Show HN: While painting this, I had nothing in mind
krickelkrackel.com
krickelkrackel.com
Now secondly, obviously the premise is also completely untrue and almost impossible to achieve: The artist did have something in mind when painting these pictures: to paint pictures where only the viewer is meant to decipher the meaning while the artist themself has nothing in mind. He or she also did paint something aesthetically pleasing so there seems to be a lot of intention on that part as well. Painting something without any intention at all seems almost completely impossible to me. (Maybe you could trick somebody else into painting something without them knowing about it – but even then you are still the artist with an intention).
Finally I wanted to address the criticism by some other comments that art critique and galleries are always looking for an artistic intention even if there is none. I don't think that's completely true – I have seen plenty of exhibitions where it is explained that the artist "was just experimenting with form/colors".
Actually, the longest part of building this was finding the right wording. Here are some previous attempts:
- When painting this, I had no artistic intent
- When painting this, there was nothing I wanted to express with the picture
- When painting this, I wanted to express nothing
In German, there's a nice ambiguity: "Bei diesem Bild habe ich mir nichts gedacht" is somewhere between 'I was not thinking' and 'I wanted to express nothing.'. It's also the reason why I went with a German stamp (which is my mother tongue) and not an English one.
It is SO complicated to say that I wasn't up to anything with these pictures.
Aber für Deutsch, brauche iche mehr ubung! :)
Found it: https://www.dicocitations.com/citations/citation-67489.php
They use the pas
There is a big difference between "... je ne sais quoi" and "... je ne sais pas quoi".
"... je ne sais pas quoi" means "I don't know what". The slogan is indeed "I have something to say but I don't know what".
"je ne sais quoi" is a weird French construction which is actually a name. It takes a masculin determinant and means "a little something".
Il manque à ce plat un petit je ne sais quoi = this meal is missing a little something
But, if I may be so bold, what you describe there is the essence of Zen. And also why zenmasters are famously reluctant to find words for it. :)
No, I wasn't aware of that when painting most of the pictures. I just enjoyed the process of painting. But, as you can imagine, wall space gets limited after painting number 25, and at some point they were hanging in the staircase, all the way down to our basement. So I thought about selling them.
That was the point when I thought that I'd love to mark them as painted without any intent. That was before picture 25, I'd say.
Now, number 26 was painted KNOWING that I'd be marking it as painted without anything in mind, which somehow (same for all upcoming pictures) increases the 'pressure' of not adding any meaning.
Until now, I'm comfortable with that (the painting process is so much fun), and it's probably a thing worth exploring further. Perhaps I could write something contradictory on the front?
as opposed to commercialism/marketing/etc
I guess the autor deliberately intended to have no deliberate intention in mind while painting.
Also, the author somehow "allows" the pictures to cause feelings in the viewer, but says that he/she removes him/herself from the equation. But I think he/she is a viewer of his/her own pictures while drawing it. There is definitely some feedback going on.
So one improvement could be to draw without looking at the output.
But maybe the best way to go here is to computer-generate some pictures. And one is also not allowed to hand-pick a generated picture. And one should have nothing in mind while writing that computer program.
https://www.pinterest.de/pin/brobot-desktop-robot-arm-is-pra...
I like the idea though, and it does take the artist a little further away.
- "He or she also did paint something aesthetically pleasing so there seems to be a lot of intention on that part as well."
Sorry, you're probably wrong on both assumptions. Playing with viewers is not common and is a genre thing. Aesthetic pleasantness is also not a required requisite of an art piece and as an intention may stand in conflict with honest self-expression.
The artworks on the linked page are similar enough in style that it's obvious something within the artist dictated them.
The question is whether there is conscious intent, and what that intent is. Lots of people create art just to create something they find beautiful, with no other meaning intended.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideomotor_phenomenon
> The ideomotor phenomenon is a psychological phenomenon wherein a subject makes motions unconsciously.
> The phrase is most commonly used in reference to the process whereby a thought or mental image brings about a seemingly "reflexive" or automatic muscular reaction, often of minuscule degree, and potentially outside of the awareness of the subject. As in responses to pain, the body sometimes reacts reflexively with an ideomotor effect to ideas alone without the person consciously deciding to take action.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34507844
> Even humans draw many things that they don't understand. If we draw something that we completely don't understand (such as through random scribbling) we don't even call it a representation. It's a fluke. I used to scribble and then trace images in my scribbling (if possible). Often I ended up tracing things that looked like a child's bad drawing of Donald Duck, but once, without having to trace particular lines at all, my scribbling was a perfect seeming of a rose flower (with some minor additional flourishes). I recognized the rose flower, but I certainly didn't set out to draw it.
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_Descending_a_Staircase,_N... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marcel_Duchamp,_1912,_Le_...
It seems that for both study of English language/literature and art at schools is 80%-90% analysis of "what the author/artist was thinking or meaning when creating this" and then expecting the students to either agree with this ideology and pass the assignment/exam or disagree and fail the assignment/exam.
This is an incredibly narrow angle of study and allows little room for creativity or even the idea that the author literally meant nothing or left it up to interpretation and seems to be teaching rote thought only.
See also:
http://www.chrisbrecheen.com/2013/03/5-reasons-i-absolutely-...
https://www.tumblr.com/austinsirkin/180007505784/the-blue-do...
https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/dghmrf/im_in_eng...
I'm in the UK and this is the type of crap they were and still are teaching: https://madameanglaise.wordpress.com/2018/01/10/aqa-gcse-eng...
(It's also often that people ask me 'What did you want to express while painting this?')
I know there's a movement in artistic circles that denies intent in the artist, but some artists do actually have an intent. Art is used as a medium for communication and therefore can have meaningful content. It's important to their artistic expression. It seems to me that not all art is semiotically vacant. Is that therefore bad art? Should it not be studied in those terms?
I'm an outsider, I have zero artistic training or background so the chances I have any idea what I'm talking about are extremely low. The only reason I even know what semiotics means is because a flat mate of mine studied contemporary dance and I helped her with an essay on it once a long time ago, as English wasn't her first language.
Bullshit marketing stunt. Artists who wish to do this (and there are plenty of them) just put their work out in the world and don't sign it. There is a grain of truth to it, insofar as abstract or figurative paintings do not need to be 'about' something, and most art talk is just hype. But making abstract art in the first place is an expression of sensual glee over color, form, composition and so on.
I like this guy's art, but he's using flattery to market it.
So yeah, I guess I feel suspicion when looking at this art, like the artist concocted a world that lets us control our own brains as a… idk, way of introducing control where there is none?
I guess that’s the point, but was it one worth making?
Some written words, poetry, dance, and music can be made this way. Why not painted art?
Figurative art might be about what you feel when you look at an art piece (still debatable), but art per se is not.
Every single poem or song I wrote had a very precise meaning and a message in it and my choice of words, rhyme, and rhythm was deliberate and meant to be aiding me in conveying that message.
I'm glad to see other ideas and points of view, and I do think you should keep exploring the statement. You could probably go pretty far with it.
It's a fascinating topic in general. I really like how you have incorporated the debate/concept into your art.
To me it's kind of interesting that this person's stream of consciousness results in such visually coherent stuff, but that's about it. One might need to be more plugged in to modern art culture to get anything "moving" out of the meta.
But I remember Scott McCloud defining it as 'everything that doesn't serve the preservance of the species'. So making people reflect about what they think what art is for them (and if it's by finding out that this isn't), would be.
You just described most things in life.
> validates that response
You are saying that your disinterest in these works is justified because the artist claimed to create them without conscious thought during the process?
I happen to like these works, and I was actually happy when my own generative art attempts resulted in output similar to these (but lacking the texture and subtle complexities these appear to have).
Improvisational jazz is sometimes made with no conscious plan or thought during the process, but it is built upon structures and foundations which were very conscious efforts in the education of the musician. I don't see why the same cannot apply to visual art.
Thank you!
I want the artist to use the art to try to connect to me in some way. I don't want it to be a still piece of abstract nothingness that is supposed to only reflect my perception.
May as well be randomly generated noise, or AI art.
Though, it doesn't really matter, because what this artist is claiming is impossible anyway, but I'm glad it is. Their idea is nauseating and gross. My only reaction to this is disgust and revulsion. Maybe that's the point? But I doubt it
It has to be noted though that it is very difficult to "just like" a piece of art for good reasons. Art historically had a function: religious, mystic, political... and we're still stuck with this legacy. The function of art has only recently been deemed to be a raw trigger of raw emotions. For better or for worse, I can't say. Probably both.
It also seems to me that "having nothing in mind" is polysemic and I'd be interested in knowing which prevails or how they coexist for the artist. "I had no intention", "I had no goal" and "My mind was blank" (is it even possible?) draw 3 very different intentions.
Again, it's a very interesting approach. One might argue that it is too formalized, elaborate and sophisticated of an approach only to claim that the creation process is "with nothing in mind", but I don't think that the intensity of the concept and the outcome have to align in all points. The only certainty. here is that it cannot be categorized as naive.
Which brings us to the audience. The audience for this project clearly is an educated one, one that met the struggles of having to comment and understand a piece of art and the ridiculous situations and discussions that often ensue to battle over who has the biggest one (brains, I mean).
And look at my own comment... full of gibberish and not a single word on the art pieces themselves. I quite like them though. Shapes, colors, textures, they're beautiful.
I'm indeed not an English native speaker, so I wasn't fully aware of the different possible meanings of 'nothing in mind', but you're right. The German stamp has exactly the same ambiguity, which I thankfully took as a way out of the impossible situation of 'thinking nothing.
It's also very notable that the back of the paintings receives way more attention than the paintings themselves – but I guess that's what HN is all about (and what I like about it!), pondering the intellectual and philosophical problems of not thinking ;-)
I wonder to what extent do you think that the viewers appreciation of, or interpretation of the work is based on them coming to it with no particular conception in mind either, or do you take a more constructivist view that there has to be a frame or context brought to it from the observer by their experiences and life?
I love this definition of art and it's why some of the recent knee-jerk rejection of AI-generated artwork (sometimes citing its inhumanity or lack of human backstory) is premature IMO.
More importantly, that's beautiful art. Thank you for sharing, OP.
To me, it seems like the artist at least has this particular sentiment in mind - if not while doing the physical act of painting, at least at some time before or after, or while sharing the works of art themselves.
To me, I often sense I don't "get" art, because I don't feel anything looking at it, and I am wholly preoccupied with wondering why the artist created what they did, and what they had in mind at the time. To me... that's what art is. Wholly contradicting what this particular artist defines it as.
Who is right?
When you say "that" you appear to disagree with the quote.
I also don't know what to think about AI-generated art yet, either. All of my paintings, I just keep painting until I have the feeling that they're finished. But: in my head, don't I simply remix previous things I saw and found beautiful, pigment and scratch movements that worked well, and all these things? Where's the difference? :-)
(I enjoy the act of smearing paint on canvasses, which makes a lot of difference for me – and there is no prompt.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author
Personally I think an artist without intention would not interest me, though I agree that his intent is not necessarily of greater significance than the viewer's reaction.
An artist creating a new work of art has an idea of what he wants to do based on the materials available to him.
A cigar blender creating a new cigar has an idea of what he wants to do based on the raw materials available to him.
An artist will poke and prod at their creation, adding details until they are happy with their work, and then take a step back to determine if anything new needs to be added because making art is a very subjective process.
A cigar blender will combine tobacco he thinks will make a good cigar and also several other iterations using different blends because creating a cigar blend from scratch is a very subjective process.
An artist will put his work into a gallery, where it will be judged by critics who will attempt to assign meaning to the work even if no meaning actually exists.
A cigar blender will send his completed blend to reviewers where it will be judged by critics who will attempt to assign flavors to the cigar even if they're utterly ridiculous.
I think the main difference between the two is that the artist usually doesn't have to get his art to perform well. A cigar blender can't just make a cigar that tastes great, he also has to pay attention to how well the cigar burns. I used to get plenty of pre-release samples to get my thoughts from manufacturers I knew, and some of the best domestic stogies I've ever tasted burned like trash and had to be disregarded when choosing the final blend.
> Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread.
Off topic: blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be Show HNs. Make a regular submission instead.
This cannot be tried out, except in the way that any website can be "tried out".
You can post these things, but they're supposed to be posted as regular links, not with the enticing "Show HN" prepended.
The Show HN rules are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
> “Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.”
That's Tolstoy's definition, and it's basically the one I stick with because it filters out the most things that don't seem to be art, and leaves the most things in which seem to be. It's an ad hoc, imperfect definition, but to me it's better than the one that says "anything is art, and art means whatever I want it to".
In terms of interpretation, I believe most art is open to a pretty wide range of interpretations, and you can make a strong case for the meaning to be something other than the most literal reading. Artists have subconscious minds too. But, in my opinion there are wrong interpretations, and the easiest ones to identify are ones that have no textual evidence ("Macbeth is actually about radio astronomy") so I don't agree with statements like:
> I believe that no interpretation of an artwork can be right or wrong.
Because where does that leave us? A world where art has a lot less value because it can just be anything to anybody. If it can mean anything, it effectively means nothing. Hard to find common ground or have a shared cultural language when you operate like that.
However, it's difficult to talk about any artwork without ever discussing an interpretation. By saying "I had nothing in particular in mind", we risk having the opposite effect, that of forbidding any kind of interpretation or discussion. It should be made clear that this means "you are free to interpret", not "there is no interpretation whatsoever".
Finally, a remark: the author is saying they had nothing in particular in mind, but this is not true. Not that they're lying - they are fooling themselves.
i think this applies to all art/expression. this manupulation pandemic and image management of today's world is making artists slaves of critics.
great paintings!
At the same time, I believe that artist have can often have a unique ability to see/perceive reality in a way that escapes the general population, and can convey those perceptions to the rest of us through art. I’ve been blown away by how an artist is able to portray a situation in a way that it’s never occurred to me and the enlightenment resulting from it is very valuable to me.
So, I think that both are needed, art that gives freedom to the observer to makes sense of it, and also art that conveys such deep perceptions/insights that artists seems to have more often that the rest of us and thus enlightened us too!
What I find particularly distasteful about this is the presentation of "art" as interior design products. This seems to be a trend among independent creators looking to make a living outside of the traditional gallery/fair/buyer system. I of course understand why they're doing it, but I'm using those disparaging quotation marks because that commercial contextualization commercializes the work itself. And at that point, it escapes my own nebulous boundaries for art and becomes something else.
What exactly, I don't know. I'm not sure "design" qualifies here, even though we're being asked to appraise the work as we might a chair or credenza, because I'm not sure I believe "this wall feels empty" is a problem to be solved, in the design sense.
So what is it then? Stuff? Just more stuff for people to buy and feel good about owning? Okay.
(And no, I don't think this counts as me having a reaction to the art. I'm reacting to the creator, the marketing, and—sorry—the bullshit.)
There is purpose behind design. It allows us to build up unique associations with a place, its people, its purpose. It keeps us from being bored. It gives us a break from other places. It sets a mood conducive to whatever a place is for. It expresses something about ourselves to others.
Decorating our spaces and walls seems to address a deep need in our species.
A wall with nothing on it creates tension. It isn't neutral.
Nowhere in nature are there environments comparable to huge vertical flat surfaces of white, brick, or wood or other uniform material.
The angle I was coming from was not only the aesthetics/purpose behind the art but more so about the "effort" put into it by removing any effort from the creation. "Effort" being thinking about good composition or finding an interesting subject matter or waiting for the perfect time of day for the lighting to be just right. Instead I show up, press a button, and because I call it art it is even if I agree it isn't very good art (and that's also kind of the point - I would argue the act of curation is in and of itself an art form...)
Also - you should make thumbnails of the art and link out to the larger pictures. Currently you're loading 2000~ px width images as 300~ px thumbnails and it is very slow to load due to that at the gallery near the bottom. This being HN I'm actually shocked nobody has mentioned the completely bloated and unnecessary file size of the images.
'Effort' is an interesting factor – I won't neglect that I'm putting effort into the paintings. How do you decide when to press the camera's shutter? (This is a bit like a Libet experiment, in case you don't know it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will#Libe...)
Thanks also for the technical remark regarding the image sizes, I'll do that, good point.
(Presentation-wise, my website is based on a template called 'ZeroOne' (https://www.thezero.club/demo/one/) for the Kirby CMS (https://getkirby.com/). Really nice to work with, especially if you want to create something gallery-like!)
I went to work and completed a rather pathetic landscape painting using palate of six colors and the pencil tool. As I tried in vain to improve the awful painting, I discovered highlighter tool could be used to blend and create an infinite array of colors!
Inspired by uncomfortable seating and the music Drexcia, Anthony Rother and the Egypitan lover ... I present to you the convergence of modern budget airline travel, electro music and crappy Android phones. This amazing in-air gallery can be found here: https://imgur.com/a/3aql6rn
For a limited time, available to only Hacker News readers you can purchase the original digital copy of the gallery for only $199.99. The lucky purchaser will receive the entire digital collection with a certificate of authenticity (basically, an email saying "Thanks, bud!").
Act now, because if there are no buyers the collection will be listed in Sky Mall for the full retail price of $1999.00
To recapitulate, they had in mind creation of a work with no intrinsic meaning.
Accidental art, if it is possible, has been of interest to me for a decade or so; my conclusion (limited as it is) is that it is not art.
However, finding an object and imbuing it with meaning is an artistic endeavour, so if the painter were able to produce work devoid of intrinsic meaning then it would become art if a person finds the work and imprints a meaning on it. Quintessential postmodernity, I guess.
It's an interesting area. It reminds me of reading a poet's reaction to reading an analysis an educational organisation had applied to that poet's work: you know the sort of thing 'the poet used the darkness of the sky to highlight the sense of foreboding of the hero'. The poet did not recognise any of their motivations in the analysis that was (IIRC) being taught to schoolchildren. Consciously they had been very plain in their approach of recording a (fictional) event ... of course they might have subconsciously made choices in language that would follow the analysis given ...
The computer doesn't have anything in mind, it is just random noise turned into something aesthetically pleasing. In fact, coupled with a random prompt, it is even more "nothing in mind". Here the artist has "nothing in mind" in mind, diffusion models have literally nothing in mind, in fact they don't even have a mind to put something in.
Here's a playful and provocative Dadaist manifesto by Tristan Tzara
https://writing.upenn.edu/library/Tzara_Dada-Manifesto_1918....
> What we need is works that are strong straight precise and forever beyond understanding. Logic is a complication. Logic is always wrong. It draws the threads of notions, words, in their formal exterior, toward illusory ends and centers. Its chains kill, it is an enormous centipede stifling independence. Married to logic, art would live in incest, swallowing, engulfing its own tail, still part of its own body, fornicating within itself, and passion would become a nightmare tarred with protestantism, a monument, a heap of ponderous gray entrails.
I do this first as a form of therapy and don’t care to display or show the world my works as I feel knowing there was an audience would interfere with my process, would make me more self conscious perhaps wanting to please a perceived audience. I applied the same philosophy to music making.
According to Minsky the mind is composed of tiny "components" (which form the "subsconscious" one might say) and only some reach "consciousness" levels of attention.
(Even if I'll have to cross off the stamp on the back after reading it ...)
Gruss aus dem Rheinland ...
I think TFA conflates two things a bit: "While painting this picture, I had nothing in mind." — let's grant that as true. "All my works [… have] been painted with no intention at all." — that's different: my point (and I think the parent comment's) is that painting with nothing in mind is an intentional decision.
While I granted the statement about painting with an empty mind, I also wonder if that's true: if the point of art is, as TFA states, "be about the feelings it creates in you. The viewer." then did the artist not have feelings about the art as the art was being produced? Can you separate yourself from the process? Can one have an empty mind, especially while trying to do a focused task such as painting, and for long enough to complete the work? It seems close to trying to not think about a thing, which becomes all the more impossible to do the more you try to do it.
I also think there's a leap from "Art is about the feelings it creates" and "I believe that no interpretation of an artwork can be right or wrong." The artist might be able to say, "there is no interpretation of this art that is right or wrong", as that's their intent … but there is definitely art out there the intent of which is to produce a particular reaction within its viewership, so I think the statement is a bit too broad.
But what do I know, I'm a software engineer.
Denying meaning doesn't annhialite it. Finding meaninglessness may be even more challenging than the search for meaning itself. This artist may also have made a monoply on authentically meaningless art, since anything informed by it is a coherent reflection.
I'd ask the artist, of what can meaninglessness be the effect?
BUT then comes the meaninglessness stamp, and this really gives the entire thing meaning – the meaning of meaninglessness.
I'm a huge fan of Douglas Hofstaedter's work (if you haven't read it, I can highly recommend his book 'I am a strange loop') and self-referential statements and things.
And this is somehow what happened here: I only wanted to get out of the way, people should interpret the works as they like, it's about them feeling something. But HN, as HN is what we love it for, escalated this into a logic discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eXQjgcGOWc
Everybody's feeling like
"Oh my, that's my song"
And it is because
You're hearing yourself
By means of us
There's no quote unquote
You're creating this noteThis is objectively wrong. The Girl Wearing a Pearl Earring is not a statement about fascism. The Spotify logo is not a depiction of child labor.
Now, this artist may feel that way about their own work (and that's neat!), but it is a huge overreach to apply it to all others. Every artist is different.
I am so tired of these conversations about art as if it's a mystical monolith. No, you don't get to make blanket statements about literally all art.
Those should be the role of the viewer.
(BTW, my statement cannot be disagreed with - I am the creator here and you are merely a consumer of it, therefore the very notion that you get an opinion or response is objectively wrong).
Nice try, but you can still disagree with the artist. But if I said "your statement is clearly defending murderers", you could say that my interpretation of your statement is wrong.
You get to interpret it and understand it as a defense of murderers. I find that to be an unreasonable interpretation, born of a mind that is desperately trying to force the world to conform to it, rather than existing in the world as it comes. But that's my response, not a dictation what you meant when you said it.
Maybe you meant something else, maybe you found that it reminded you of a murderer you met once at a bar, or maybe it reminds you of stuff you said prior to committing murder, or maybe you're just being silly. Maybe you just think that way.
I dunno - I often find that what I intend to create and what I actually create differ quite often, even in a medium I'm fairly good at (code or food for example). It makes me doubt that I can dictate what it's really about to me - let alone what its supposed to be about to you. (honestly try it out sometime, see how many people can guess what you were thinking before you wrote that gnarly bit of code, or if they can say what you're thinking about it after it's done).
There's a lot of brain science out there that suggests a lot of "why i did that" is post-hoc rationalization rather than a true "why i did that". I don't see why creation is exempt from that.
I also share the opinion that having no interpretation can be either or since often I have no interpretation outside of "it looks neat" for something that later I find out has deep meaning for the author that is shared by others. I don't personally see it, but that's what I think.
I think the author has conflated the two because in their art, they are explicitly inviting you to draw your own interpretations. That's not true of all artists.
"The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”
Ref: The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp.
These paintings are visually appealing to me. I doubt I could afford any of them, but if I could you'd have a customer!
True art could get lost amidst all the AI stuffs! Long live true artists. Long live those who follow their passion amidst all the chaos! Hail hemmert!
(In a sense, then it is also about me having a feeling - fun - while painting, which differentiates it from AI-generated 'works'.)
Thank you!
Yes, there are obvious limits to not having anything in mind while doing anything but we can be more charitable when interpreting this. Like "nothing besides the obvious stuff but this disclaimer would make it too long to fit on the stamp" :-)
'This is meaningless art.'
Now that I'm claiming it to be meaningless art, we're finding ourselves in a discussion that this can't be.
Is this true only of _this_ art? As general statement, it seems suspicious to me. If I say "Guernica celebrates nationalistic violence", isn't that wrong?
I believe the above comment is the only comment which is an exception to the above rule.
Does anyone have a reference price point?