Community condemn Bedminster AI mural as 'insult' to artists
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Were John Berger here, I'm sure he would remind us all that art does not exist in a vacuum, but lives in a social context.
The most meaningful (to me) critique of AI generated works are that they deprive the artist of the benefit of the investigation. As media become more disconnected (intermediated), the reasoning path between urge and resolution is obscured for the artist.
Generative models are highly intermediated.
The purpose of art may be thought of as the effort to produce artifacts. But at a societal level it is a process to reveal "truths" embedded in commonly held "lies."
I like this specific piece in the same way I liked Duchamp's urinal. It makes a statement about art more than being art. And in concretizing that statement raises itself to the status of "art."
But if Duchamp (or anyone else) tried to pass off a second urinal as a second fountain, the impact would not be there and it would not be art.
Which is to say... I think the Bedminster piece IS art because of its context. But subsequent AI generated pieces would need to be judged on different merits.
If the Bedminster piece is indicative of the quality of output of generative AI, human artists have nothing new to fear.
There has always been the danger of art patrons subsidizing substandard public art because of budget concerns. This is just the next chapter in that story.
Bedminster is not known for its patronage, and it's unlikely that will change anytime soon.
Though yes, to the degree that generative models rip off existing artists, whirl it around in a convolutional neural network and barf up something... Yes, this is a prime example of what Massimo Vignelli called "visual pollution."
For free? I find these arguments completely unconvincing and they completely ignore the extra work that would entail.
Does art stop being art because it was AI generated? I don't think so. Just like code is code is code no matter how it came into being. There is still good code and bad code but that exists separately from "was it AI generated". Judge things based on their merits, not their origins.
I look forward to a future where artists embrace AI tooling to further their work. I reject completely the idea that art must be 100% human created. For starters because it's absurd on the face of it, you might as well say no technology at all can be used and it still be called "art", and yes that includes your brushes and paints. You can see how this is an absurd idea. It's my understanding that often artists use other people to assemble their art pieces and/or fill-in painting on something like a mural. Since the artist didn't actually make it with their own hands is it no longer art?
There is just simply no logical place to draw the line on this and I'll be glad when we've moved past this distraction from progress. AI is another tool in the toolbox, avoiding it for the sake of avoiding it is silly and self-defeating.
I think so, but I also don't feel strongly about that. I.e. I don't think there is one correct definition of the word "art", and I also don't think it matters in practice, most of the time. It's easily the most subjective word in our language, and arguments about its meaning are moot in most contexts.
In this context: AI art is, conceptually, obnoxious and offensive, like the smell of rotting garbage. Whether it's also "art" by dictionary definition is secondary, and not interesting.
You can, however, argue that you like the art I guess.
Yes it does. Art is a form of expression, and clankers don't have sentience or intelligence to express themselves.
> Just like code is code is code no matter how it came into being.
Code is a functional thing, not a form of expression. Though LLMs aren't good at that, either.
That we are discussing it shows that the mural, even though it's AI generated is performing as art should. Should we welcome all forms of art? If not, where do we draw the line? That's for me the most uncomfortable question.
Which is to say, not all art is comfortable, but not all things that are not comfortable are art.
It's perfectly fine for art to be comfortable. Stop gate-keeping.
You wrote:
"Should we welcome all forms of art? If not, where do we draw the line?"
You didn't ask if it was art. You asked about welcoming it. I gave my personal answer.
If you'd like my opinion on the "is it art?" question, I gave a short version here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49821850
I might add another thought onto that post, which is, maybe rather than not being art, it's closer to being somebody else's art? Where "somebody" is an aggregate of other artists. Of course that's not quite right either. As I said in the linked post, it's just a semantic argument, which can be fun but isn't really interesting.
> If not, where do we draw the line?
I don't find this question uncomfortable at all: art is art if and only if it was made by humans, end to end. Human thought informing human action resulting in a human-created work. If you involved an AI, it is not art; it is a facsimile of art. If you agree that conveying emotion and meaning is an important part of art, and I think you do since you highlighted that art can and sometimes should be uncomfortable, then I posit that AI "art" cannot be art because there is no feeling, emotion, or creativity involved in its creation. An AI can only attempt to mimic human expression based on its training while the AI itself is incapable of these things.
I disagree with your definition of art. One can use AI as a reference and the end result will still be art because it'll carry execution technique and the subjective perception of the artist. Saying otherwise would be like saying that electronic music isn't music because it's a computer producing the sound waves.
A better candidate would be "an object can be a work of art if and only if it wasn't made by machines end to end".
I think it's a spectrum. DJing can go from hitting play with someone else's recorded live set to sampling live from vynil and midi controllers and mixing with voice, doing loops and the likes.
I think there is room for art in anything, including AI. Just like musicians like DJ Shadow managed to show it's perfectly possible to make great pieces using only sampling, I think we can go very far with AI generated art and still be able to call it art in good faith.