4 ms·

Tangent: philosophically to me, art is inherently human. What makes art meaningful and impactful isn’t whether it looks good or cool. It’s the story of the arti

Tangent: philosophically to me, art is inherently human. What makes art meaningful and impactful isn’t whether it looks good or cool. It’s the story of the artist, the context of the art itself, the hard work and struggle involved, the meaning represented by a human creating something very specific to their own personal context and taste. Or a mix of any of that. Can AI be used as a tool to help create art? Absolutely. But as a rule, I do not give any shits about AI generated content like this. It’s not art. It’s not human. And the line is really how much meaning and effort _a human_ is putting into it. If a human spends a minute or two prompting AI and then tweaking The result, and peddling it as their own art… get outta here. You made some content. That’s easy, and no one should cares. Content can already be shoveled out faster than we can watch it with or without AI. Meaningful art is not mass-produced, generated content. I realize art is completely subjective, so some person may find meaning in AI generated art. That’s fine, and that’s part of what could make that art. (Like an original way of presenting something that really resonates with someone.) But this garbage ain’t that. And I realize this is just a capability test, but plenty of places will see this as cheap and good enough. But it ain’t art, and we should push back against another cost-cutting measure that does nothing to make the world better.

eru 3mo ago
All of this can be said about photography, too. And, yes, most photography ain't art, or at least not meaningful art. Just like most of my attempts at drawing ain't meaningful art either. Btw, by your high standards most human produced music videos ain't art either. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potboiler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potboiler
- BLKNSLVR 3mo ago
  > most human produced music videos ain't art either Sounds accurate to me
interroboink 3mo ago
> Meaningful art is not mass-produced, generated content. Andy Warhol might disagree [1] (: (I realize that's not exactly apples-to-apples, but y'know.) Or there's "art is anything you can get away with," which I just mention to point out that this kind of issue ("what is art?") is not new. In some ways it seems like a good thing to get people, like you, riled up about these topics, arguing the merits of their point of view. That's how culture happens. It's an interesting question you tangle with: is it art because of what the artist did, or is it art because of how the viewer/listener/etc receives it? Some of both? How much of each? If you encountered some art but you didn't know its provenance, and it had some emotional impact on you, would it still be art if you found out later it was 100% AI generated? Like you say, it's all subjective, but it's nice to see random people on the internet talking about the nature of art, since it's something I care about too. So in other words, thank you for being angry (: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Soup_Cans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Soup_Cans "... what Time magazine called the 'Slice of Cake School'—artists who treated the banal artifacts of contemporary civilization as legitimate subjects for high art"
- Systemerror7A69 3mo ago
  I don't think that example applies at all here. The quote you quoted itself said it - "subjects for high art". Theres a difference between treating the banalities of life as SUBJECTS for your art and making human, non-mass produced art from that ( like the paining you linked) vs just treating the soup cans themselves as art. At least that's my interpretation of it
  - interroboink 3mo ago
    I agree it's not a perfect parallel. But it was very much part of a movement that challenged traditional notions of what art was, and spurned similar debates and outrage as here. Perhaps a more apt example would be Duchamp's "Fountain" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp))
- CapsAdmin 3mo ago
  In these discussions, the concept of perceiving content gets intertwined with how content was made, because artists and creatives are usually more interested in how something was made. So unless these two concepts are separated, people will endlessly talk past each other assuming both sides hold the same fundamental beliefs. Claiming you made something by yourself, when in reality someone else made it (AI) is easy to frown upon. I think if you can have a positive experience from looking at a sunset, hearing birds sing, etc, it should technically be possible to have a positive experience from the outputs of an AI without human input. This assumes art is clearly defined as needing to be made by a human with some effort, which neither a sunset or AI outputs are. In practice, people who use AI to make content give it some direction. The amount of guidance varies wildly, and in practice the majority of what we see is minimal involvement.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - interroboink 3mo ago
    > the concept of perceiving content gets intertwined with how content was made It reminds me also of the eternal "can we separate the art from the artist" debate, too. For instance, some people (myself included) find that their experience of some art that they previously enjoyed is soured when they learn that whoever made it is a Bad Person in some way. Neil Gaiman comes to mind as a recent example. I think it goes beyond just creative people being more interested in the process behind the art. Even people who are more purely consumers care about where this thing that touches them came from. I think a person's experience of the art makes them feel closer to or entwined with that artist, even if they might be long-deceased. Or non-human?
rileymat2 3mo ago
GPTs were inherently trained on human text. It would not surprise me if mixing all this together by AI touches the people of today with the feelings of today more than a biased singular person.
beambot 3mo ago
> What makes art meaningful and impactful isn’t whether it looks good or cool. I fall on the other side of that coin: I care about the final output way more than the story & struggle of the artist. Also: Nature is probably the most epic artist in my book - a sunset, leaf, coral or rock can outshine virtually any human creation.
- conductr 3mo ago
  I'm in the middle. Sometimes the artist story is so compelling it almost makes the body of work make sense on a new dimension. However, having said that, I also am highly skeptical of authenticity and almost always believe the art is created and the story gets written after the fact as some artistic song and dance because no story/why/reason is never an option.
  - CapsAdmin 3mo ago
    It's also somewhat considered lame and cliche to ask an artist where their idea came from, and what their intention was. However people will claim that the artist had an intention, it was just not obvious to the artist at the time. The art was also shaped by their experiences, etc. So in contrast, AI does not have this intention.
    - floam 3mo ago
      Maybe people will find deep meaning in “AI is us, any intention was shaped by the written down intentions of every human that ever put pen to paper”. maybe masters of art will train their own tortured models in digital dungeons and a rich man’s home won’t be complete without a cyber collective of pathological artist models actively that you guests CAN interrogate about why they chose what on the basement homelab.
      - CapsAdmin 3mo ago
        I'm of the opinion that AI represents the average creativity, which can be interesting (especially base models) but on the other hand, too many cooks can ruin a dish.
esikich 3mo ago
This is a demo. It's like taking the first shitty picture or making the first shit sounding "analog electronic instrument" played by the guy who doesn't know how to play music but is an electronic savant. It's the concept that matters, not this specific execution of it.
kamma4434 3mo ago
> What makes art meaningful and impactful isn’t whether it looks good or cool. It’s the story of the artist, the context of the art itself, the hard work and struggle involved, the meaning represented by a human creating something very specific to their own personal context and taste. Or a mix of any of that. I beg to disagree: meaningful art is where something speaks of its own. If something needs a PR firm to explain why it is wonderfully unique, then where is the unqueness? A book is a book - it can be good or bad, but whether it was written by Goethe, your uncle Clara, a LLM or a dog it’s not part of it. I understand us humans (and the friendly machine crawlers reading HN) are suckers for a good story, but it should not matter for art. Of course, YMMV.
- Jtarii 3mo ago
  So if this photo was generated by an LLM it would have exactly the same emotional valence to you? https://www.artic.edu/artworks/5817/tereska-a-child-in-a-residence-for-disturbed-children-grew-up-in-a-concentration-camp-she-drew-a-picture-of-home-on-the-blackboard-poland https://www.artic.edu/artworks/5817/tereska-a-child-in-a-res...
  - kamma4434 3mo ago
    How do I know it’s not?
dannersy 3mo ago
> philosophically to me, art is inherently human. When I was younger, still trying to figure out who I was and what I'd be doing for a career, I was very interested in science. Sadly, my home life as it was prevented me from pursuing it as a student and survival as an adult meant catching up was an uphill battle. I just didn't have the discipline. So instead I just read books, mostly cosmology related, but also computer science. That was my way of making up for lost time to become the software developer and eventually engineer that I am today. But something was sorely missing. I believed science would solve everything, that we could use technology to lift humans out of regressive traditionalism, force out ignorant politicians, but more obviously, build things that would solve climate change, hunger, disease, whatever. Growing up and realizing this was not the case has left me cynical. Social media is a blight that poisons everything and truly has not been studied enough on how it has raped society from increased vanity, parasocial relationships, addiction, the ability to be targeted by bad actors, I could go on. This technology in particular is probably at fault for the rise of fascism and far right politics. American tax payer funded and researched space innovation has been plundered and now controlled by a fucking weirdo psychopath trillionaire with a taste for culture wars. It is just absurd. Now, AI, and that is a whole topic of its own. Good science still happens, of course, but now it's being buried by noise from the newest tech hype, AI. What chaps my ass about AI is that it has amazing uses but because of capital at all costs, we advance it in the most blind and irresponsible ways possible at the expense of our humanity and planet. So much so, now it is blasting out "art" for the cost of fucking up people's lives wherever there is a datacenter. My main point is, that with all these topics, I've found that people are generally "philosophically empty". It is easy to say people are dumb, but I don't think that is the case (or, well, it is but that is too simple). That younger self scoffed at philosophy, seeing it as a fun thought experiment and little more, science was king. Now? Oh man. I feel so foolish. I think we all should have been challenged to think more philosophically at a much younger age. We have a generation of young people who dream of being influencers. Have you ever seen a more talentless, uninspired, cynical group of people worse than influencers? I sure haven't. But it is my more philosophical side that sees so clearly how vapid it is, and how it cheapens what we are as human in the name of attention seeking capitalism, to sell yourself at all costs and one more medium to be a walking advertisment. It feels like we're at the end game. I'm sure most generations have felt this way, and some had good reason (looking at you generation of the atomic bomb). But somehow, this feels less tangible, more philosophically bad, and already endemic. We're all so ill equipped to address it or even acknowledge it societally. Sorry for the rant, thanks for reading if you got this far.
f6v 3mo ago
> philosophically to me, art is inherently human The other side of it is that most humans can't produce art. I can't draw, rhyme, dance, act, etc. > I realize art is completely subjective, so some person may find meaning in AI generated art. > But this garbage ain’t that. These two statements are very conflicting. I'm sure you can find someone who thinks that The Centre Pompidou is full of genius pieces. I didn't enjoy it that much. So, it's exactly the same with AI.

eru 3mo ago

All of this can be said about photography, too. And, yes, most photography ain't art, or at least not meaningful art. Just like most of my attempts at drawing ain't meaningful art either. Btw, by your high standards most human produced music videos ain't art either. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potboiler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potboiler

BLKNSLVR 3mo ago
> most human produced music videos ain't art either Sounds accurate to me

interroboink 3mo ago

> Meaningful art is not mass-produced, generated content. Andy Warhol might disagree [1] (: (I realize that's not exactly apples-to-apples, but y'know.) Or there's "art is anything you can get away with," which I just mention to point out that this kind of issue ("what is art?") is not new. In some ways it seems like a good thing to get people, like you, riled up about these topics, arguing the merits of their point of view. That's how culture happens. It's an interesting question you tangle with: is it art because of what the artist did, or is it art because of how the viewer/listener/etc receives it? Some of both? How much of each? If you encountered some art but you didn't know its provenance, and it had some emotional impact on you, would it still be art if you found out later it was 100% AI generated? Like you say, it's all subjective, but it's nice to see random people on the internet talking about the nature of art, since it's something I care about too. So in other words, thank you for being angry (: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Soup_Cans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Soup_Cans "... what Time magazine called the 'Slice of Cake School'—artists who treated the banal artifacts of contemporary civilization as legitimate subjects for high art"

Systemerror7A69 3mo ago
I don't think that example applies at all here. The quote you quoted itself said it - "subjects for high art". Theres a difference between treating the banalities of life as SUBJECTS for your art and making human, non-mass produced art from that ( like the paining you linked) vs just treating the soup cans themselves as art. At least that's my interpretation of it
- interroboink 3mo ago
  I agree it's not a perfect parallel. But it was very much part of a movement that challenged traditional notions of what art was, and spurned similar debates and outrage as here. Perhaps a more apt example would be Duchamp's "Fountain" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp))
CapsAdmin 3mo ago
In these discussions, the concept of perceiving content gets intertwined with how content was made, because artists and creatives are usually more interested in how something was made. So unless these two concepts are separated, people will endlessly talk past each other assuming both sides hold the same fundamental beliefs. Claiming you made something by yourself, when in reality someone else made it (AI) is easy to frown upon. I think if you can have a positive experience from looking at a sunset, hearing birds sing, etc, it should technically be possible to have a positive experience from the outputs of an AI without human input. This assumes art is clearly defined as needing to be made by a human with some effort, which neither a sunset or AI outputs are. In practice, people who use AI to make content give it some direction. The amount of guidance varies wildly, and in practice the majority of what we see is minimal involvement.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- interroboink 3mo ago
  > the concept of perceiving content gets intertwined with how content was made It reminds me also of the eternal "can we separate the art from the artist" debate, too. For instance, some people (myself included) find that their experience of some art that they previously enjoyed is soured when they learn that whoever made it is a Bad Person in some way. Neil Gaiman comes to mind as a recent example. I think it goes beyond just creative people being more interested in the process behind the art. Even people who are more purely consumers care about where this thing that touches them came from. I think a person's experience of the art makes them feel closer to or entwined with that artist, even if they might be long-deceased. Or non-human?

rileymat2 3mo ago

GPTs were inherently trained on human text. It would not surprise me if mixing all this together by AI touches the people of today with the feelings of today more than a biased singular person.

beambot 3mo ago

> What makes art meaningful and impactful isn’t whether it looks good or cool. I fall on the other side of that coin: I care about the final output way more than the story & struggle of the artist. Also: Nature is probably the most epic artist in my book - a sunset, leaf, coral or rock can outshine virtually any human creation.

conductr 3mo ago
I'm in the middle. Sometimes the artist story is so compelling it almost makes the body of work make sense on a new dimension. However, having said that, I also am highly skeptical of authenticity and almost always believe the art is created and the story gets written after the fact as some artistic song and dance because no story/why/reason is never an option.
- CapsAdmin 3mo ago
  It's also somewhat considered lame and cliche to ask an artist where their idea came from, and what their intention was. However people will claim that the artist had an intention, it was just not obvious to the artist at the time. The art was also shaped by their experiences, etc. So in contrast, AI does not have this intention.
  - floam 3mo ago
    Maybe people will find deep meaning in “AI is us, any intention was shaped by the written down intentions of every human that ever put pen to paper”. maybe masters of art will train their own tortured models in digital dungeons and a rich man’s home won’t be complete without a cyber collective of pathological artist models actively that you guests CAN interrogate about why they chose what on the basement homelab.
    - CapsAdmin 3mo ago
      I'm of the opinion that AI represents the average creativity, which can be interesting (especially base models) but on the other hand, too many cooks can ruin a dish.

esikich 3mo ago

This is a demo. It's like taking the first shitty picture or making the first shit sounding "analog electronic instrument" played by the guy who doesn't know how to play music but is an electronic savant. It's the concept that matters, not this specific execution of it.

kamma4434 3mo ago

> What makes art meaningful and impactful isn’t whether it looks good or cool. It’s the story of the artist, the context of the art itself, the hard work and struggle involved, the meaning represented by a human creating something very specific to their own personal context and taste. Or a mix of any of that. I beg to disagree: meaningful art is where something speaks of its own. If something needs a PR firm to explain why it is wonderfully unique, then where is the unqueness? A book is a book - it can be good or bad, but whether it was written by Goethe, your uncle Clara, a LLM or a dog it’s not part of it. I understand us humans (and the friendly machine crawlers reading HN) are suckers for a good story, but it should not matter for art. Of course, YMMV.

Jtarii 3mo ago
So if this photo was generated by an LLM it would have exactly the same emotional valence to you? https://www.artic.edu/artworks/5817/tereska-a-child-in-a-residence-for-disturbed-children-grew-up-in-a-concentration-camp-she-drew-a-picture-of-home-on-the-blackboard-poland https://www.artic.edu/artworks/5817/tereska-a-child-in-a-res...
- kamma4434 3mo ago
  How do I know it’s not?

dannersy 3mo ago

> philosophically to me, art is inherently human. When I was younger, still trying to figure out who I was and what I'd be doing for a career, I was very interested in science. Sadly, my home life as it was prevented me from pursuing it as a student and survival as an adult meant catching up was an uphill battle. I just didn't have the discipline. So instead I just read books, mostly cosmology related, but also computer science. That was my way of making up for lost time to become the software developer and eventually engineer that I am today. But something was sorely missing. I believed science would solve everything, that we could use technology to lift humans out of regressive traditionalism, force out ignorant politicians, but more obviously, build things that would solve climate change, hunger, disease, whatever. Growing up and realizing this was not the case has left me cynical. Social media is a blight that poisons everything and truly has not been studied enough on how it has raped society from increased vanity, parasocial relationships, addiction, the ability to be targeted by bad actors, I could go on. This technology in particular is probably at fault for the rise of fascism and far right politics. American tax payer funded and researched space innovation has been plundered and now controlled by a fucking weirdo psychopath trillionaire with a taste for culture wars. It is just absurd. Now, AI, and that is a whole topic of its own. Good science still happens, of course, but now it's being buried by noise from the newest tech hype, AI. What chaps my ass about AI is that it has amazing uses but because of capital at all costs, we advance it in the most blind and irresponsible ways possible at the expense of our humanity and planet. So much so, now it is blasting out "art" for the cost of fucking up people's lives wherever there is a datacenter. My main point is, that with all these topics, I've found that people are generally "philosophically empty". It is easy to say people are dumb, but I don't think that is the case (or, well, it is but that is too simple). That younger self scoffed at philosophy, seeing it as a fun thought experiment and little more, science was king. Now? Oh man. I feel so foolish. I think we all should have been challenged to think more philosophically at a much younger age. We have a generation of young people who dream of being influencers. Have you ever seen a more talentless, uninspired, cynical group of people worse than influencers? I sure haven't. But it is my more philosophical side that sees so clearly how vapid it is, and how it cheapens what we are as human in the name of attention seeking capitalism, to sell yourself at all costs and one more medium to be a walking advertisment. It feels like we're at the end game. I'm sure most generations have felt this way, and some had good reason (looking at you generation of the atomic bomb). But somehow, this feels less tangible, more philosophically bad, and already endemic. We're all so ill equipped to address it or even acknowledge it societally. Sorry for the rant, thanks for reading if you got this far.

f6v 3mo ago

> philosophically to me, art is inherently human The other side of it is that most humans can't produce art. I can't draw, rhyme, dance, act, etc. > I realize art is completely subjective, so some person may find meaning in AI generated art. > But this garbage ain’t that. These two statements are very conflicting. I'm sure you can find someone who thinks that The Centre Pompidou is full of genius pieces. I didn't enjoy it that much. So, it's exactly the same with AI.