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Comment by boorang | Hacker News Reader

you don't need to learn blender anymore. you can talk with the ai and describe what you want and iterate. all of the software tools used in media are now accessible to creative but not necessarily technical people.

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Just describing what you want doesn't make you an artist. It makes you a client.

Just iteratively refusing what a stochastic generative algorithm presents to you doesn't make you an artist. It makes you a client with attitude.

Jeff Koons, artist or client?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_(sculpture)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson_and_Bubbles

etc.

Apples, oranges.

Koons didn't write a two paragraph description of his ideas and then handed it over to a porcelain factory that repeatedly tried to come up with something that fit the spec until Koons cried out "Yes, that's it! That's what I had in mind!"

He drew sketches, built models, shaped prototypes, etc. He was an active participant in the creative process from the very start to the end, not just a client that checked in on what the artists were doing from time to time to give the thumbs up or thumbs down.

But also, many people consider Koons to be a hack. (He says his art has no intrinsic meaning and he mostly makes vapid balloon sculptures for very rich people.)

I think this is just gatekeeping. If you are involved in the creative process - additive or subtractive, you are an artist.

Funny how I've only seen people make this kind of claim about AI, and never about people who commission art from artists.

Pope Julius II did not paint the Sistine Chapel's ceilling. Michelangelo did. I cannot believe I have to say this.

Exactly.

If just "being involved" in the "creative process" is enough to be called an artist, then by that measure that includes the guys that are simply involved by having the money to patron the process. Maybe it also includes the guy delivering the pizza.

I mean i suppose it depends on if you think people using blender are artists. If you think the part that makes them creative is knowing to right click select blah do blah then I get your position. If you say "no, make the background fade out at this point, push the face to the foreground, and add some shadow behind", I really don't understand why knowing the specific keystrokes are the creative part.

But I think you know that and you're just straw manning.

edit- to be clear i'm talking about using existing software like logic pro, blender, etc. i'm not talking about generative AI.

A person using tools to make art is an artist (or craftsman). A person yelling directions at people or machines that make the actual art is a director, at best.

Knowing the tools of your trade is what you makes a artist. It's not enough to know that you would like to have the shadow there and have the face pushed to the foreground, that's just being aware of the design space. To be an artist you also need to know how to navigate the design space - know how to use the colours, brushes, vertices - to actually arrive at the place you intend. That means that you know how to use the tools of your trade so that this stroke or infill completes the brow to create the gaze you were aiming for.

Just selecting from a random sampling makes you a curator at best. You know where you want to go, but don't know how to do that. If luck is not in your favor, you will never arrive. And you're wholly dependent on luck to get there.

I appreciate you directly addressing what I was talking about. In my case, I'm an old school 90s wannabe rapper/producer and I used to make beats with old school drum machines, a sequential prophet 2000 sampler, and my friends MPC3000 sampler when I could get my hands on it. When music went into the full computer/MIDI programming phase I dropped out as I lost interest in it, for many of the same reasons that artists today will be facing with AI.

Having never learned the computer tools, like Logic Pro, or whatever open source alternatives are available, I've been considering taking a crack back at it. I have no desire to learn these tools, but if I can say "ok move the kick 1/8 and double up the snare on measure 4" I may get back in the swing of things.

Forced retirement at 50 has me looking for new hobbies.

I'm not really worried about what anyone wants to call me, but I was just pointing out a legitimate use case for agentic AI in the arts.

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