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> 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

> 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.
    - ivape 1y ago
      So what's the intent behind a flower looking beautiful? You see you will have to make the argument that a flower isn't art or ... that other explanation (something intended it be beautiful).
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]

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.
  - ivape 1y ago
    So what's the intent behind a flower looking beautiful? You see you will have to make the argument that a flower isn't art or ... that other explanation (something intended it be beautiful).

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

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