Comment by klez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by klez | Hacker News Reader

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> Writing a text prompt is a fair place for that line to be drawn in my opinion.

I read an article[0] on the subject the other day. At some point it said that some art tools are inherently easy to use. Part of the difference between an amateur and an actual artist is in the mastery of such tool.

Think of a phone camera for example. It's extremely easy to take more than decent pictures with it. But it takes a good photographer to make art with it.

Bringing it back to the topic at hand it means that yes, describing what you want to see to this kind of software is easy on a basic level. But you get a picture that looks like any other. Instead, you need to speak the language of the software to obtain a better materialization of your vision, and that requires some sort of mastery of that tool. That would be the difference between an illustration made with stable diffusion and actual art.

[0] https://www.indiscreto.org/non-fa-tutto-il-computer-il-ritor... (in Italian, sorry)

What I think you miss is that mastery is really just a proxy value for what we really value.

Suppose I'm an artist, with something I feel I want to say, something I want to share with the world. How can I convince you to listen to me, when there's a thousand other people you could listen to? Especially about big issues like what's worthwhile in life.

Well, one way is commitment. Supposedly, Sophie Germain decided as a child to study mathematics because she read the story about Archimedes, who was so obsessed about his circles that he got killed over it. Clearly, Archimedes had found something that really mattered to him, and if Sophie studied it, maybe she would find that meaning too?

So likewise, as an artist I can convince you to take a look by being really dedicated, practicing the craftsmanship side of what I do so that no one can convincingly say they do it better. That doesn't guarantee that what I say is worthwhile to you, but it's at least an indication it was worthwhile to me.

But you know, the converse is not necessarily true. Someone who wasn't the best at the craft and who didn't sacrifice everything for the opportunity to reach you, could still have something wonderful to say.

Sometimes the skill at the craft limits what you're able to say, even if what you wanted to say was great, but I think that's rarely what matters. On a technical level, there's very little that distinguishes, say, the best guitarists in the world.

I like this train of thought. I wonder if "text in prompt" is far too simplistic of an interface as an input to a black box to consider skill level with?

My inclination is to say the interface needs more breadth of options beyond single-line string input, and the outcome needs to have some level of predictability to enable the artist a significant enough level of understanding of how each aspect of their input alters the output.

I mean, the input parameters should be complex enough to let artist intentionally develop a unique style/idea, rather than style being dictated inside the black box.

If you used an AI to write a million DALL-E prompts for a million different outputs - are you an artist if you pick the nicest looking output and call it art?

In all honesty, that's how a lot of photographers work. They take a gazillion photos and pick the best ones.

But the human is at least taking the photos in this scenario.

Well it’s a human pointing the camera and pushing the button. It totally depends upon the camera how much influence it has on the actual picture produced. Depending on your settings, hardware control and image processing can be applied to automate the production of a more acceptable image. Is the camera or the person holding it producing the image? Or is the photogenic environment the camera is being pointed at responsible for the resulting image?

Once I’ve selected one from the 20 or so images, had it printed, framed and placed it on my wall then weeks later notice it again when the light coming through the window catches it just right, I think that is a really great picture that transports me to another place.

Is it art? Because I was holding the camera does that make me an artist?

All I know is that my life is enhanced by having that image on my wall however it came to be there.

I'm still trying to figure out a proper input to get a picture of this scene:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...

Yes.

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