand. AI is commoditizing digital images, but it can't commoditize physical ones (yet, or ever.)
_m_p 1y ago
https://christojeanneclaude.net/artworks/surrounded-islands/ https://christojeanneclaude.net/artworks/surrounded-islands/
killerstorm 1y ago
It seems it was originally written to be provocative and might not reflect author's views, as author have himself produced a lot of computer art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieder_Nake#Art_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieder_Nake#Art_career I think something missing in the article is role of art as a way to communicate meaning. Perhaps it's deliberate, i.e. author wanted to provoke people into talking about that aspect. Obviously, art is part of the broader culture and it is one of the ways people update the collective unconscious. With computers entering human life, and thus culture, people need to make sense of computers. And "computer art" is a part of it, and it's part of the discussion about originality and individuality, so it definitely should be (if anything should be at all).
falcor84 1y ago
> In the light of the problems we are facing at the end of the 20th century, those are irrelevant questions. I'm just surprised that someone writing in 1971 thought that they're sufficiently close to the end of the century to comment on it.
Aardwolf 1y ago
So in 50 years our current articles worrying about AI and artists will look as dated and silly?
- makapuf 1y ago
  I hope that our current articles will look dated and silly. The issue is that we don't know which part will, and which part will, as this article is, reflect still-current in another context thoughts which will engage us to think of a deeper question underneath.
calebm 1y ago
I am an artist who uses a computer to make art (https://gods.art https://gods.art). The reason I starting doing art with code was due to the difficulty of drawing wave interference pattens and phyllotaxis spirals by hand. Why should I spend hours doing it by hand when I can write an algorithm to perfectly draw the mathematical patterns I have in mind? It feels more elegant to me to understand the math, and express it in code, rather than just copying it manually (which can be done without understanding the mathematical dynamics). That said, doing a simple prompt into an LLM and calling it "my art" seems disingenuous.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  yeah, i think what you're getting at is something i think about a lot re: art, which is the delineation and interplay between "art" and "craft". i value and appreciate craft on its own merit. something intentionally well-done by someone who is informed by practice is valuable in at least some capacity. but not all craft is art (obviously, harder to define), or at least, i don't hold all craft-as-art as equal or as personally valuable. to me the biggest thing that separates art from craft is the intention behind creating or materializing an idea through craft vs simply creating or materializing an object (digital or physical). i can really appreciate your "artist's statement" behind the mastery of craft (mathematics in this case) as a means to an end to convey a greater concept, if that's what you're getting at. this is entirely personal, but it's why i value certain forms of craft-centric art less than art that places a higher value on concept. i guess it's a value difference between media and message. it's why i kinda can't stand listening to prog rock like Rush or Dream Theater (technically very impressive! and valuable craft as someone who strives to become better at "Music"), but instead tend to prefer things that don't place the craft so prominently compared to other aspects. again - that's not me knocking Rush or Dream Theater anything like that. extremely talented people doing extremely impressive things. but on my personal barometer (personal! not forced on anyone else), i guess i just tend to find it harder to enjoy than some other types of music.
jplusequalt 1y ago
First things first--art is innately human. If a human didn't create it, it's not art. That means nature is not "art" (though that doesn't mean you can't notice the beauty in nature). The artistic process is complicated, and which role a person plays in relation to the creation of a piece of artwork varies. Some people are the actual workers who go about creating the thing. Some are collaborators who help out the worker with small pieces of the artwork. Others are simple curators who bring people together. Then you have those who commission an art piece, and it's what their role in this process is that I find myself conflicted on--are they deserving the title of artist because they funded it's creation, or had the initial idea for the piece? If your answer is yes--that they are considered an artist for commissioning a piece, then I think you can argue that a person who uses an AI model to generate art is actually creating art. But if your answer is no--that simply having an idea and the means to bring it about (through money, or an AI model that was trained off the works of millions of artists without their consent), then I think you have a basis to argue that simply prompting these models to generate art, is not enough to constitute art. The piece wasn't generated by a human, and the prompt given to the model wasn't from someone who actually contributes to the creation of the art piece, therefor the result is not art. Now what if someone first prompts a model to generate an image, and then spends a lot of time tweaking said image in Photoshop--are they still only a commissioner at that point? Well I suppose they aren't. But what about repeatedly prompting an AI until it gives you a close enough replica of what you imagined? Is this process practically the same touching up the piece yourself? I'd argue no, and I'd say this is simply the role of a commissioner telling the worker they're off the mark, and that the worker needs to start over. Anyways that is a lot of text, but I think my point is this--analyzing the role a person plays while prompting an LLM can help inform if the output of the model is actually art.
cmrx64 1y ago
> That is, the role of the computer in the production and presentation of semantic information which is accompanied by enough aesthetic information is meaningful; the role of the computer in the production of aesthetic information per se and for the making of profit is dangerous and senseless. I think this was prescient and still worthy of contemplation.
- antithesizer 1y ago
  ah yes "aesthetic information" definitely a real concern in art
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    Care to expand beyond the snark? The way I understand that paragraph is that "aesthetic information" is the aesthetics involved themselves, and I think it's more than agreeable that art at minimum concerns itself a great deal with aesthetics (things looking pretty, organized, orderly disorganized, etc.) - some might even argue it's all aesthetics, or that aesthetics are inalienable or foundational to it. I'd personally argue there's no art without aesthetics.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  It's by Frieder Nake, who was - ironically - one of the pioneers of computer art.
antithesizer 1y ago
There should be no art at all. And indeed there is no art. So everything is fine.
00x-2 1y ago
A little distracting that the cookie dialog buttons on dam.org have black text on black backgrounds when I’m in dark mode. The styling is not as annoying as the cookie dialogs themselves, though. Google shot themselves in the foot by transferring the pain of privacy to the user for Google Analytics. No one wants this. It wastes so much time. It’s as if every storefront that previously had open doors got a half door added with a crappy combination lock.
- m463 1y ago
  It is a shame that physical cookies get a bad name. Toll house chocolate chip cookies. Peanut butter cookies with the crossed-forks design. snickerdoodles...
protocolture 1y ago
I remember there being a bit of a storm, roughly when Braid was released, about whether games are allowed to be called art. And at that time I spoke with lots of digital artists who had been told that they weren't artists at all also.
Daub 1y ago
I am an artist who works with both digital and traditional media. When household computers were just making an appearance I remember talking with a family friend on the subject of art. They asked my if I had considered trying out this new technology, saying with stars in her eyes that ‘it can draw lines to a degree of accuracy of thousands of an inch’. I was at the time rightfully unconvinced. This anecdote demonstrates how completely misunderstood new technologies can be. Such accuracy is completely irrelevant to an artist. In the end the thing that ‘converted’ me was getting my hands on a copy of Photoshop. I was then, and remain, unimpressed by its painting tools. However, I was blown away by its ability to penetrate the surface of a photo - to change the facts of that photo. Effectively, this solved a creative problem I did not even know I had. I honestly believe that tools are invented before tool users.
- crq-yml 1y ago
  There's a related phenomenon in that we now have an "iPad kid" generation that gets sucked into these extremely precise digital tools without a lot of context, following the beginner's trope of overvaluing rendering and draftmanship to the end of making pieces that all take hundreds of hours and do very little to utilize the machine's ability to automate or dissect information. I remember coming across a livestream of someone whose line-making process was to zoom in and scrub over a tiny area repeatedly for several minutes to create the effect of a single ink brush stroke. The effect was pleasant and had a very intentionally designed quality to it, but I came back a few hours later and he had made hardly any progress. The goal he had in mind was really better suited for vector tools, but the machine wasn't stopping him in the way that paper would give out under intensive scrubbing. I'm quite sure, extrapolating that anecdote, that there's someone out there trying to intentionally design each pixel in a 4k image. IMHO the single most important thing digital provides is new ways to see - I'll often direct students to use the threshold filter to discover new lighting shapes in references or indicate planning problems with their value structure.
  - Daub 1y ago
    > IMHO the single most important thing digital provides is new ways to see - I'll often direct students to use the threshold filter to discover new lighting shapes in references or indicate planning problems with their value structure. Completely agree. The hidden structures of an artwork are pretty much invisible with access to some flavor or other of a digital tool. I believe that Rembrandt would have killed to have the ability to photograph his work and apply a de-saturation in order to see its lightness map. In fact... he did something similar... view his paintings in candle light, which does indeed almost de-saturate his colors. Likewise, any decent Impressionist would have loved to be able to create a Saturation map using Photoshop's Selective Color adjustment.
mediumsmart 1y ago
Art is unique and made directly. You can record and photograph it. Creating the recording or the scan of the photograph with the computer is direct digital cloning. A source file and no originals. That being said you can make a print on canvas and take a brush to add some unique strokes or play the recording and strum along on a guitar. or you can automate the direct digital cloning and ask the computer for something original.
Kiyo-Lynn 1y ago
I'm not an artist, and I don't know much about aesthetics. But I've always felt that the most meaningful kind of image is one that somehow captures what you were feeling inside at the time. AI-generated art can be stunning, but the more I see, the more it feels a bit empty. It often looks great, but there's no emotion behind it.
b0a04gl 1y ago
[dead]
parentheses 1y ago
Humanity's abilities are always enhanced by their tools. This simply changes the judgement of art in the face of easier execution. Let's say I used a custom power saw to carve a statue faster than ever before and more precisely. Would that reduce my influence and my application of taste? No. I would in fact be able to produce a piece faster and have more room for making more attempts. Neural network based art tools are all giving us the same thing - easier execution. This means greater production and the ability to try most possibilities. The fact that creating art is more accessible to the public means that more creatives can be in the arena, making for more competition. Any creator grapples with this change over time. Woodworkers of old prefer their techniques to modern power tools, painters prefer physical media, carvers prefer real blocks of marble/whatever. All of these things have modern digital equivalents, but the establishment of existing artists refuse to leave their posts. They hold their ground that the medium is critical to the art. Art moves and changes slowly because of this human bias against new solutions. Go to any museum of modern art and you'll find that most of it could have been executed as such 20+ years ago. It's just that art takes time to accept a new way of doing something.

97 points by glimshe 1y ago

> I find it easy to admit that computer art did not contribute to the advancement of art. But a banana sticked to a wall with some tape did! I'll stick to the best definition of art that I've heard : "if it gives you an emotion, it is art".

auggierose 1y ago
I guess shitty code is art then.
- groestl 1y ago
  "p" == 0; (shitty type systems as well?)
- SirHumphrey 1y ago
  Esoteric programming languages could be considered art - perhaps the only difference is intentionality.
onthedystopia 1y ago
One is made by a human for other humans. The other is a randomly recognized pattern built from the stolen art of millions, and has no intended audience (because it itself is incapable of consuming art). I also want to emphasize the "banana sticked to a wall" complaint is an often right wing stance to devalue art. Art can be emotional, but not everything that creates emotion is art. In time I think we will work out a better definition of what constitutes art. One that excludes generated images and videos and emphasizes the human connection of artwork.
- ivape 1y ago
  First, I’m going to upvote you because I’m tired of this grayed out censorship bullshit that goes on in this site. I really wish there was a way to set a setting that makes it clear idgaf about downvotes, don’t gray shit out. Second: One is made by a human for other humans. The other is a randomly recognized pattern built from the stolen art of millions, and has no intended audience (because it itself is incapable of consuming art). There is something that fits that definition, which is nature. Some actually believe it’s a divine expression and does indeed have an intended audience (us). That’s a weird belief, but your argument is actually quite sound if you believe in God. If you don’t, then your argument falls apart because so much of nature is art, so much so that art is often based on it. If the Grand Canyon is randomness, yet it appears clearly beautiful to us, and is the source of inspiration for Art, then we can say that this new form of random pattern generator is also another source, one we can take inspiration from. There will be sticklers that will create a delineation between nature and art, which ultimately is quite arrogant because it will apply one specific characteristic to art, that being art is a specifically human creation.
  - strken 1y ago
    Download the Stylish extension, open your browser's console, check out the classes in the HTML, and change the CSS. You can make your own setting in about five minutes unless you're using a locked down platform like iOS that doesn't let you run your own code easily.
  - zzzeek 1y ago
    > I’m tired of this grayed out censorship bullshit that goes on in this site. I really wish there was a way to set a setting that makes it clear idgaf about downvotes, don’t gray shit out. but that would interrupt my tech bro flow with uncomfortable things I've decided nobody should read. that simply wont do, sorry
  - mossTechnician 1y ago
    One need not apply a "human" characteristic to define something as art, only the characteristic of intent. Perhaps that's better suited for GP's definition, which I otherwise find agreeable.
ralfd 1y ago
Pornhub is art?
- SirFatty 1y ago
  No, pornhub is a website.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
andybak 1y ago
The banana stuck to the wall isn't as dumb as it sounds. Look up the story behind it. I read an argument that it's a clever bit of satire on NFTs and the idea of "owning a piece of art". Does that make it art? Dunno. Don't care. It makes it interesting which is a more useful category.
- wongarsu 1y ago
  It is a physical version of the insanity that are NFT pictures. It is a piece of art that is perfectly fungible. Anyone can stick a banana on the wall. And in fact the exhibits of this piece of art are a banana taped to the wall by some random employee. The only thing making it unique is a certificate by the artist that assures you that a banana taped to the wall in that specific exhibition is an art piece by the artist. Just like NFTs are fungible jpegs presumably made non-fungible by a blockchain entry. I think it's brilliant commentary. And even if you have never heard of NFTs it poses questions about what qualifies a piece of art as unique or an original
  - dingnuts 1y ago
    an NFT is a record of ownership. if you have no enforcement mechanism it's meaningless, but nobody makes jokes about fungible data files when we're talking about copyright. if you tied an NFT hash to a legal contract then you could actually enforce ownership of those fungible jpegs and the right click copy people would be just as in violation of the law as someone who walks out with your employer's software sources and jpegs don't actually have anything to do with NFTs other than being used as representations of them by grifters, ruining a useful technology by poisoning the representation of it in minds like yours because a distributed record of software ownership would threaten the app store monopolies. ok that's conspiratorial but it would explain it..
    - Retr0id 1y ago
      If NFTs only become useful when tied to a regular legal contract, why not just use a regular legal contract?
tialaramex 1y ago
I prefer: The unnecessary, done on purpose
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  i've held a personal definitional aspect of art to include "many, but not all, forms of expression by humans that are unnecessary for mere survival" but this is a lot more succinct :)
brookst 1y ago
The duct taped banana has caused far more emotion than the last decade of Marvel movies.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
cainxinth 1y ago
“Art is anything you can get away with.”
bookofjoe 1y ago
>Who’s Laughing Now? Banana-as-Art Sells for $6.2 Million at Sotheby’s [November 20, 2024] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/arts/design/cattelan-banana-sothebys-auction.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/arts/design/cattelan-bana... https://archive.ph/vs3g3 https://archive.ph/vs3g3
hydrogen7800 1y ago
If not for a PBS documentary on surrealism, I wouldn't have considered the existence of meta-art; art as commentary on art. The example I remember was Ceci n'est pas une pipe.[0] That sounds a bit like the banana taped to the wall. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images
zzzeek 1y ago
that's not a good definition. if I go hiking and look at the mountains. that gives me an emotion. But is it art? it's just the actual planet. No human created that. Art requires human intention to be art.
- falcor84 1y ago
  You're just disagreeing without offering an explanation - why was the original not a good definition? As I see it, art is in the eye of the beholder. Splotches of color made by Jackson Pollock and those made by my 3 year old don't differ in their intent (I assume both equally want to express themselves), but in the way that we view the work. I for one don't see any issue with treating a beautiful mountain vista as "a work of art", regardless to whether I believe it was intentionally created by a personified god, or by an RNG in the simulator that's rendering this corner of the universe, or anything in between. I see art.
  - zzzeek 1y ago
    > You're just disagreeing without offering an explanation - why was the original not a good definition? because a pretty mountain is not art? sorry that's not obvious?
    - jstanley 1y ago
      That's not obvious. It's obvious to you, because your definition of "art" requires it to be man-made. But you can't use the fact that non-man-made things can't be art to argue that non-man-made things can't be art. It only works on people who already agree.
      - totallykvothe 1y ago
        A table is not a chair because a table is not a chair. A mountain is not art because a mountain is not art. You're free to use words wrong if you want, but that doesn't make them not wrong.
banannaise 1y ago
The banana would be interesting art if the concept hadn't been done a million times before. This iteration is just a cash grab (and/or publicity play). Which does, to an extent, make it interesting again, so what if it's a commentary on the cash-grab nature of contemporary ar--okay I'm logging off.
- frereubu 1y ago
  Reminds me of the Damien Hirst piece that I love and hate equally. A platinum cast of an 18th-century human skull encrusted with diamonds that had an asking price of £50 million, which was bought by a consortium of people that include... Damien Hirst. He's always been great at titling his work - the fact that it's called For The Love of God, a phrase that I use regularly when I'm exasperated by something, is the icing on the cake. Just unbelievable self-referential, self-dealing chutzpah.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
TeMPOraL 1y ago
> I'll stick to the best definition of art that I've heard : "if it gives you an emotion, it is art". I think it's necessary, but not sufficient. So I kinda like my better: It's art if (and to the extent of) people generally agree it's art. Sounds tautological, but it isn't[0]. Of course, not everything is art. There are some aspects typically - but not always - present. Whether something gives you an emotion is one. Whether it has a deeper story behind it is another. Whether it's something that you can bond over with other people, or a shared experience, yet another. But none of those are required to be present. Art is ultimately a consensus opinion. -- [0] - In fact, most of our civilization is built on ideas that exist only as long as most people expect most other people to believe them. Examples include: money, laws, countries, corporations, even the concept of society itself.
- hex4def6 1y ago
  That feels unnecessarily restrictive. Does Jiro and his sushi constitute an artist and his art? Let's say yes, and let's say most people today agree with this. They're cosmopolitan enough to recognize the sophistication and craft. This definition therefore defines it as "art". I would say if you told the average Brit living in the UK in the 1950s that there's a guy that's really good at slicing up raw fish, you might get a different average answer. So I don't think art is dependent on the conclusion viewer, but on the intention of the author. If they arrange rocks just-so, because they enjoy the shadows they make at noon, I think that's art.
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    > So I don't think art is dependent on the conclusion viewer, but on the intention of the author. If they arrange rocks just-so, because they enjoy the shadows they make at noon, I think that's art. That still depends on the conclusion of the viewer, because intent exists only in the heart of the creator. We can guess at it, or choose to trust the creator when they say what their intent was, but we cannot independently see and evaluate it. Then, other people can disagree with us on what the intent was. You say Jiro is is an artist, I say he's just building a fake persona to market his fish-slicing business. I think there is no quality of "art" that's inherent to the work; I see art as purely social phenomenon.
gspencley 1y ago
> I'll stick to the best definition of art that I've heard : "if it gives you an emotion, it is art". Stubbing my little toe gives me an emotion, is that "art"? lol I would suggest that art is a method is communication. One philosophical definition that I've often used is that "it is a selective recreation of reality in accordance with what the artist considers to be essential." When viewed through the lens of how art might be a useful tool for human survival, it allows us, as rational animals, to communicate highly complex topics in a condensed, straight-to-the-point manner. Morality tales and other stories, paintings, statues, theatrical plays ... all serve to communicate something. To circle back to computer-generated "art", I would say that if the computer-generated artwork has a human programmer who was trying to communicate something through the software and its output, then I could consider it to be "art." It is not the computer producing the art, it is the human being who is programming or otherwise directing the computer through an intent to communicate something. If you leave a computer alone, and using some kind of random entropy it just so happens to produce an image of something because that's what the random generator landed on, then it's not art. There was no intent to communicate. And in the example of computers visualizing some natural phenomenon (the article mentioned an oscilloscope as an example), then it is no more "art" than the image projected into the eye from a microscope since there is no recreation. It is, in that context, a tool for observing reality as it exists, rather than a medium of communication intended to express an idea.
- zeroCalories 1y ago
  The art of the deal is when I feel good about being scammed.
- nullsmack 1y ago
  idk, what did stubbing your toe make you feel. what did it say to you. what did the universe put into it?
exe34 1y ago
> "if it gives you an emotion, it is art". Even if it's made by chatgpt? A lot of carbon-chauvinists believe only meatbags can make art.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  what a weird false dichotomy. i don't think many definitions of art include non-human animals.
  - TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal-made_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal-made_art
  - exe34 1y ago
    > what a weird false dichotomy In what way?
immibis 1y ago
Don't forget "Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue" too - a huge rectangle of mostly red, which angered someone enough to try to destroy it, proving that someone was, in fact, afraid of red, yellow and blue.
kendalf89 1y ago
Art is the product of someone expressing themselves. It requires personhood and it requires intent to express one's self. Therefore, unless you grant an autonomous AI personhood it can't create art. However, one could use AI as a tool to express themselves and that would be art. But that's where I admit the line gets blurred.
- FraterSKM 1y ago
  > Art is the product of someone expressing themselves. While I agree, unfortunately to the majority of people, "Art" simply means "something that makes me feel something". Whether that thing was generated by a human or a machine makes no difference. In my experience most people, when consuming art, hardly think about where it came from/who made it/why they made it, simply on the feelings it evokes with themselves. And as we have seen through outrage algorithms, computers are quite good at figuring out how to create emotional states in humans.
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    I feel that on the other side of the spectrum is where things like idolization and parasocial fandom lies, so in my view, this is not unfortunate at all. There are many flavors of this I can recall. One is voice acting in anime. I'd read episode discussion threads, and people would keep namedropping and discussing the voices behind the characters. Striked me and continues to strike me as just an extremely odd thing to do. As if these folks would go out of their way to ruin the immersion for themselves. Still, I don't mean to judge: they enjoy themselves whatever way they prefer. Or recently I had a discussion with a coworker on being a fan of musicians and bands. He brought up an example that really surprised me: "so called fans will stare at you like a deer at headlights when you ask them: oh you're a fan of Linkin Park? what's their drummer called?". Or how there were so and so "cool" stories about some rock n roll musicians. These are beyond weird to me: I like (some of) their music, not them as individuals. I know nothing about them, nor do I really wish to or think I would be able to. (But then I'm also no "fan" of any musician in the sense my colleague described his idea of that: I feel completely uncompelled to be familiar with the entire discography of a band/artist, and especially to be obsessed with one in general.) But maybe this is a generational difference. In any case, I'd be really hesitant to characterize this as just straight "unfortunate". There's also a swath of cases where the expression in question is only a little more if even that than just a demonstration of someone's aesthetic or ideological preferences. I'm not sure how much art is in there - if someone were to call those expressions shallow, I'd likely agree. In which case, I'm not sure there's much to find unfortunate on this; it's only as unfortunate as much interest you (can) have in that person.
spankibalt 1y ago
[flagged]

mcv 1y ago

> There is no need for the production of more works of art Really? Was art finished in 1971? These sort of very dated articles by people misunderstanding history can be funny, but this particular claim stands out as unusually weird.

dcminter 1y ago
Oh, you think that's a weird view...? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_L... Not that I think anyone much bought the thesis at the time either.
- mcv 1y ago
  Yeah, I didn't either. I also recall reading somewhere that at the end on the 19th or start of the 20th century, a lot of scientists thought that physics was nearly "done". It seems to be a recurring idea that the current state must surely be the final culmination of something. Like us being the end product of evolution.

throw93849494 1y ago

There should be no tax incentives and deductions to trade art.

brookst 1y ago
What incentives are there that don’t apply to any other asset like real estate or jewelry?
- schmidtleonard 1y ago
  Why should real estate and jewelry be tax incentivized?
  - brookst 1y ago
    Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn’t. But either way the more honest conversation is about assets rather than cherry picking one example as if there’s something special about it.
IAmBroom 1y ago
Name one that exists.
- richardwhiuk 1y ago
  Capital gains tax loss is the usual mechanism I think.

detourdog 1y ago

My cousin went to RISD in 1972 after graduation she started hanging around MIT eventually studying under Negroponte before the formation of the media lab. After graduation she worked as a computer animator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter She is in the photo at the terminal working on the last starfighter. She has been creating computer art ever since. She has often expressed confusion and disillusionment with the field. She is often unsure if she or the computer is the artist.

api 1y ago
Photographers have always had similar sentiments, but if you look at artistic photography versus random or amateur photography the former is definitely an art form. Nearly all art except singing and dance is made with tools. In many cases tools define the art form.
- brookst 1y ago
  Even signing and dance use tools, they’re just biological and under sophisticated neural control. It takes at least as much work to train vocal cords and breathing as it does to train muscles to use a paintbrush.
- glimshe 1y ago
  Dance generally uses tools too, but they are more subtle and better integrated. Clothes, props, lights and even the stage can be seen as tools to achieve dance's aims. Singing can certainly use tools too. Auto tune and special microphones. Perhaps you mean to say that neither require tools.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > Singing can certainly use tools too. Auto tune and special microphones. Not just electronic tools: archictectural acoustics are often a tool in vocal performance.
- jrm4 1y ago

HenryBemis 1y ago

> I find it easy to admit that computer art did not contribute to the advancement of art. (We = humans) We made the tweets. We made the paintings. We wrote stupid things on Reddit (or the smarter things). We photographed nature. We built LLMs. In a way, what LLMs are doing is derivative/product of 'our' (and nature's) work. It's like adding 4 ingredients to the blender, blend it for only a few seconds, and you get variation. If you put 4 similar ingredients and you blend again for the exactly same amount of seconds you will get something similar but not the same. LLM is a blender :)

brookst 1y ago
LLMs are probably better compared to a fully equipped chef’s kitchen: a suite of powerful tools that can be used to make sublime fare, or just to burn a nice steak to a crisp.

skrebbel 1y ago

> There is no need for the production of more works of art, particularly no need for “computer art” I mean, if you're against new art in the first place then the rest kinda follows from that right? This article is like titling an essay "Against Chelsea" and then halfway subtly dropping that, well, actually, you hate football in general and people should stop playing it.

coldcode 1y ago

People have said similar things about artists throughout history. Oil Paint? Non-religious/mythical subjects? Impressionism? Fauvism? Cubism? Modern Art? Etc. Throughout art history people have often not valued the new, but only the existing. Beaux-Arts de Paris in the late 1800's was the premiere art school in Europe training traditional artists; yet many eventually turned to impressionism, etc. and abandoned the old styles. I do "computer art" today and go in directions that are new. If all you do is what came before, everything including art will stagnate. Evolve or die is not just for biology.

mc32 1y ago
Depends. Ancient Egyptian art didn’t evolve that much and it remained for millennia as current without the feeling that it ‘stagnated’. There is nothing that says things need to eternally evolve. There is some advantage in some systems in evolution, but not all systems and not for every species and not even for man.
- whism 1y ago
  I’m not sure your assertion regarding ancient Egyptians’ feelings on art trends of their time can be tested :P People create with what is at hand — this includes ideas, not just physical media. In my opinion, suggesting there is society-wide progress (or lack of it) in art is silly, like suggesting the same for fashion or cooking. Exploration, technical evolution, yes. And progress in ideas, in society? Of course!
- detourdog 1y ago
  You are correct good art never goes out of style. The question about Egyptian art is more difficult than it seems. Almost all the artifacts are the ones that could survive 1,000s of years and is quite sophisticated. What we don't get a good sample of is woodworking which is much easier to manipulate. The difficulty of stone work has a built-in limiting factor. The Egyptians also had Ptah the god of creation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptah
4gotunameagain 1y ago

fjfaase 1y ago

There are but a few classical traint artist that started to use computer programs to produce art. One of them is the Dutch artist Peter Struycken. See pstruycken.nl for his art works. In his last works, that focus on colour, he used software to find arrangements of squares with no recognizable patterns as not to distract the viewer from the subject of his works, the interaction of carefully selected coloursm

gjm11 1y ago

My impression is that the author's underlying position, which happens among other things to lead him to the conclusion that "there should be no computer art", is that art should be subordinate to politics. "There is no need for the production of more works of art [...] Aesthetic information as such is interesting only for the rich and the ruling. [...] Thus, the interest in computers and art should be the investigation of aesthetic information as part of the investigation of communication. This investigation should be directed by the needs of the people. [...] We should be interested in producing a film on, say, the distribution of wealth. Such a film is interesting because of its content; the interest in the content is enhanced by an aesthetically satisfying presentation." That is: to the author, the purpose of art is simply to enhance the presentation of something whose primary purpose is political. It may be that the author's position isn't specifically about politics as such: he might say, rather, that art should be subordinate to morals, that making art is only valuable in so far as it furthers some other goal that has value in itself, which might or might not be political. But the specific examples in this article are political. The author does evidently have some other more specific reasons for being skeptical about "computer art". He says that "the repertoire of results of aesthetic behaviour has not been changed by the use of computers" (which might be true, or might be false now but have been true in 1971, but he offers no evidence or arguments for it). He says that "outsiders from technology" are invading the art world without understanding its political situation and "surrendering to the given 'laws of the market'" rather than rebelling against commercialism as real artists should. He says that technology in general, and computers in particular, worsen "the alienation of the artist from his product". Two of these reasons are also political but do engage with the specifics of "computer art" as such. But I think his main reason is the overarching super-general political one: there should be no computer art, because there should be no art as such, because there should only be anti-capitalist political activism which will sometimes use art as a tool. So far as I can tell, the guts of this argument -- art, in practice, is driven by the rich and powerful, artists should reject this and focus on serving the greater need to overthrow the system with those rich and powerful people at the top and replace it with something fairer, therefore such-and-such an idea in art-as-such is a distraction -- could be transplanted without loss to any moment in the history of art and any particular artistic idea or technique or movement. Maybe that or something like it is right, but my bet is that in practice the human race is enriched by having some people in it who create art because they love creating art, for whom other concerns are secondary. (Having said all of which, so far as I can tell the author is basically correct about "computer art" not having contributed much aesthetically, and if he'd written more about that it could have been very interesting. And he might be correct about technology increasing the separation between artists and what they produce, and about that being a bad thing, and if he'd written more about that it could also have been interesting.)

tempaway43563 1y ago

The same author was on twitter until recently giving his take on AI https://x.com/CarlCanary/status/1479567776272498693 https://x.com/CarlCanary/status/1479567776272498693 There are people around who successfully predict new modes of creativity when humans and AI will be working together. Seriously: “working together”. Not: “humans using software”. One such software is called “Botto”. An artist is its inventor. https://x.com/CarlCanary/status/1480107734087479296 https://x.com/CarlCanary/status/1480107734087479296 I read, there are machines that take an input text to generate images from it. That’s meant to be surprising. Haven’t programs always been texts? You mean, natural language texts are different? So what? Isn’t there Natural Language Programming? I've got to say though, I dont think his takes were very good

keiferski 1y ago

Commenting about recent events, because that's why probably why the link was posted: I think AI art is actually going to make gallery-based individual contemporary art objects more valuable, because they are unique things that cannot be replicated. There are only so many paintings by Picasso, or Kiefer, or Hockney, and even if you could copy them down to the atom, the chain of provenance would still basically make the copies worthless and the originals invaluable. This extends even to smaller contemporary artists that aren't world-famous names. And it also means that digital / computer art is probably never going to sell for much money, at least directly as an art object. At the end of the day, it's essentially simple supply and demand. AI is commoditizing digital images, but it can't commoditize physical ones (yet, or ever.)

_m_p 1y ago

https://christojeanneclaude.net/artworks/surrounded-islands/ https://christojeanneclaude.net/artworks/surrounded-islands/

killerstorm 1y ago

It seems it was originally written to be provocative and might not reflect author's views, as author have himself produced a lot of computer art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieder_Nake#Art_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieder_Nake#Art_career I think something missing in the article is role of art as a way to communicate meaning. Perhaps it's deliberate, i.e. author wanted to provoke people into talking about that aspect. Obviously, art is part of the broader culture and it is one of the ways people update the collective unconscious. With computers entering human life, and thus culture, people need to make sense of computers. And "computer art" is a part of it, and it's part of the discussion about originality and individuality, so it definitely should be (if anything should be at all).

falcor84 1y ago

> In the light of the problems we are facing at the end of the 20th century, those are irrelevant questions. I'm just surprised that someone writing in 1971 thought that they're sufficiently close to the end of the century to comment on it.

Aardwolf 1y ago

So in 50 years our current articles worrying about AI and artists will look as dated and silly?

makapuf 1y ago
I hope that our current articles will look dated and silly. The issue is that we don't know which part will, and which part will, as this article is, reflect still-current in another context thoughts which will engage us to think of a deeper question underneath.

calebm 1y ago

I am an artist who uses a computer to make art (https://gods.art https://gods.art). The reason I starting doing art with code was due to the difficulty of drawing wave interference pattens and phyllotaxis spirals by hand. Why should I spend hours doing it by hand when I can write an algorithm to perfectly draw the mathematical patterns I have in mind? It feels more elegant to me to understand the math, and express it in code, rather than just copying it manually (which can be done without understanding the mathematical dynamics). That said, doing a simple prompt into an LLM and calling it "my art" seems disingenuous.

GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
yeah, i think what you're getting at is something i think about a lot re: art, which is the delineation and interplay between "art" and "craft". i value and appreciate craft on its own merit. something intentionally well-done by someone who is informed by practice is valuable in at least some capacity. but not all craft is art (obviously, harder to define), or at least, i don't hold all craft-as-art as equal or as personally valuable. to me the biggest thing that separates art from craft is the intention behind creating or materializing an idea through craft vs simply creating or materializing an object (digital or physical). i can really appreciate your "artist's statement" behind the mastery of craft (mathematics in this case) as a means to an end to convey a greater concept, if that's what you're getting at. this is entirely personal, but it's why i value certain forms of craft-centric art less than art that places a higher value on concept. i guess it's a value difference between media and message. it's why i kinda can't stand listening to prog rock like Rush or Dream Theater (technically very impressive! and valuable craft as someone who strives to become better at "Music"), but instead tend to prefer things that don't place the craft so prominently compared to other aspects. again - that's not me knocking Rush or Dream Theater anything like that. extremely talented people doing extremely impressive things. but on my personal barometer (personal! not forced on anyone else), i guess i just tend to find it harder to enjoy than some other types of music.

jplusequalt 1y ago

First things first--art is innately human. If a human didn't create it, it's not art. That means nature is not "art" (though that doesn't mean you can't notice the beauty in nature). The artistic process is complicated, and which role a person plays in relation to the creation of a piece of artwork varies. Some people are the actual workers who go about creating the thing. Some are collaborators who help out the worker with small pieces of the artwork. Others are simple curators who bring people together. Then you have those who commission an art piece, and it's what their role in this process is that I find myself conflicted on--are they deserving the title of artist because they funded it's creation, or had the initial idea for the piece? If your answer is yes--that they are considered an artist for commissioning a piece, then I think you can argue that a person who uses an AI model to generate art is actually creating art. But if your answer is no--that simply having an idea and the means to bring it about (through money, or an AI model that was trained off the works of millions of artists without their consent), then I think you have a basis to argue that simply prompting these models to generate art, is not enough to constitute art. The piece wasn't generated by a human, and the prompt given to the model wasn't from someone who actually contributes to the creation of the art piece, therefor the result is not art. Now what if someone first prompts a model to generate an image, and then spends a lot of time tweaking said image in Photoshop--are they still only a commissioner at that point? Well I suppose they aren't. But what about repeatedly prompting an AI until it gives you a close enough replica of what you imagined? Is this process practically the same touching up the piece yourself? I'd argue no, and I'd say this is simply the role of a commissioner telling the worker they're off the mark, and that the worker needs to start over. Anyways that is a lot of text, but I think my point is this--analyzing the role a person plays while prompting an LLM can help inform if the output of the model is actually art.

cmrx64 1y ago

> That is, the role of the computer in the production and presentation of semantic information which is accompanied by enough aesthetic information is meaningful; the role of the computer in the production of aesthetic information per se and for the making of profit is dangerous and senseless. I think this was prescient and still worthy of contemplation.

antithesizer 1y ago
ah yes "aesthetic information" definitely a real concern in art
- perching_aix 1y ago
  Care to expand beyond the snark? The way I understand that paragraph is that "aesthetic information" is the aesthetics involved themselves, and I think it's more than agreeable that art at minimum concerns itself a great deal with aesthetics (things looking pretty, organized, orderly disorganized, etc.) - some might even argue it's all aesthetics, or that aesthetics are inalienable or foundational to it. I'd personally argue there's no art without aesthetics.
TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
It's by Frieder Nake, who was - ironically - one of the pioneers of computer art.

antithesizer 1y ago

There should be no art at all. And indeed there is no art. So everything is fine.

00x-2 1y ago

A little distracting that the cookie dialog buttons on dam.org have black text on black backgrounds when I’m in dark mode. The styling is not as annoying as the cookie dialogs themselves, though. Google shot themselves in the foot by transferring the pain of privacy to the user for Google Analytics. No one wants this. It wastes so much time. It’s as if every storefront that previously had open doors got a half door added with a crappy combination lock.

m463 1y ago
It is a shame that physical cookies get a bad name. Toll house chocolate chip cookies. Peanut butter cookies with the crossed-forks design. snickerdoodles...

protocolture 1y ago

I remember there being a bit of a storm, roughly when Braid was released, about whether games are allowed to be called art. And at that time I spoke with lots of digital artists who had been told that they weren't artists at all also.

Daub 1y ago

I am an artist who works with both digital and traditional media. When household computers were just making an appearance I remember talking with a family friend on the subject of art. They asked my if I had considered trying out this new technology, saying with stars in her eyes that ‘it can draw lines to a degree of accuracy of thousands of an inch’. I was at the time rightfully unconvinced. This anecdote demonstrates how completely misunderstood new technologies can be. Such accuracy is completely irrelevant to an artist. In the end the thing that ‘converted’ me was getting my hands on a copy of Photoshop. I was then, and remain, unimpressed by its painting tools. However, I was blown away by its ability to penetrate the surface of a photo - to change the facts of that photo. Effectively, this solved a creative problem I did not even know I had. I honestly believe that tools are invented before tool users.

crq-yml 1y ago
There's a related phenomenon in that we now have an "iPad kid" generation that gets sucked into these extremely precise digital tools without a lot of context, following the beginner's trope of overvaluing rendering and draftmanship to the end of making pieces that all take hundreds of hours and do very little to utilize the machine's ability to automate or dissect information. I remember coming across a livestream of someone whose line-making process was to zoom in and scrub over a tiny area repeatedly for several minutes to create the effect of a single ink brush stroke. The effect was pleasant and had a very intentionally designed quality to it, but I came back a few hours later and he had made hardly any progress. The goal he had in mind was really better suited for vector tools, but the machine wasn't stopping him in the way that paper would give out under intensive scrubbing. I'm quite sure, extrapolating that anecdote, that there's someone out there trying to intentionally design each pixel in a 4k image. IMHO the single most important thing digital provides is new ways to see - I'll often direct students to use the threshold filter to discover new lighting shapes in references or indicate planning problems with their value structure.
- Daub 1y ago
  > IMHO the single most important thing digital provides is new ways to see - I'll often direct students to use the threshold filter to discover new lighting shapes in references or indicate planning problems with their value structure. Completely agree. The hidden structures of an artwork are pretty much invisible with access to some flavor or other of a digital tool. I believe that Rembrandt would have killed to have the ability to photograph his work and apply a de-saturation in order to see its lightness map. In fact... he did something similar... view his paintings in candle light, which does indeed almost de-saturate his colors. Likewise, any decent Impressionist would have loved to be able to create a Saturation map using Photoshop's Selective Color adjustment.

mediumsmart 1y ago

Art is unique and made directly. You can record and photograph it. Creating the recording or the scan of the photograph with the computer is direct digital cloning. A source file and no originals. That being said you can make a print on canvas and take a brush to add some unique strokes or play the recording and strum along on a guitar. or you can automate the direct digital cloning and ask the computer for something original.

Kiyo-Lynn 1y ago

I'm not an artist, and I don't know much about aesthetics. But I've always felt that the most meaningful kind of image is one that somehow captures what you were feeling inside at the time. AI-generated art can be stunning, but the more I see, the more it feels a bit empty. It often looks great, but there's no emotion behind it.

b0a04gl 1y ago

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parentheses 1y ago

Humanity's abilities are always enhanced by their tools. This simply changes the judgement of art in the face of easier execution. Let's say I used a custom power saw to carve a statue faster than ever before and more precisely. Would that reduce my influence and my application of taste? No. I would in fact be able to produce a piece faster and have more room for making more attempts. Neural network based art tools are all giving us the same thing - easier execution. This means greater production and the ability to try most possibilities. The fact that creating art is more accessible to the public means that more creatives can be in the arena, making for more competition. Any creator grapples with this change over time. Woodworkers of old prefer their techniques to modern power tools, painters prefer physical media, carvers prefer real blocks of marble/whatever. All of these things have modern digital equivalents, but the establishment of existing artists refuse to leave their posts. They hold their ground that the medium is critical to the art. Art moves and changes slowly because of this human bias against new solutions. Go to any museum of modern art and you'll find that most of it could have been executed as such 20+ years ago. It's just that art takes time to accept a new way of doing something.