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You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

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Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#161

Post by ch4s3 »

rafaelero wrote: post #154
ch4s3 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re talking about a question of taste, and I’m sure you could find a group of people and some samples where the group prefers the AI generated images. That seems almost tautological. There’s more to art than the mere appeal of an image to random people. Some great art is disturbing, but it is emotionally resonant. No doubt some of these AI images are quite neat to look at, but they’re basically assemblages, high t…

I don't think you understood what I was saying. It's not about taste, it's about being able to differentiate between human and machine made art using whatever metric people have about what constitutes good art.

I think you’d be hard pressed to find a group of people with minimal education in art who couldn’t reliably pice out the AI generated images. You might be able to trick them with abstract images or things intended to look like computer generated art that doesn’t have a complex or human subject matter.

Frankly humans and animals generated by these things look like blurry trash or are wrong on details in a way a human wouldn’t be, even intentionally. I’ve yet to see examples that don’t look kind of shitty.

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#163

Post by ch4s3 »

nradov wrote: post #159
ch4s3 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DALL·E 2 and co are pretty neat, but the output mostly sucks as art. Good art comes from somewhere, having provenance in person, place, culture, and time. Really great art can be quite moving, and I've yet to see anything AI generated that elicits more than a chuckle or a mild "huh neat" from anyone who doesn't know why it's technically impressive.

A blue canvas with a white line sold for $44M. Pretty sure an AI could generate that. https://nypost.com/2013/05/15/43-8-million-for-this/

Sure great. Everyone loves to punch high dollar contemporary abstract art sales. It’s a pretty well worn and boring critique of a narrow corner of contemporary art.

My point still holds that anything vaguely representational looks kind of bad and has an uncanny quality. It’s clear that the trick is a kind of collage in most of the images I’ve seen.

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#164

Post by psychomugs »

rafaelero wrote: post #143
ch4s3 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DALL·E 2 and co are pretty neat, but the output mostly sucks as art. Good art comes from somewhere, having provenance in person, place, culture, and time. Really great art can be quite moving, and I've yet to see anything AI generated that elicits more than a chuckle or a mild "huh neat" from anyone who doesn't know why it's technically impressive.

It's quite simple to verify your assertion. Someone should show people some pieces of art and ask them to rate the quality of each of them. If the rating between human-made art and machine-made art doesn't differ significantly, then we can comfortably say that there is nothing special on art produced by humans. I think I know what the result will be, but hopefully some researcher will carefully investigate this issue…

This operates on the very narrow view that the only value of art is its aesthetics, and that art can be measured against objective ratings.

I value art because it communicates something from an actual human being, like an exchanging between consciousnesses. When I can derive the choices of an author or photographer or any other class of artist, I find a mutual perspective that, at the root of it, makes me feel understanding and understood.

This article (posted here a few days ago) has a great argument on why AI art isn’t art:

https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/ai-art-isnt-art

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#165

Post by dogman144 »

Per this thread, apparently some engineers really dislike artists. I wonder if this is because artists and engineers both claim expertise in the meaning making process - a painting, or an app. I make my paycheck via that meaningless tech money like most others here, but that aside, I’m under no illusions that I’m doing much beyond solving crossword puzzles for high pay and providing for my family.

Every time tech wades into high minded ideals for its products, it seems to find ways to destroy the thing it’s helping, or put another way have extreme negative externalities. Oil and cars connected relatives via ease of travel and caused what looks like one-way pollution. Facebook and Twitter connected people and then did .

I think engineers selectively ignoring the above for a long time is a source of extreme disgruntlement later career, and maybe why the artist hate exists?

I have never heard of a piece of world changing art have the same negative externalities, or really any lasting negative externalities, as world changing tech.

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#166

Post by thethethethe »

anigbrowl wrote: post #51
thethethethe wrote: post #33

Seems a little entitled to me. Why should artists be able to spend their time doing exactly what they want while all the boring plebs have to pick vegetables/write CRUD apps? Sounds like someone is upset that more people dont find utility in their work

I hear this a lot from people who don't understand how much hard work is involved in the art life, or generalize from notoriously feckless examples.

I am sure that art is very hard work. I also happen to believe that art is extremely valuable to society. I enjoy art almost constantly throughout the day and it makes my life better.

I just don't appreciate the sentiment that artists deserve to exclusively make the art they want, the way they want because art holds a special value to society that needs to be supported.

Our society is drowning in art. There are millions of hours of content; videos, photos, drawings, music, books, etc that one can consume at any moment and more is being created every day. With this in mind it's pretty hard to believe that society isn't supporting artists enough.

Sure some artists are poor but many are well off or even rich. You can't same the same for people who pick vegetables which we need to eat to not die

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#167

Post by pcwalton »

finexplained wrote: post #137
pcwalton wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people would say the same about programmers.

Sure, but we actually provide business value and our toolset is applicable to a broad set of problems.

Obviously artists provide business value. That's why there is such a thing as the entertainment industry.

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#168

Post by antognini »

watwut wrote: post #71
buscoquadnary wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patronage. Honestly music was profitable for a very brief period of time between around 1940s-1990's. Every other time in history it's required someone rich to like you enough to pay you to do it, or be a traveling minstrel who lived on the edge of society. Like even Wagner who is arguably one of the most influential and popular composers of all time spent most of his life destitute and only was stable when the Kaise…

Neither Mozart nor Bach were poor. Quite a lot of these were basically middle class - respectable good paid job, but you are not Elon Muck rich. And some of them earned less then they could due to own habit of alienate people (Beethoven).

The astronomer William Herschel had a fairly successful career as a musician in Bath and was able to afford a nice middle class home.

When King George appointed him Royal Astronomer so he could do astronomy full time, the salary he earned from that position was half what he made as a musician.

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#169

Post by thethethethe »

swayvil wrote: post #41
thethethethe wrote: post #33

Seems a little entitled to me. Why should artists be able to spend their time doing exactly what they want while all the boring plebs have to pick vegetables/write CRUD apps? Sounds like someone is upset that more people dont find utility in their work

Because artists make the world an objectively better place in an uncommonly powerful way. Because it's an excellent investment, socially speaking. Because investment in the arts (I mean serious investment. Not like USA) has worked pretty well for some countries.

> Because investment in the arts (I mean serious investment. Not like USA) has worked pretty well for some countries.

Perhaps we should invest infrastructure, systems and institutions that give people more free time, flexibility, freedom, and inspiration so they can create good art rather than "investing in the arts"--whatever that means

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#170

Post by JoeyBananas »

nbzso wrote: post #141

A little life story: I had commercial success in art at the humble age of 23. Not only were my paintings respected and collected by accomplished and wealthy individuals, they formed commissions for years to come. My success was the result of an obsession with craftsmanship and clever word-of-mouth marketing. Suddenly, one day after insisting on meeting the deadline of the expensive commission, I had a headache and my…

> I don't paint for you. I paint for myself. It's part of my life. A place where there are no compromises, no demands, no expectations, no projections, no assessments, no tasks, no metrics, no applause and no glory.

That sounds idealistic to the point of foolishness. The end result of your decision to quit art was that you had to get a job as a graphic designer. Doesn't that achieve even less of your vision?

A lot of people encounter this same dilemma: "do I want to conform to an imperfect system in order to stay in my chosen profession, or should I quit?"

By choosing to quit, you are giving up all of your leverage. You will be replaced by the next "yes man" who doesn't share your vision. If you stick with it, you can continue to nudge the system in the direction you want.

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