Pikazo
pikazoapp.com
pikazoapp.com
Art is not art because it looks nice or because it looks like something else that is widely accepted as "art".
I see art as something produced by an artist combining genius + technique.
Genius usually implies being original, but also stating what the piece of art represents in contrast to the existing ones (what boundaries it breaks, what pre-conceptions it revolts against, what is its purpose (even if it's purpose is to have no purpose) etc.).
Technique means work and expertise. Sometimes genius is so overwhelming that there is little technique needed. Sometimes technique is so skilled that it overwhelms genius.
The makers of this app are probably artists (there's certainly a lot of genius involved in devising a way to produce such compositions, and work). What you create with your app probably not art though, regardless of how amazingly beautiful it turns out to be.
That's not to say artists may not make use of such tool to make art, but they'll have to find ways to be original. The fact that a button can be clicked to produce a result automatically destroys much of the artistic value of the outcomes. But hey, it's beautiful :)
What's art for you?
It's because modern artists started thinking that _the goal_ of art was to be original that we came to this situation.
You can't even recognize "genius", which this is. It directly challenges the definition of "art", which is pretty wonderful.
Most art has nothing to do with being a genius, it's lots of work, repetition, variation, trying new things, combining.
That's exactly genius and technique. It's not about being a genius in the sense of intelligent, it's about having the genius to move forward from the current state.
Art is a lot like humor, it works for people because it just 'works'. That is what matters. Not the hard work, and 'genius' of the creator behind it, that's just vanity.
Would bohemian rhapsody not count as art if it was made up by a machine?
Edit: art is not art because "just works" or because it's likeable. Art goes way beyond what just works or the search for beauty. See the Viennese actionism for example: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-viennese-actionism.htm
The computer broke after completing the work: now does it count? I don't understand your idea of art, isn't there beauty in the result? You give different value if the same result has been reached by a computer, chaos or a human?
Do you have to know how the piece has been produced to decide if it's art or not?
Yet, go to a modern art gallery and someone will try to convince you the potato he stuck on a coathanger is 'art'. usually with the same fluffy explanations you are offering here.
If it makes you laugh, it's a good joke. What does the origin matter?
The decision of what constitutes art is up to the individual. What you have described is commonly accepted great art/ists, not art itself.
And how would you decide if a definition (of anything) qualifies as "useful"?
He begins by stating that it's now widely accepted that anything can be viewed as art. Seeing as that's an infinitely broad definition, he goes on to describe the following “scorecard” for what counts as art. A “yes” means it's more likely to be art:
* Is it in a gallery or an art context? * Is it a boring version of something else? Does it lack entertainment value? * Is it made by an artist? * Is it limited edition? * Is it admired by hipsters? * If you put it in a dumpster, would a passer-by wonder why an artwork had been thrown away? * Does it detain and suspend us in a state of frustration and ambivalence, making us pause and think rather than simply react? * If it's a photograph that's smaller than 2m and costs less than five-figures, then it scores negatively.
He says that the above tests aren't watertight, but if you put them together in a Venn diagram, the bit in the middle (the bit to which all the answers are yes) is pretty well guaranteed to be contemporary art.
I dislike the definition, but I wonder if it might be accurate. When I try to come up with a better definition, I wonder if the concept I'm trying to describe is something else—what art _should be_—not what art is.
More to the point, I think that definition is a little dissatisfying. By that metric, I have probably never created any art in my life -- because I'm not an artist with limited-edition work in a gallery. To me, that is unacceptable for a definition of art. Artistry is something more intrinsic to human nature than just being a thing made by an "artist" and put in an artistic context to be admired by hipsters and to confuse people.
I'm pretty sure they're using the open-source code that was published.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/09/1...
Let's refrain from making nasty implications about each other, shall we? Thank you.
Would you also mind retracting your claim below that we have "misappropriated" your technology? Perhaps we're having a language problem - "misappropriate" is a crime in English. If you honestly believe a crime has been committed, I would strongly urge you to discuss it with us (somewhere other than this public forum). We've tried a few times now to reach out to your team, and have not heard back.
Thank you.
K.
We simply have limited resources for servers, but still want to provide the highest quality possible in the free version. That's why there is a queue, but we are working hard to make the implementation faster and more efficient :)
The success message (when there will be one - there should be one instead of only the submissions queue) should definitely include an explanation, what happens next and how I can influence it. Will I get an email when my pictures are ready? Can I schedule more pictures?
I think you will have more success showing the # of people in the queue and a "jump the queue" feature.
Is there a way to build a "I want it NOW, even if it isn't that great... (and get the great version later via email)".
The public/private thing could also use some explanation "Show this on the website" vs. "Only give the result to me".
"Delete" would probably better be named "remove" as you remove the submission from the queue, and don't really delete anything that was already created.
Also, "Submit a new image" could let me choose some style images... but I bet that's already on your backlog anyway.
Nice idea, nice tool!
Unfortunately "I want it now" is not possible for the moment as the computations are really heavy and there is a lot of people who want to use it. But we also have some ideas for that.
Now our focus is the quality, regardless the cost. We increased the resolution and we try to make things faster. Later we will figure out how to make it more sustainable.
I really appreciate your suggestions.
The "Use style" wording didn't immediately register for me that the images were clickable. I wondered why the gallery images all had the same description when they were clearly different styles!
Perhaps "Use this style" would be more expressive?
When you do click through, it shows the same image (with face) to be used as the style image, leaving me wondering if a user provided style image should just be a texture (newsprint, vegetables etc.), or an already styled image.
The "Buy a painting" button is deceptive, since it's a canvas print, not a painting. I was going to suggest teaming up with instapainting, but I see they beat you to it [1]. I guess you could always go to the source [2].
The resulting modal dialog on clicking "Buy a painting" barely fits in the browser on a 15" retina MBP, even then, the cookie info bar clips the button, so I suspect you may be loosing sales from people who can't figure out how to get to the button, especially on smaller screens (you'd be surprised!).
Clicking through that dialog brings me to an ebay page, but not for the image I selected to buy. There are a range of other images shown, but it doesn't seem to be possible to choose one, never mind the one I wanted. I have no idea what I'm buying, or how to buy what I want.
Finally I can't "Buy", I can only bid, as it's an auction, not a "Buy it now".
Oh, and please tell Michael to change his name to Andy. :) [3]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10162121 [2] http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/oil-painting-on-demand.html [3] http://deepart.io/page/about/
I've been slowly coming back to this app for weeks. It works well combining a photo with a clear focus, and a patterned one.
A few weeks ago, they dropped the resolution of the photos. After seeing a preview of what a smaller resolution one looks like, I'd be happy paying extra for a large-sized one.
$2.99/user will probably cover AWS bill for a while, if users don't keep hammering it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRL9J6DoCgs&feature=youtu.be
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/joy-of-programming-painter/i...
I wonder who it is. The press-kit linked on the website just says "Developer: qarl".
Then the appreciation is subjective; to replace an artist you would need something like; 'I like Rembrandt but now I like this guy instead'. I used to like Jean Michel Jarre then Beethoven then Iron Maiden then Slayer then ... etc. I still like all of these and can get excited when hearing any of them. No one of them replaced the other.
So we might have MORE artists. Once we accept that computers can make art 'without' humans. I am fine with that, but this example is definitely not a very good example. To me it looks like fancy filters.
Huh?
In the meantime, there are tons of underground movements and scenes, coming up with new sounds and styles, and the artists we generally accept as proper such (and not just performers), belong to these, feeding new styles into the mainstream.
Something similar will probably hold true for computer-made "art": Some very nice and enjoyable things will come out of it (and tons and tons of trivial and dull things as well), but the truly interesting stuff is made by humans further up the funnel.
there are photos that are considered to be art, without applying such effects. and there are photos that are not considered to be an artwork.
latter will more likely become more tasteless and ugly with those filters applied, while former don't need such filters in order to be considered the art.