Hacker News Reader

Comment by alharith | Hacker News Reader

I get the appeal from a "it's fascinating we can make computers do this" stance.

I don't get the appeal as trying to appreciate this as actual art (or music in the case of ai-generated tunes).

Art for me is about the connection I can make with the person who made it. I can't make a connection with an algorithm. I view it and I am like "OK this is interesting" but that's about it. There's no desire to try and understand it because it was programmatically generated.

Does anyone else feel this way?

View on HN

Yes - I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that most people who appreciate fine arts feel this way.

Tech is more of a, “why is a painting of a triangle worth so much!?” crowd (see: other comments).

Given that this is the product of human written code trained on art generated by other humans, you are seeing something that’s an amalgam of what humans have done.

You can’t take away the human and get what you have here.

What about connecting with the person who wrote the algorithm? Imagine a time in which music was only heard when performed by the right group of people. Without that the appreciation was mostly for a cultural memory or written record of the music. There are more ways to connect with art and it's maker than playing back the audio or opening the image.

I think Mario Klingemann said it the best. https://vimeo.com/298000366 This becomes just a tool, like everything else

I can appreciate the algorithm, and have appreciated in the past, if there are artful qualities to it, but in this case it isn't quite apt to say that as we are talking about the output of the algorithm, not the algorithm itself.

Out of curiosity, do you feel that an artwork having an anonymous author substantially detracts from your appreciation of it?

No, because the art allows me to get to know the person. If an anonymous voice tells me a short story I enjoy, I still get to appreciate the qualities of the person's storytelling (almost a completely lost art these days)

Would you appreaciate these images if you thought they were made by a person?

Machine learning enthusiasts always treat this response as if it's a checkmate, but it's a silly stance, you are depending on either:

a) the ignorance or apathy of the person answering the question; and/or

b) deception if you are telling them it's created by a human, when it's not.

There's less inherent value of this kind of "art" for most people if they know it's created by an algorithm in milliseconds, rather than by a human artist who spent hours working on it. Maybe there is an audience who would pay good money for it, who knows. But I think most human beings would devalue it if you were honest about its source.

I don't think it's silly at all; I couldn't determine whether this was specifically made by hand or with the aid of a computer, even when put next to a piece that was (it's the amalgamation of real arts afterall).

I can't appreciate how much pain something takes if it can be achieved for less. Much like opting to use a bucket for water transport instead of pipes, it's just silly.

> I can't appreciate how much pain something takes if it can be achieved for less. Much like opting to use a bucket for water transport instead of pipes, it's just silly.

That's a valid point of view I think from the point of the art consumer, if you are into computer generated art. But misses part of the point of art completely; the point from the artists' perspective, at least for humans, which is about self-expression.

I never really understood why people want to know so much about an artist, and not just appreciate the art, in itself.

If the artist has such a great story, I wish they (or someone else) would just write a book about them, and do without the art as an intermediary.

Because we are human beings. Art is just as much about connection as much as it is about technique.

how about... you pretend they're just from an infinite amount of anonymous authors?

some of them feel pretty real to me, but then again, I don't know a thing 'bout this...

were someone to make a catalogue of them, with random names and possibly authors, would you not enjoy it then, too, if you believe them to be made by humans?

Unfortunately, as an adult, my fantasy I create for myself will only take the enjoyment so far. I need some things to be based in reality at some point.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com