I’m sorry if I misunderstood your points. Sometimes I get so much pressure defending AI as legit that I tend to think everyone is being extra-hostile. Sorry.
If was thinking of creativity as creating something that os not there, by contrast to representation that would be the pursuit of replicating something that is already there.
Creativity as the tool which humans use to make their ideas materialize in the world… I can buy that concept. I I could be ok with a definition of art that requires creativity, thus human involved. Not my favourite definition, I still think that art can exist without human or intelligent intervention. But it’s true that a creative art in that way will be very coherent.
I’m not that sure about permission being important in art would led to coherent definition. How could art know if it had permission to be made or not?
Taking a picture and printing it on a t-shirt is art? I don’t know. What if you took a picture of your own art and put it on the t-shirt. What if the idea of the art needed to be on a t-shirt?"
Imagine I take a picture of the mona lisa on a t-shirt and with some text like “it is not smiling” or something clever. Because my idea is to make a t-shirt like that. Is that much different if instead of the mona lisa (whose artists cannot consent) I use AI to give me any other image?
About the mountain being art:
I talked about a beautiful mountain, but it does not need to be beautiful. It could be horrible, scary, ugly, peaceful, agitated. What I meant is that it had some emotions in it. And the artists will try to take those aspects, those emotions and copy them, but the mountain had those inherently.
For instance an attacking lion, it’s scary. And an artist could try to portray that emotion by copying the lion, but the artist did not create the scaryness of it. For my the attacking lion itself could be considered art, if you see it with your own eyes, without needing it to be portrayed by an artists before it became art.
Another approach to this would be the infinite monkey problem. Infinite monkeys with typewriter write Shakespeare’s plays. Are those versions of Hammlet not art because they were not written by Shakespeare, or Hammlet being art is inherent to the play deapite how it came to be?
It doesn’t need to be beauty. For me art is anything that provoque a feeling or emotion. It’s an incredibly open interpretation, and subjective. But I like it because it lets everything to be art, without it being able to gatekeep anything. Again pushing my own political agenda probably, as I like things open.
Thanks for a thorough reply, there’s a lot to tackle, so apologies that I’m not responding to everything in it. You make good points, but it’s clear we have fundamentally different perspectives on this.
I’m not that sure about permission being important in art would led to coherent definition. How could art know if it had permission to be made or not?
I tried to be explicit that permission is not required to make art - because I want to disentangle the two arguments. One of the biggest contentions I have with AI gen stuff is the ethics involved. No ethical consumption under capitalism, so I get arguments that the paint brushes I have were produced unethically to some degree, so pot meet kettle, but I think there’s degrees we can find some nuance in. But I don’t think it’s useful, either, to just shrug and toss the ethics aside. It must be acknowledged, and grappled with.
As for the rest of your comment about the artist copying preexisting emotions, tapping into things that are already there - or the infinite monkeys thing - I do think some amount of intentionality is required to call something art. That said, we all create derivative works to a degree: that’s just impossible to avoid. We’re only human, and we filter our environments through our brains and experiences, and that allows some unique (but again, derivative to a degree) works. If you ask ten people to paint a scary lion, we’re all drawing on some shared fear, and maybe a single photograph of a lion, but you’ll get different works as a result. The art, for me, is the product of the creative process. Art requires intentional action, IMHO. It’s a more narrow definition than yours, but I think being overbroad makes the word meaningless, and indistinguishable from…beauty, or (to include grotesque images, or other emotions), simply aesthetics. AI tools can make beautiful images, but this all circles back to my initial point (with some modified wording): aesthetics are not inherently art, art is not just aesthetic. If we get to AGI, I’ll buy the things it creates as being art. For now, it’s really impressive math. Doesn’t undermine the beauty in it, but it’s something different.
Again, this is my personal opinion. In my science career I’m more of a lumper than a splitter - when talking about evolution, you can “lump” together groups into species, or “split” them into subspecies (really for any clade). So I get your impulse to be open and not gatekeep. I’m not trying to gatekeep, but I do think there is utility in defining things. I don’t like splitting species, but there are differences in crocodiles and alligators. We can’t just lump them into one species - but they are related by broader terms. In this case, I think you’re talking about aesthetics, and not art. Just my personal opinion, and not making a value judgement any more than calling an alligator an alligator, and not a crocodile. They’re different things, and yes: species that look nearly identical but are genetically distinct qualify as different species. The way something beautiful is made matters. IMHO
I’m sorry if I misunderstood your points. Sometimes I get so much pressure defending AI as legit that I tend to think everyone is being extra-hostile. Sorry.
If was thinking of creativity as creating something that os not there, by contrast to representation that would be the pursuit of replicating something that is already there.
Creativity as the tool which humans use to make their ideas materialize in the world… I can buy that concept. I I could be ok with a definition of art that requires creativity, thus human involved. Not my favourite definition, I still think that art can exist without human or intelligent intervention. But it’s true that a creative art in that way will be very coherent.
I’m not that sure about permission being important in art would led to coherent definition. How could art know if it had permission to be made or not?
Taking a picture and printing it on a t-shirt is art? I don’t know. What if you took a picture of your own art and put it on the t-shirt. What if the idea of the art needed to be on a t-shirt?"
Imagine I take a picture of the mona lisa on a t-shirt and with some text like “it is not smiling” or something clever. Because my idea is to make a t-shirt like that. Is that much different if instead of the mona lisa (whose artists cannot consent) I use AI to give me any other image?
About the mountain being art:
I talked about a beautiful mountain, but it does not need to be beautiful. It could be horrible, scary, ugly, peaceful, agitated. What I meant is that it had some emotions in it. And the artists will try to take those aspects, those emotions and copy them, but the mountain had those inherently.
For instance an attacking lion, it’s scary. And an artist could try to portray that emotion by copying the lion, but the artist did not create the scaryness of it. For my the attacking lion itself could be considered art, if you see it with your own eyes, without needing it to be portrayed by an artists before it became art.
Another approach to this would be the infinite monkey problem. Infinite monkeys with typewriter write Shakespeare’s plays. Are those versions of Hammlet not art because they were not written by Shakespeare, or Hammlet being art is inherent to the play deapite how it came to be?
It doesn’t need to be beauty. For me art is anything that provoque a feeling or emotion. It’s an incredibly open interpretation, and subjective. But I like it because it lets everything to be art, without it being able to gatekeep anything. Again pushing my own political agenda probably, as I like things open.
Thanks for a thorough reply, there’s a lot to tackle, so apologies that I’m not responding to everything in it. You make good points, but it’s clear we have fundamentally different perspectives on this.
I tried to be explicit that permission is not required to make art - because I want to disentangle the two arguments. One of the biggest contentions I have with AI gen stuff is the ethics involved. No ethical consumption under capitalism, so I get arguments that the paint brushes I have were produced unethically to some degree, so pot meet kettle, but I think there’s degrees we can find some nuance in. But I don’t think it’s useful, either, to just shrug and toss the ethics aside. It must be acknowledged, and grappled with.
As for the rest of your comment about the artist copying preexisting emotions, tapping into things that are already there - or the infinite monkeys thing - I do think some amount of intentionality is required to call something art. That said, we all create derivative works to a degree: that’s just impossible to avoid. We’re only human, and we filter our environments through our brains and experiences, and that allows some unique (but again, derivative to a degree) works. If you ask ten people to paint a scary lion, we’re all drawing on some shared fear, and maybe a single photograph of a lion, but you’ll get different works as a result. The art, for me, is the product of the creative process. Art requires intentional action, IMHO. It’s a more narrow definition than yours, but I think being overbroad makes the word meaningless, and indistinguishable from…beauty, or (to include grotesque images, or other emotions), simply aesthetics. AI tools can make beautiful images, but this all circles back to my initial point (with some modified wording): aesthetics are not inherently art, art is not just aesthetic. If we get to AGI, I’ll buy the things it creates as being art. For now, it’s really impressive math. Doesn’t undermine the beauty in it, but it’s something different.
Again, this is my personal opinion. In my science career I’m more of a lumper than a splitter - when talking about evolution, you can “lump” together groups into species, or “split” them into subspecies (really for any clade). So I get your impulse to be open and not gatekeep. I’m not trying to gatekeep, but I do think there is utility in defining things. I don’t like splitting species, but there are differences in crocodiles and alligators. We can’t just lump them into one species - but they are related by broader terms. In this case, I think you’re talking about aesthetics, and not art. Just my personal opinion, and not making a value judgement any more than calling an alligator an alligator, and not a crocodile. They’re different things, and yes: species that look nearly identical but are genetically distinct qualify as different species. The way something beautiful is made matters. IMHO