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Comment by camillovisini | Hacker News Reader

A couple of years ago, after reading the book, I sketched some of them on Procreate with an isometric grid, but not all 55. I only arrived at number 4, since each took multiple hour...

https://camillovisini.com/drawing/fc4jc6-le-citta-invisibili...

https://camillovisini.com/drawing/p2yrdj-le-citta-invisibili...

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It’s interesting, with a human made piece of art, I’m always drawn to « zoom in », to see how you did little details, if you have hidden something here and there, how you connected different parts.

With AI generated stuff, sure it looks amazing at first glance but I definitely don’t want to zoom in, since I know it’s all a cardboard facade with no passion. Look a bit too closely and you’ll see the bridges that make no sense, the bunch of nonsensical threejs cylinders etc.

I always consider AI-generated content to be a draft — or, in its parlance: something that takes the shape of the final product.

I don't dismiss the ability of models to create. I dismiss their ability to create finished goods. Humans should always be involved, especially with creative works. Models are great at modeling existing creations and solutions — head starts on long roads — but it's the person that needs to walk it and take the journey.

This pairs well with the saying "art is never finished, it is abandoned."

Abandoned one-shot drafts are akin to speaking words but never finishing a sentence before moving onto the next thought. There's no there there.

Are they really? Nothing of value is produced unless the exact artifact is transmuted into a professional good? There’s nothing to be gained from sketching preliminary drafts or notes because they’re never polished for publication?

Not what I meant. The point was work under a certain grain size of effort has very little (or negative) value to others.

We're in an environment awash in 'content' where every person has an infinite slop producing machine, and a lot of people are publishing nearly zero effort drafts, awed by the appearance of meaning.

What happens when you zoom in to a human-made painting and notice an error?

Not much, because they are fundamentally different types of errors. A slightly off perspective doesn’t change what the artist was trying to convey.

In the original link the first city I checked (forgot the name) was one were supposedly you have 5 bridge, every one of them more magnificent than the other. The city looks great at a distance, with glow and particle effects. Zoom in and you’ll see the bridges are actually floating over the river, they are not connecting both banks they are literally in the river parallel to the banks with no way to get in or out of the bridge.

The bridges were the central element of the story. Would a human that spend 10h working on this piece just forget that the bridges, the very central element they are trying to depict, need to actually function as a bridge?

With a human, you may get ugly output but you’ll not get that nonsense.

The only reason a human will not give you a nonsense bridge is that a human is running a 2.5kWh spacial physics calculation engine in his/her head.

Replace 3.js with an engine that embeds physics, ask it to do test fly-through through each city and fix inconsistencies and let's then compare the results.

> Make a three.js (pnpm) visualization of all Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Don’t ask questions, it is a one-shot task. You have 6h of work, use it until it becomes a masterpiece.

Depends on whether it is a happy error.

Since this project (both yours and OP's) seem more for personal fulfillment and enjoyment, I wonder who got more enjoyment out of the process, and also who will remember the results better in ten years.

One is a toy. Created on a whim, it will end up in the bin with other toys. They might pick it up and paw at it later, stir up some memories, and then put it back.

One is art. When completed, they can look at it and be reminded of the journey of creation, a labor of love. It could be put away, or displayed for all to enjoy.

> One is art. When completed, they can look at it and be reminded of the journey of creation, a labor of love. It could be put away, or displayed for all to enjoy.

How is this not applicable to both things? This just reads as gatekeeping to me.

The amount of time or effort put into something does not determine its value.

The amount of time and effort a human put into something very much does tend to determine its value, both to that human and others in their social circle.

> The amount of time or effort put into something does not determine its value.

It literally does, not only in art. Is not the only factor, yet is definitely one of them. In many objects, the version with 'more human effort' is more expensive.

You draw what you saw in your minds' eye. I can guarantee the author of this didn't visualize the cities like they came out.

These are amazing!

I'd much rather see yours than the slop version. One of the nice things about the book is that everybody sees the cities different in their minds eye, this link above came from no mind.

That looks pretty nice, I didn't know Procreate could be so good at precise line art!

SOUL

Love it. I see isometric angles - I updoot.

> Leaving there and proceeding for three days toward the east, you reach Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theatre, a golden cock that crowns each morning on a tower...

Text in the second person is causing my my D&D instincts to kick in.

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