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Redditors Vent and Complain When People Mock Their "AI Art"
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this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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people forget that what makes art impressive is also the skill of the artist in the respective medium
if someone creates a perfect color gradient fill in Photoshop nobody is going to be impressed but make it with colored pencils and people may regard it as stunning
the beauty is also in the effort it took to create, not only in what the result looks like - i don't need to take time to look at stuff people didn't take time to make
Funnily enough, that was what Mark Rothko was doing with paint. Exploring color to get the perfect shade of something. Looking at color at its most basic. That's why those of us who understand what Rothko was going for often really love his paintings while most other people say, "I don't get it, it's just rectangles."
Oh I do get it but it's still just rectangles. If the only people who like your stuff are other painters, not other artists in general but other painters, then I think it's fair to say that what you're doing is 99.99% craft and maybe 0.01% art.
That kind of stuff also exists in an AI context, btw, people doing things for the heck of getting it to work and showing off technical aspects. Like absolutely a milestone when it comes to video2video, absolutely at a stage where it's usable for artistic expression if you're willing to work within some limitations, though the video here is much more dicking around than art. You'll also find gazillions of AIified tiktok dances from the same crowd as tracking limbs isn't exactly trivial.
But it isn't "just rectangles." That's the point. They were slowly and meticulously constructed by layering oil paint in a way that explores the idea of what colors and color contrasts mean.
He didn't just take a broad paintbrush and paint a rectangle.
He also suggested viewing his canvases up close, maybe a foot away, so you could see it the way he saw it.
With less skill in painting but the same artistic intent I can take a sample book of unicolour fabric with different weaves from the local textile store and put it on a pedestal: Exploring the idea of what fabric texture and texture contrasts mean.
And I'm sure clothing designers all over the world will be ecstatic... or would be, if they didn't have store rooms full of sample books.
It is a valuable and thorough exploration of the craft is all I'm saying. He's a Paganini, not a Ravel.
But why isn't such an exploration a form of art?
If someone does a complicated abstract painting but uses a ruler and a protractor to achieve it, is that art?
Because I make a distinction between art and craft. You can produce extraordinarily impressive pieces of craft that have no artistic content at all, no intent nor capacity to convey a message or transform mind or anything that resembles it, you can produce extraordinary pieces of art with zero recourse to craft. Like putting a urinal on a pedestal, as I've mentioned quite often in this thread.
Speaking about protractors: Engineering drawings can actually be art. There's a difference between a drawing that's merely conveying technical information and one that is both technical and at the same time is arranged, presented, such that it does not have to be deciphered, it is capable of transforming a mind by merely being looked at, instead of having to be pondered. It's the difference between a court file and a thrilling detective story.
So you're claiming any image that must be deciphered isn't art?
Nah not like that. Art is something on top of the mundane and with technical drawings it happens to be that kind of stuff.
I would argue that Rothko's works are anything but mundane considering the effort that went into them.
There's also tons of effort in merely technical drawings.
As said: Things can be absolutely impressive for their craft content alone. I'm not discounting that. But art is something on top of that. Art is something which works without craft. Which works with nothing more but a urinal out of a factory.
I'm not married to the word "mundane" in that comment btw it's just a suitable word to use for the baseline I contrast the "art on top" to. If you want to use it for "basic craft, fulfills its purpose" vs. "extraordinary craft, exceeds even the wildest dreams" then be my guest, I do the same I simply didn't happen to use it that way in that specific sentence.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
absolutely a milestone when it comes to video2video
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Respectfully disagree. There's a plethora of artists with exceptional skills that create photorealistic art in several mediums. While the process takes an inordinate amount of time it is completely devoid of any creative input. These are essentially human xerox machines that match color values from a photo using the naked eye. The skill is impressive, the art: not so much.
Isn't that what the person you replied just said?
No. The person I replied to was exclusively praising skill and emphasizing its relevance to the final product. I pointed out that effort does not by default result in an original or creative product. OP dismisses effort and equates time with quality. Take for instance japanese calligraphy: the master places only a handful of strokes to render something gorgeous. On the other hand, someone could spend 80 hours meticulously recreating a photorealistic portrait in watercolor but it's just a human xerox at that point. The human element is completely missed.
They didn't say that though? The last paragraph made it clear (to me) that they were saying the end result isn't the only part of at that makes it impressive, but also the effort/skill involved
I guess you're right. I suppose this last phrase threw me off:
The way I read it this statement stands apart from the rest of their comment. Skill is nice--I agree--but I stand by my original statement: time or effort does not by default result in an artistic product. I suppose I could have read it wrong in that the comment as a whole is a bit disjointed.
I always hated that the most upvoted art on reddit was just photorealism... Abd then the comments were all like, "Wow! I was 100% sure this was a photo until i zoom in!!!"
Yeah I agree, but with large platforms it's inevitable for tastes to converge towards the median. A Rothko wouldn't even register on such a platform.
I think Rothko probably doesn't look as impressive on a phone screen either, compared to real life
This is because different people enjoy different things about art. Some people see it as a connection, hearing another person's voice in the piece. Some love to see sacrifice, like spending hundreds of hours on creating something. Some view it almost like a sport and want to see a display of pinnacle skill. Others want the art to connect with them and their past.
I bet you don't like it when people put urinals on a pedestal.
While I support your whole statement, I think the beauty of art lies in the message, vision or emotion that the artist wants to convey to the world through a visual medium. You can have a super realistic portrayal of a human and still prefer the art of Van Gogh because he shared his emotions through his art and people could feel that.
there was an 'also' in that sentence - and he put it there himself without leveraging other bathroom-installations-on-pedestal works
He put it there leveraging a whole urinal factory. Transported into today's world, instead of clicking "generate" on a prompt with "urinal" on it he put "urinal" in the amazon search box, picked the first result, and then hit "buy".
The art is in the idea, the message, the thought or impression that's getting transmitted, the effect in the recipient's mind (in this case it was a shitpost to troll conservatives on the one side and have a good chuckle among people who got it on the other). The rest is craft. Craft, on its own, can be fucking impressive but it's not art.
And, of course, yes, not everyone hitting "generate" is putting a urinal on a pedestal. Much of the AI stuff out there is devoid of artistic intent, much of it isn't even crafty, but that doesn't mean that something being AI generated cannot be art, or that it would need craftiness to become art.
In the case of his bicycle wheel thing he went through a gazillion wheels -- hitting generate a million times if you want -- until he found one that was neither beautiful, nor ugly, but one that was profoundly uninteresting, "just a wheel, nothing special". That was work, the actual work of an artist (judging the impression something makes), and with precise artistic intent -- to make a statement about how art should be about engaging the mind, be not about aesthetics.
The people producing profoundly uninteresting works with AI don't do that. Just goes on to show that the author is very much not dead.
Until one can produce work that makes an impression with some precision one has to have experience in the medium though - and different media are different regarding to what that means.
With illustration and representative art it starts with something 'reading' correctly, i.e. whether the intended representation even gets to the recipient. And then there are more layers on top of that getting ever more meta.
Someone who can put a urinal on a pedestal and cause an uproar in whichever direction has a lot of experience - but if a picture is just a picture or a urinal is just a urinal, it's not worth looking at much, except for its engineering. Good art doesn't have to be on that level though, entertainment can also be good art (but a lot of it isn't) - there, it's about resonance.
You're right that craftsmanship alone cannot produce good art, there is something else driving the desire to hone craftsmanship, which is maybe to better be able to express what was impressed on the artist through life. Something that resonates with the artist is made with the hope it also resonates with other people, art is a social endeavour.
But I also feel that to a large extent, honing the craft also hones the intuition (and some knowledge as far as it can be distilled) for what makes things resonant with others. I make myself into the diffusion model to resonate with what I'm making while making it, you feel each curve you put to paper or canvas, you feel the tension in a pose, the impact of a composition - the resulting art is what's there when that process is abandoned.
I feel like a vegan about the currently available models - once there is something made from public domain art only I'll experiment. But right now I'm sitting in front of them like a vegan in front of sausage: For others the result is food but for them, they just see the process turning individuals into sausage.
Oh, definitely. I'd also say that if you want to make art, starting out with AI isn't a good idea, do literally anything else until you have developed an artistic eye: If for no other reason that it is developed faster by trying to appease even an underdeveloped one than by using it. Just to make this a bit more concrete, if you can sculpt or paint a smile that doesn't look freaky which is a low bar aesthetically speaking but not trivial for a beginner sculptor or painter, then you can properly judge whether what AI is giving you is something resonant, or forgettable. The untrained eye putting "woman with big tiddies" in the prompt certainly isn't going to notice finer details of a smile, what with eyes being on the tits.
I don't consider models learning from stuff, as in, the pixels can be accessed without a paywall or they've paid for that wall, as infringement. If it was then every artist who ever used reference should be in prison, and we shouldn't.
Note that this is actually quite a different situation in diffusion models than it is with LLMs which are notorious for returning their training data verbatim: All the NYT needed to do to get their articles back is to put in the first paragraph of the article. Getty, meanwhile, is arguing their court case in the abstract because they can't get models to reproduce their images, certainly not for lack of trying or resources. When working with the models it also quickly becomes apparent that they can abstract over concepts.
At the most it's the difference between organic and barn eggs. Yes, organic ones are nicer. No, barn eggs aren't terrible (depending on local regulations etc. yadayada). Vegans might disagree but, then, well, I'm flexi.
i wonder if the people downvoting you even understand the reference
I just need to press a button and my DSLR will automatically upload the picture I took. Is photography art? Different people get different things from art. If you want to see something that took a human a hundred hours of consideration, that's fine. But I don't care what the artist was thinking most of the time. I care how it makes me feel. What inspiration it sparks in my mind. I've been moved and inspired by AI art. Admittedly I could also probably have been moved by inkblots. But people hang inkblot prints in their house because it does something for them. Art is subjective, meaning it's more about the subject viewing it than the artist.
You caused me no distress, I was just inspired by your comment to share my perspective.
If a machine isn't an athlete for throwing a football, there are no athletes. If a computer can't be a musician, there are no musicians. The line you're drawing where a computer is worthy of being called an artist, is whether or not it was created by evolution. But there's no technical differences between the two. Or at least there won't be soon.
I understand you're under a different opinion and I thank you for it. I have no need to change it.