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Comment by BugsJustFindMe | Hacker News Reader

> So what is it that you enjoy, when looking at a certain image (especially, when it comes to this particular image, as compared to any other representation of the same subject matter), if not the artistic choices?

Things can be visually interesting without intent or artistic meaning. Even if you've never stared into a fire, surely would agree that many people do it? Or the ocean? Or hills covered in snow? Or trees? Or other people having lunch? Or a pretty face? People have gazed contentedly at things that are just pretty without any worry about "artistic choices" since people have existed.

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I'd argue, there's a difference between media and the world as-is. Media are crucially a projection, transposing an impression as an expression into another space, implying a difference in these two spaces and their respective dimensionality. This is, what makes media interesting to us. All what is implied in this: human experience, narrative strategies, focus, depth, texture, skill, choices, etc. Otherwise, we're just immersing in the world as-is, enjoying ourselves and our own choices. But, for art as an act of communication, this doesn't work. It even doesn't work for media, which is why immersive media, like 3D TV, regularly fail: it simply misses the media part.

You are presuming we all care about art as an act of communication all the time, or even at all. A lot of the time what the artist is trying to communicate is not all that interesting to me.

I can enjoy just looking at something, whether it's a painting or a generated image, or just the sky. It doesn't take away anything from the experience to me if I know there is no meaning or intent behind it.

I can just try to relate what kind of impact this has on me. As mentioned above, visual media are important to me. I graduated in the theoretical side of this, part of my work is visual design. First, I observed that these images made me depressed, whenever I encountered them, then, that I now just ignore any images by default. It hurts. I miss what had been a constituent part of me.

I struggle to even imagine feeling that way about it. I don't know what to suggest, other than perhaps try experimenting with meditation as a way to see if experiencing detachment of your feelings about the process vs. the outcome and images might make a difference.

To me the two are entirely separate, and e.g. when I make things myself, whether I draw, or play the piano, or write code, the outcome is often secondary (I'm shit on the piano, and mediocre at drawing, but it doesn't matter). When I learn about an artist, the person and ideas might be interesting even if I have no interest in their art (I pointed out my favourite part of the Matisse museum in Nice is not his art, but the olive garden outside it, elsewhere, but Matisse is fascinating even if I don't care about his art at all). But when I watch their art, it's purely about what I see then and there. It's not that knowing history behind it never affects me, or interests me, but that I don't need it to enjoy the work, nor will I always - or even most of the time - feel the slightest urge to learn about the work or the artist.

I think, it's a matter of the parable of the puppet theatre. According to this, we may either "naively" enjoy the play, immersing ourselves in the story presented, sustaining our disbelief regarding the puppets, taking the scene "for real", or we may engage in a dialog with this, by applying our own perspective to what is already a perspective (or, in my words, a projection). From this arose Kant's suggested "disinterested pleasure", a state of alert suspense and readiness, which has become the blueprint of bourgeois art consumption ever since the enlightenment. It's really this framework of looking at, engaging with and producing art and visual media, I'm referring to.

On a less theory-heavy notion, the mere fact that a certain image or certain parts of a given image enjoyed that much of an investment to look like it does, somewhat guarantees that it had been worth the effort to someone, that it was meant to convey something. A quality, which is now gone for ever. Meaning, even the barest spark of expression, is now just at random. Moreover, by the very definition, art will now be dogmatic, even where it's asked for aberrations and exceptions, and redundant, since it's just a product of weighted averages based on an existing library of expressions. At least applied art is pretty much over, as is visual media. (Just look at what happened to cinema, when the regulating factor of film stock and related production costs fell away.)

TIL. Thanks a lot for your comment. This meta analysis just opened another dimension for engaging with art.

> the mere fact that a certain image or certain parts of a given image enjoyed that much of an investment to look like it does, somewhat guarantees that it had been worth the effort to someone, that it was meant to convey something

For reasons very similar to yours, I enjoy going to 2nd hand record stores: if someone has bought the record a 1st time, then someone else though it was worth buying and putting it on a shelf, it's more likely to bring enjoyment than a random new purchase

> Moreover, by the very definition, art will now be dogmatic, even where it's asked for aberrations and exceptions, and redundant, since it's just a product of weighted averages based on an existing library of expressions.

I don't know much about visual media except music videos, but if you want to discover non dogmatic art, I'd recommend you try out what's popular in any random country.

I love music and I've found russian rap and french pop to be extraordinary, maybe because they follow their own dogma, a dogma that feels very foreign to someone more used to north american music: whatever the russian (or french) weighted average may be, it's very far from the norm of what I'm used to, so it stands out.

I fundamentally reject your notion that this changes anything other than your choice to dismiss what you see because you can no longer feel sure of your understanding of things you couldn't be sure of before either.

But then from early on I found a lot of attempted analysis of art shallow and often outright insulting in it's insistence of knowing intent that was often not there.

E.g. I recall an interview with a Norwegian author where the interviewer was terribly invested in the symbolism of a scene, and the author though for a moment and answered that he just thought it sounded good, and wished he'd thought of that.

In other words, while there certainly is intent behind a lot of art, your interpretation is yours. It may or may not even intersect with any authorial intent.

So why does it matter?

I've written two novels. I don't give the slightest shit if people interpret things in them how I intended. For the most part I just wanted to evoke certain feelings. There's no intentional symbolism there. Many things in the setting that I know people will interpret as a positive outlook I consider depressing - from my perspective its a dystopia, but I don't want to make it feel like that. But how people take it is entirely up to them.

The artists investment has no relevance to or bearing on my enjoyment of a work. Nor would I expect or care if that is the case when people engage with my own. (I get that people who make a living of human art are worried, and that is valid)

I for one look forward to consuming AI art when it is pleasing. I also still look forward to consuming human art when it is pleasing. And hybrids.

I really don't care which is which if it looks good to me, sounds good to me, reads well to me, makes me think, makes me feel.

> I can enjoy just looking at something, whether it's a painting or a generated image, or just the sky. It doesn't take away anything from the experience to me if I know there is no meaning or intent behind it.

I feel like that's an attitude that's particularly common among software engineers: see an artifact as its surface presentation and nothing more. Maybe it's a result of thinking about abstractions like APIs too much.

When I appreciate an image, it typically has to be either a reflection of reality (this thing I'm seeing is a real thing that I now know about) or an actual person's expression (an act of communication) for me not to feel cheated.

It doesn't help that one of the biggest use-cases for "AI" image generation is the creation of clickbait bullshit masquerading as a reflection of reality.

Basically: the context is as important as the raw image itself.

> I feel like that's an attitude that's particularly common among software engineers: see an artifact as its surface presentation and nothing more.

I think there's no there there. Most of my time as a software engineer is spent understanding what someone else was thinking and trying to accomplish at the time through the lens of the code they ended up writing. Is that archaeological endeavor not strongly connected to if not exactly what we're talking about here?

It's just that I also know how to enjoy looking at things without any of that.

I think this gets it entirely upside down: There is meaning and symbolism and patterns everywhere, but we can never be sure our interpretation matches sone intent, and I see no compelling reason to see that 'intent' as more than complex computation anywhere, and pretty much everything, everywhere is computation.

There is context to a storm, or a tree too. Many things have more, and more complex, context than human intent.

Intent is just one categorisation of data, and it can be interesting, but so are many other categorizations of data.

And we also often get authorial intent wrong, often embarrassingly so.

It also compels me to see the dismissive attitude to AI art as fundamentally flawed, in that while we're clearly not "there" yet, I see no fundamental conceptual difference between different forms of computation - including the human mind - so any dismissal of the "just statistics" kind to me is an attempt to imbue the human mind with religious characteristics I fundamentally reject.

At the same time, to me, that attempt denigrated human art, which to me is equally just a result of computation.

If you can't enjoy art unless you think there's some spark of something more behind it, then to me the only reason you fail to reject human art too is faith in something there's no reason to think I'd there.

Nothing we know suggests we are - or can be - anything more than automatons resulting from computation any more than the trees in a forest or waves on a beach.

Yet we still have intent, even if it is just a product of computation.

And we still produce beautiful patterns that I enjoy whether or not I recognize your intent, and whether or not there was any intent behind any given aspect I enjoy.

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