> I find it easy to admit that computer art did not contribute to the advancement of art.
But a banana sticked to a wall with some tape did!
I'll stick to the best definition of art that I've heard : "if it gives you an emotion, it is art".
But a banana sticked to a wall with some tape did!
I'll stick to the best definition of art that I've heard : "if it gives you an emotion, it is art".
Does that make it art? Dunno. Don't care. It makes it interesting which is a more useful category.
I think it's brilliant commentary. And even if you have never heard of NFTs it poses questions about what qualifies a piece of art as unique or an original
and jpegs don't actually have anything to do with NFTs other than being used as representations of them by grifters, ruining a useful technology by poisoning the representation of it in minds like yours because a distributed record of software ownership would threaten the app store monopolies.
ok that's conspiratorial but it would explain it..
For NFTs "owned" by people in the US, I sure hope you have each and every NTF as a formally registered copyright. IANAL, but it would seem the contract cannot directly affect non-parties, and thus standard copyright law would apply. Registration is required to file a copyright infringement suit.
What are you EVEN talking about.
If you transmit an image to my computer when I browse your website, that image is now saved on my computer in my browser's cache. It is too late for your supposed legal contact at this point, I have already copied your image, at your explicit instruction. Now try to run that through court.
"Your honor, I instructed the defendant's machine to save a copy of my image on his computer, which it did, causing the defendant to have copied my image, thus violating this here legal contract written on a slice of American cheese."
You can already make legal contracts about the use and re-use of art. NFTS, as a method for trying to prevent people from performing actions the internet explicitly requires for them to even be seen in the first place, were, are, and will remain nonsense.
no it does not, as anyone may create a new NFT attached to the same content with different claims
Of course, we probably don't want the dystopic parts of society to get more reliable, but the fact is the tech would probably make them so.
I strongly agree, and thank you for spelling it out. It's a point often lost in discussions of both tech and economics, that we need some slack in the system. That's where happiness, love, friendship, compassion, charity, forgiveness, imagination, and all other things good, nice and human, live. Too much efficiency just grinds people to dust.
(That, and creates brittle systems that breaks the first moment reality asserts itself.)
> Apparently it's not uncommon that when a debt collector buys a spreadsheet of unpaid debt, they can't actually prove in court that the debtor actually owes them the debt. You'd think some form of cryptocurrency technology would improve this
At a glance, I think your idea would work. I'm just curious about corner cases alone, and how often they'd happen.
For example, in some cases, I imagine it would actually reveal there is no proof because the debt is bogus. My impression is, no one in the chain is really incentivized to verify whether the debt is legitimate. Creditors outsource that in bulk to collection agencies, agencies might find it easier to try and collect anyway than proactively validate every entry in the spreadsheet, and plenty of debtors will contest real debts anyway. For the first two, the name of the game is minimizing costs; not sure if adding crypto to the mix would help, or just make the process more complicated and expensive.
I also wonder what would happen if, for some reason, a smart contract/NFT was established around a bogus entry. How much harder would it be for the debtor to prove that they don't actually owe the money in question?
Some would probably buy proofless unpaid debt, but it would be almost worthless.
> How much harder would it be for the debtor to prove that they don't actually owe the money in question?
I refer you to the aforementioned dystopia. Even today, if your credit card is used in a transaction involving the physical card and your PIN, it's presumed you agreed to pay.
But that's not the argument the "hurr... it's a banana. stuck to a wall" crowd are really making.
Stubbing my little toe gives me an emotion, is that "art"? lol
I would suggest that art is a method is communication. One philosophical definition that I've often used is that "it is a selective recreation of reality in accordance with what the artist considers to be essential."
When viewed through the lens of how art might be a useful tool for human survival, it allows us, as rational animals, to communicate highly complex topics in a condensed, straight-to-the-point manner. Morality tales and other stories, paintings, statues, theatrical plays ... all serve to communicate something.
To circle back to computer-generated "art", I would say that if the computer-generated artwork has a human programmer who was trying to communicate something through the software and its output, then I could consider it to be "art." It is not the computer producing the art, it is the human being who is programming or otherwise directing the computer through an intent to communicate something. If you leave a computer alone, and using some kind of random entropy it just so happens to produce an image of something because that's what the random generator landed on, then it's not art. There was no intent to communicate.
And in the example of computers visualizing some natural phenomenon (the article mentioned an oscilloscope as an example), then it is no more "art" than the image projected into the eye from a microscope since there is no recreation. It is, in that context, a tool for observing reality as it exists, rather than a medium of communication intended to express an idea.
Therefore, unless you grant an autonomous AI personhood it can't create art.
However, one could use AI as a tool to express themselves and that would be art. But that's where I admit the line gets blurred.
While I agree, unfortunately to the majority of people, "Art" simply means "something that makes me feel something". Whether that thing was generated by a human or a machine makes no difference. In my experience most people, when consuming art, hardly think about where it came from/who made it/why they made it, simply on the feelings it evokes with themselves. And as we have seen through outrage algorithms, computers are quite good at figuring out how to create emotional states in humans.
There are many flavors of this I can recall. One is voice acting in anime. I'd read episode discussion threads, and people would keep namedropping and discussing the voices behind the characters. Striked me and continues to strike me as just an extremely odd thing to do. As if these folks would go out of their way to ruin the immersion for themselves. Still, I don't mean to judge: they enjoy themselves whatever way they prefer.
Or recently I had a discussion with a coworker on being a fan of musicians and bands. He brought up an example that really surprised me: "so called fans will stare at you like a deer at headlights when you ask them: oh you're a fan of Linkin Park? what's their drummer called?". Or how there were so and so "cool" stories about some rock n roll musicians. These are beyond weird to me: I like (some of) their music, not them as individuals. I know nothing about them, nor do I really wish to or think I would be able to. (But then I'm also no "fan" of any musician in the sense my colleague described his idea of that: I feel completely uncompelled to be familiar with the entire discography of a band/artist, and especially to be obsessed with one in general.)
But maybe this is a generational difference. In any case, I'd be really hesitant to characterize this as just straight "unfortunate".
There's also a swath of cases where the expression in question is only a little more if even that than just a demonstration of someone's aesthetic or ideological preferences. I'm not sure how much art is in there - if someone were to call those expressions shallow, I'd likely agree. In which case, I'm not sure there's much to find unfortunate on this; it's only as unfortunate as much interest you (can) have in that person.
But if we accept that, there's no need for the creator to be a person - since if you yourself are a person observing the art, the idea will still hold.
While I'd find this notion agreeable, I really don't subscribe to personhood being a requirement on either side of art to begin with. But maybe it's something worthwhile for your consideration.
I think it's necessary, but not sufficient. So I kinda like my better:
It's art if (and to the extent of) people generally agree it's art.
Sounds tautological, but it isn't[0].
Of course, not everything is art. There are some aspects typically - but not always - present. Whether something gives you an emotion is one. Whether it has a deeper story behind it is another. Whether it's something that you can bond over with other people, or a shared experience, yet another. But none of those are required to be present. Art is ultimately a consensus opinion.
--
[0] - In fact, most of our civilization is built on ideas that exist only as long as most people expect most other people to believe them. Examples include: money, laws, countries, corporations, even the concept of society itself.
Does Jiro and his sushi constitute an artist and his art? Let's say yes, and let's say most people today agree with this. They're cosmopolitan enough to recognize the sophistication and craft. This definition therefore defines it as "art".
I would say if you told the average Brit living in the UK in the 1950s that there's a guy that's really good at slicing up raw fish, you might get a different average answer.
So I don't think art is dependent on the conclusion viewer, but on the intention of the author. If they arrange rocks just-so, because they enjoy the shadows they make at noon, I think that's art.
That still depends on the conclusion of the viewer, because intent exists only in the heart of the creator. We can guess at it, or choose to trust the creator when they say what their intent was, but we cannot independently see and evaluate it. Then, other people can disagree with us on what the intent was. You say Jiro is is an artist, I say he's just building a fake persona to market his fish-slicing business.
I think there is no quality of "art" that's inherent to the work; I see art as purely social phenomenon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/arts/design/cattelan-bana...
Art requires human intention to be art.
As I see it, art is in the eye of the beholder. Splotches of color made by Jackson Pollock and those made by my 3 year old don't differ in their intent (I assume both equally want to express themselves), but in the way that we view the work. I for one don't see any issue with treating a beautiful mountain vista as "a work of art", regardless to whether I believe it was intentionally created by a personified god, or by an RNG in the simulator that's rendering this corner of the universe, or anything in between. I see art.
because a pretty mountain is not art? sorry that's not obvious?
It's obvious to you, because your definition of "art" requires it to be man-made. But you can't use the fact that non-man-made things can't be art to argue that non-man-made things can't be art. It only works on people who already agree.
> While nature itself is not art, it is a source of artistic inspiration and can be used as a medium or subject in art. Art is typically considered a human creation with intentional aesthetic or expressive purposes, whereas nature exists independently of human creation. [1, 2]
> because your definition of "art" requires it to be man-made.
it's not "my" definition, it's the definition. In the dictionary.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/art
1 : skill acquired by experience, study, or observation "the art of making friends" 2a: a branch of learning: (1): one of the humanities (2)arts plural : liberal arts b archaic : learning, scholarship 3: an occupation requiring knowledge or skill "the art of organ building" 4a: the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects "the art of painting landscapes" also : works so produced "a gallery for modern art" b(1): fine arts (2): one of the fine arts (3) : one of the graphic arts 5aarchaic : a skillful plan b: the quality or state of being artful (see artful sense 2a) 6: decorative or illustrative elements in printed matter
In particular, if art was so easy to define, we probably wouldn't have philosophical studies such as "Definitions of Art" - https://books.google.ie/books?id=6peJnXr4L5gC
And even the chair&table example isn't that straightforward - https://www.coolthings.com/little-oyster-coffee-table/
Even if it's made by chatgpt? A lot of carbon-chauvinists believe only meatbags can make art.
In what way?
(shitty type systems as well?)
I also want to emphasize the "banana sticked to a wall" complaint is an often right wing stance to devalue art.
Art can be emotional, but not everything that creates emotion is art. In time I think we will work out a better definition of what constitutes art. One that excludes generated images and videos and emphasizes the human connection of artwork.
Second:
One is made by a human for other humans. The other is a randomly recognized pattern built from the stolen art of millions, and has no intended audience (because it itself is incapable of consuming art).
There is something that fits that definition, which is nature. Some actually believe it’s a divine expression and does indeed have an intended audience (us). That’s a weird belief, but your argument is actually quite sound if you believe in God. If you don’t, then your argument falls apart because so much of nature is art, so much so that art is often based on it.
If the Grand Canyon is randomness, yet it appears clearly beautiful to us, and is the source of inspiration for Art, then we can say that this new form of random pattern generator is also another source, one we can take inspiration from.
There will be sticklers that will create a delineation between nature and art, which ultimately is quite arrogant because it will apply one specific characteristic to art, that being art is a specifically human creation.
but that would interrupt my tech bro flow with uncomfortable things I've decided nobody should read. that simply wont do, sorry