manibus

"a machine that can out-write anyone, out-draw anyone, out-sing, out-code, out-everything, everyone, ever"

What does it mean to "out-write" or "out-draw" someone?

If you created an oil painting of an apple, and I created a charcoal drawing of a cabin in the woods, how can we possible say who "out created" the other? Do you win because your apple was done in oils and might look more "realistic"? Or do I win because I picked a broader more complex scene? Maybe you rendered your apple with a nuanced difference only you truly understand. Maybe I rendered the cabin in a way that plays on our very expectations of how cabins should be rendered.

Do you see how it is a losing battle to compare these things? Such is the nature of our reality and appreciation of feelings and beauty that I can ALWAYS find a new axis on which to critique or glorify any given art produced by anyone ever.

I can even find things that were never intended to be "artworks" created thousands of years ago, and find artistic connection to them, value them higher than things made with greater effort or intent.

There are many rock and roll songs that share huge structural similarity and styles, but ultimately you will like some of them, and someone else will maybe like some that you do, and also their own set of preferences. How do we say which is the more "valid" or "well done" rock song? How do we account for the classics?

Art in reality (to me) is the exact opposite of empirical statements like "best of" or "better", there is only the artwork and how it makes me feel, what I imagine the artist felt when making it and so on and so forth.

All the niche cultures we have today are the precise result of people rejecting the idea that something has already been created to sufficient specification and scope, instead opting to create new divergences on the discovered themes.

"I'm mad that leonardo can't be as good as the AI." If anything AI owes its existence to Leo as AI is an extension and result of our own minds, if anything the AI should be mad that it will never be us. I think your frustration and anxiety over AI is healthy but be wary of letting it control you, there is a lot more to the picture than " we are all f*ked! goddamn this cruel fate! "

This disagreement seems to hinge on is art solely a commodity, and the obvious answer to me is no. In my experience, the more that the artists care about how much currency they are going to reap from a work, the less likely it is to be compelling or have any kind of long term emotional value.

Judging this entire scenario only by the economic value of art is why I found what they wrote to be nihilistic. Put aside the economics of this transition for a second and think hard about how the generative pieces really make you FEEL, which artworks you have found the most compelling in your life, and why that was.

If you think just because an inanimate computer program can render an interpolation between pre-existing data, that there is no point in creating art, then maybe you didn’t really understand why many practice art. Art is not some kind of competency test, not something “a robot could do better”. By your same logic we should stop children from making finger paintings, “just stop sweetie, Leonardo Da Vinci already did it better 500 years ago.” I see these kinds of opinions often now and to me they seem to come from a place of completely misunderstanding what art is, why we do it, and why it has value to us.

You are coming from a position that you only value expressing yourself into an artefact if that artefact can be “the best” (whatever that means), who is the nihilist again? That we devote our energy to creating only has worth if it can somehow be better than others? Idk, those positions to me are pretty dark and nihilistic.