Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques

petapixel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 71 posts

Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques

#61

Post by potsandpans »

BlackFly wrote: post #20

Rarely do people get the right takeaway from this effect. Take a normal bottle of red wine and some top tier, swap them around so the ordinary is in the expensive bottle and vice versa. Serve them. People prefer the ordinary wine in the expensive bottle. Bad takeaway: taste is meaningless. Good takeaway: qualia depends on many contextual cues beyond the obvious. Part of the appreciation of Monet is the fact that it w…

Id argue that your dichotomy in of itself requires context.

While the idea that qualia depends on contextual cues might be valuable to understand how culture evolves, it's also indicative that that these cultural phenomena evolve to preserve in group/out group dynamics.

It's not so much, "taste is meaningless" and more, "taste is an arbitrary construction." These kinds of tests are the natural tools of the cynics and satirists of the world.

Critics and purveyors of the Fine Arts and Refined Tastes tend to get a little "up their own asses" about the things that they like.

So, while I agree that the framing of "taste is meaningless" is a bad take, it's valid to point out that there's natural humor here.

This kind of playful mockery is as old as the arts themselves. See: Diogenes.

Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques

#62

Post by surgical_fire »

etrautmann wrote: post #50
surgical_fire wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me the day I went to see in person Starry Night Over The Rhone. I am not exactly an art person, but I once was explained why that painting is a big deal, the whole impasto thing, etc. I get there and there's an horde of morons taking selfies next to the painting, and another horde of morons taking photos of the painting. I just wanted to observe a bit the depth of the carved layers of ink and how light r…

I love deeply observing paintings and also love taking a photo while in a museum. It helps me remember the details and review like spaced repetition the things I saw, or spend more time observing nuance later. Are many people ticking boxes? Probably, but the issue is the too many people. Even with people just looking, I feel uncomfortable spending time if there’s a line.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/St...

I don't think any picture you take with your cellphone will have as much detail as this.

The act of taking photos of paintings in museums is meaningless.

Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques

#63

Post by AlecSchueler »

surgical_fire wrote: post #62
etrautmann wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love deeply observing paintings and also love taking a photo while in a museum. It helps me remember the details and review like spaced repetition the things I saw, or spend more time observing nuance later. Are many people ticking boxes? Probably, but the issue is the too many people. Even with people just looking, I feel uncomfortable spending time if there’s a line.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/St... I don't think any picture you take with your cellphone will have as much detail as this. The act of taking photos of paintings in museums is meaningless.

> It helps me remember the details and review

Note that they said "remember the details" not "capture the details."

Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques

#64

Post by therealpygon »

BlackFly wrote: post #20

Rarely do people get the right takeaway from this effect. Take a normal bottle of red wine and some top tier, swap them around so the ordinary is in the expensive bottle and vice versa. Serve them. People prefer the ordinary wine in the expensive bottle. Bad takeaway: taste is meaningless. Good takeaway: qualia depends on many contextual cues beyond the obvious. Part of the appreciation of Monet is the fact that it w…

My 2 cents is that qualia is definitely a fancy way to say “opinions”. As in:

“My opinion is that this brand is good because others have told me it is. My opinion is that it is expensive because it must in fact be good. The bottle looks old, therefore it is old, which means it must be good because anything good takes time. Everyone has told me how this is amazing, so I need to ensure my refined palette can identify the blah…blah..”

Opinions all the way down, rarely ever based on concrete objectivity. Even for Monet.

In abstract you take the same paintings, stick them in some old dead dudes attic in Nowhere, Montana because he just did them for fun, I’d be surprised if they even ended up at a yard sale.

And that is the point. Value is entirely subjective and built through opinions. If your opinion begins with “I don’t like this,” you don’t tend to then overlook the same characteristics you willingly ignored or even embellished when you believed you are expected to like said thing.

Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques

#65

Post by spiffytech »

I once lucked into a private tour of a Monet gallery. I asked the curator, "these paintings just don't look great, why should I be impressed?"

The curator responded that Monet, and impressionism in general, were a reaction to the then-new invention of paint sold in tubes. Previously a painter had to mix pigment powder right when they painted. So they usually couldn't paint outdoors where the wind would blow the powder, and they couldn't capture rapidly-evolving scenes.

Tube paint changed that. Impressionists started painting things in motion, or in shifting lighting like dawn. Their paintings were designed not to look good close up, but to be viewed at a distance, where the "pixelation" (so to speak) resolved into a coherent picture. They skipped on fine detail to capture something as fast as they could, because they could never do that before.

I still don't care for impressionism on an aesthetic level, but I learned something that day about art history and why some people appreciate art that I don't.

Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques

#66

Post by SilasX »

futune wrote: post #19

Are the comments real? I guess this is kind of the recursive version of the purported phenomenon, but, are we sure all those comments aren't just bot generated outrage so people can have big engagement by feeling superiour or whatever?

Yeah I'm hesitant to take a strong opinion on this given how many of the replies could themselves be AI, or humans counter-trolling by baiting him to say "aha! I got you!" to the most over-the-top examples.

That said, it has definitely pulled some real humans out of the woodwork to give their real opinion that "yes, I'm influenced/duped by context and that's a good thing". And that's an accomplishment.

Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques

#67

Post by gitaarik »

saaaaaam wrote: post #5

“One person even took the time to write out an 850-word breakdown of the AI work’s shortcomings.” But they didn’t. The “breakdown” they link to is clearly and glaringly AI-authored. “ Fair warning before I dig in: this image is actually a very competent rendition. It's doing more right than most AI Monet pastiches. But you asked what makes it inferior to a real Monet, so here's the honest breakdown. What's missing —…

Yeah the 850 worded one is certainly AI, but I don't think it disproves the whole article. It's not an official study either, but things in between are allowed to be written about too.

Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques

#68

Post by sam_lowry_ »

spiffytech wrote: post #65

I once lucked into a private tour of a Monet gallery. I asked the curator, "these paintings just don't look great, why should I be impressed?" The curator responded that Monet, and impressionism in general, were a reaction to the then-new invention of paint sold in tubes. Previously a painter had to mix pigment powder right when they painted. So they usually couldn't paint outdoors where the wind would blow the powde…

Lots of techical innivations enabled impressionism, but I would argue that synthetic ultramarine is the biggest one.

One should visit the Orsay museum to understand it, its curators know their job: impressionist paintings seem to glow from inside in the dim gallery.

Screens are bad at showing these colors, one still needs personal experience to get it.

Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques

#69

Post by thunky »

unparagoned wrote: post #59
BlackFly wrote: post #20

Rarely do people get the right takeaway from this effect. Take a normal bottle of red wine and some top tier, swap them around so the ordinary is in the expensive bottle and vice versa. Serve them. People prefer the ordinary wine in the expensive bottle. Bad takeaway: taste is meaningless. Good takeaway: qualia depends on many contextual cues beyond the obvious. Part of the appreciation of Monet is the fact that it w…

It’s perfectly fine to like cheap wine and not like expensive wine. Those that like wine just because they think it’s expensive just have objectively bad taste. So your defence only works for people with objectively bad taste. It’s not something that applies to everyone.

> objectively bad taste

Oxymoron.

Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques

#70

Post by tasuki »

surgical_fire wrote: post #62
etrautmann wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love deeply observing paintings and also love taking a photo while in a museum. It helps me remember the details and review like spaced repetition the things I saw, or spend more time observing nuance later. Are many people ticking boxes? Probably, but the issue is the too many people. Even with people just looking, I feel uncomfortable spending time if there’s a line.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/St... I don't think any picture you take with your cellphone will have as much detail as this. The act of taking photos of paintings in museums is meaningless.

> The act of taking photos of paintings in museums is meaningless.

No. I found some paintings I liked in a museum and took photos of them with a serious-at-the-time camera and uploaded them to wikimedia and found the endeavour worthwhile. Not all the paintings are super-famous and been scanned at infinite resolution!

Post reply on HN