61–70 of 146 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IIRC, isn't art used as a tax dodge these days? That and a giant influx of money from countries that don't historically buy a lot of art (e.g. China)
How exactly would buying art work as a tax dodge?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Next time you leave your headlights on and someone helps you jump start, remember that you're not legally obligated to thank him or her. Most people don't seem to understand this.
An appropriate analogy in this case would be someone putting up a sign that explicitly says that nobody has to thank them, then getting mad that nobody thanked them.
The problem with this is that it disincentivizes the sharing mentality. Nobody wants to be the guy who gets taken advantage of, yet everyone benefits from free sharing of knowledge. And then once in a while you have dudes who swoop in and make everyone look stupid and make them re-think whether they should ever share their findings with others again.
Obvious could make this right if they wanted to. Yet they are standing their ground on Twitter, it seems.
People often mistake art for a form of labor production. They expect that labor has to have been performed to create value. But that all changed in the early 20th century.
I really feel bad for Dr. Beef, this must really hurt. But according to the twitter thread ( https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/1055285640420483073 ) they didn't use the pre-trained models. In any case pre-trained models are labor, not end product. They simply trained them from scratch. Possibly on the same input set.
Even if his license was more strict, they still could have just rewritten the same code and it would have escaped the licensing. Should the original GAN paper ( https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2661 ? ) be given artistic credit here ? What is authorship in this context ? There is a whole chain of people furthering things and doing labor and making decisions.
Yet nobody has even mentioned the original artists whose works were used to train the model. Would it be different if they were living artists ?
In what way is a GAN essentially different than photoshop copy and paste of elements ?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but it’s a jerk move... What on earth are you on about!? The author has every possible opportunity to set out whatever he wants in the license. If he wants anyone who uses it to name their firstborn after him he can put that in there. If he doesn’t then there is absolutely no issue or nothing jerk-like of anyone who follows to the letter he license the author decided to use. It’s up to the author to specify what he…
Jeez,we're going to berate people who get ripped off because they're 19 year old art students that didn't consult a lawyer before releasing their art project?
This is the same trap I see 40-somethings falling into time after time, acting like AGPLv3 is evil while complaining how their (non-copyleft, open source) projects are widely used, extended and not contributed back to by those that use them. If your building a totally new platform in an area with no existing tools, strong copyleft is not a bad choice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm inclined to think that the general public underestimate contemporary art and the art world overestimate its superiority over the more conventional works. I really like your framing of this and agree wholeheartedly. I think it really comes from contemporary art’s focus on abstraction and meaning within context. The combination of focus on abstraction and meaning while requiring the viewer to understand the conte…
I disagree. If you spent two minutes rolling some white paint on a white canvas because your "abstract message" was about the void of space, it's not profound, you're being an ass. Conversely if you spent at least five hours stippling black spots on a white canvas in the image of some obscure shape, because you had a concept in your head, and it took a considerable amount of effort, THAT is a profound piece of work.…
Got it. work >= 5hrs == TRUE REAL PROFOUND ART, work Art is purely expression. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to express what you're expressing. Pollock may have just splattered painting on a canvas. But it was still a true expression. John Cage made a composition where the orchestra doesn't play any notes. But it's still an expression.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. If you spent two minutes rolling some white paint on a white canvas because your "abstract message" was about the void of space, it's not profound, you're being an ass. Conversely if you spent at least five hours stippling black spots on a white canvas in the image of some obscure shape, because you had a concept in your head, and it took a considerable amount of effort, THAT is a profound piece of work.…
> if you spent at least five hours ... and it took a considerable amount of effort, THAT is a profound piece of work. Got it. work >= 5hrs == TRUE REAL PROFOUND ART, work Art is purely expression. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to express what you're expressing. Pollock may have just splattered painting on a canvas. But it was still a true expression . John Cage made a composition where the orchestra doesn't…
The fact that rich people are willing to pay for some bland expression does not confer anything but monetary value to it. It doesn't become less garbage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm inclined to think that the general public underestimate contemporary art and the art world overestimate its superiority over the more conventional works. I really like your framing of this and agree wholeheartedly. I think it really comes from contemporary art’s focus on abstraction and meaning within context. The combination of focus on abstraction and meaning while requiring the viewer to understand the conte…
I disagree. If you spent two minutes rolling some white paint on a white canvas because your "abstract message" was about the void of space, it's not profound, you're being an ass. Conversely if you spent at least five hours stippling black spots on a white canvas in the image of some obscure shape, because you had a concept in your head, and it took a considerable amount of effort, THAT is a profound piece of work.…
That said, effort isn't generally what makes or breaks art, either in the gallery / collector world, nor among artists. Very, very few stippled paintings that took more than 5 hours of work are considered profound in any way. It's been done already.
Maybe you meant to imply skill, but skill isn't that important to art history either. Somewhat important, perhaps, but not generally in the top 3. Concept and narrative and novelty and luck all outweigh effort and skill, even among unpretentious skilled poor artists.
> The art world isn't full of bohemians... it's full of pretentious, bored, rich people.
I'd be careful to qualify that statement. There are lots more poor artists than rich people. When you say "the art world", if you're talking about Christie's and Sotheby's, then yes there are rich people. My personal "art world" is full of artists, and I don't pay attention to the stuff the auction houses are auctioning.
The work of Art is the act of putting it up for auction on Christie's. That's what makes it a conceptual piece that is being discussed. People often mistake art for a form of labor production. They expect that labor has to have been performed to create value. But that all changed in the early 20th century. I really feel bad for Dr. Beef, this must really hurt. But according to the twitter thread ( https://twitter.com…
I may be misinterpreting your intent, but this seems disingenuous to me. I can't go look at the Linux kernel, then 'rewrite' [the same code] with my fingers and keyboard to escape copyright ownership of Linux kernel contributors.
I can rewrite code that implements a described process. Or code that implements a described interface. If this was your intent, I'll take the blame for misunderstanding. But I caution the use of phrases like "the same code" when you actually mean new code that implements the same process.
Twitter thread from the author of the original algorithm: https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/1055285640420483073 (worth reading the whole thread, the art collective reply) GitHub link: https://github.com/robbiebarrat/art-dcgan The README was last edited 6 months ago and contains the bolded text: "When using any outputs of the models, credit me. Don't sell the outputs of the pre-trained models, modified or not. If you…