#art #academia #art-crit #ai-art #ai-ml #cohost-repost
2023-01-04

such as: a huge part of art-as-art is the problem solving loop, the mistake -> adjust -> mistake -> workaround -> etc loop that helps people accidentally break out of genres and into others.

Since people last month have proven they throw their brains out when they start reading the topic: I'm not talking about individual artists here, but the field as a gestalt. If you get angry that this is at you, it's worth reflecting on why you think I'm talking about you in particular when criticizing a broad trend of essentially passing off commissions as original artwork done by your hand and your skills.

with AI art, especially audio stuff I've seen but even in a lot of the AI pictures, the vast, vast majority of it is laser targeted to the interest of the author, not things the author is trying to convey. At least, not past "look at this cool art I commissioned". Even if they don't say that last part out loud, it's the same energy. And that's not a bad thing -- people being able to get cool art out of the machine that's subsidized to show off how necessary it is, is probably the least bad it could do, outside of establishing a powerbase for it. But it is often, to people outside of the hyperspecific confluence of context the author stuck together in the prompt, somewhat bland, or at least inscrutable, unless you know the inputs.

The people I see using AI art that makes me think, or reveals a process to me, or is them trying to articulate something, or etc, are people who are using the AI like it's photoshop, not the people using it like it's an art generator. Doubly so for people using it as a base and changing it to suit their needs, whether that's through code or Inkscape.

But that's the thing -- art isn't about materials, code can be art, trash can be art, that fucking urinal can be art. it's about artists and mastery of toolsets (or artistic lack thereof), and trying to say things, or show you things, or just show off cool things. But they're involved in the production chain. Most art isn't about the product itself, at least as a finished product, or sending increasingly specific prompts to Fiverr With Less Direct Human Suffering.

Except that last part can be artful too -- I've seen poets and writers going so deep on things that the parts combine in ways they work. But it's sculpting, it's involved, and it's time consuming. It's not what most AI Art generation is.

When Dall E first came out, I wrote to it, descriptions of landscapes and then of people, and increasingly more features. It's a tool that makes access to rapidly prototyping artwork accessible to people who don't have the skills to translate their brain to paper at the moment. It's an excellent tracing prompt. It's a lot of things. But by shoehorning it into 'Art Itself' we're doing a disservice both to the artists making use of AI, and to the potential uses for AI image and audio and writing and code generation. AI can be useful, if we push back on how it's used. It might not seem like a battle that's winnable, but at least it's one you can fight.

the thing that's being sold is the feeling of being an artist, while restricting the tools you can actually use to be one. It's selling experiences more than it's selling tools for your workshop or studio. It's majority use at the moment is like funko pops. Which like, cool if you have them, but they exist to mostly sit there and be admired to most of the world. It's the Pressure Washer Simulator of art, to most people using it.

Conclusion, or whatever

that's the thing though, right? the companies producing these things don't care about painters or writers or tech support people or coders or whatever. They will never work to make them tools that last a long time. They care about using public opinion to help in their steering AI research to their whims, partially out of a fake fear that AI is an existential threat to humanity because they read too much scifi proximate to doing a lot of drugs, and believing that since everyone in the social circle postures as smarter than them, they must be, leading to these wild chains of trust. Elon musk was on their board until 2018, if that tells you anything.

that's where the pushback needs to be, not each other