As a programmer, I'd argue that attributing the authorship to the algorithm is DANGEROUS since it removes accountability to the person. If an algorithm behaves in a way that is harmful, then somebody still needs to be held accountable. If we remove the authorship of art from the human and give it to the machines, doesn't that set a precedent?
Interesting! Maybe it would be cool if robo-art went mainstream,. then ignited a bit ol discussion about where authorship goes (all as a much more palatable way to begin the discussion of AI, and how we go about safely developing it).
This is largely semantics, but the person who controls the program can be held responsible for any damage it causes while the program is still given “credit” for the art it produces.
Yes but at what point if ever does the artificially intelligent machine become intellectually independent from their creator? One could argue that God made us and thus the painting I painted last week was actually painted by God. If a machine possessing artificial intelligence runs amuck and kills someone, does that mean the author of the program is to be sent to the death chamber? I think these are questions for philosophers and legislators to argue over.
You mean any author of AI would be responsible for keeping track of his creation and intervening when it does harm. I heard of one algorithm in an advertising robot that ended up finding out people with bipolar disorder as easy prey. Clearly wrong from an ethics point of view but how is a machine to know if nobody tell it. Seems straight forward as long as one author or a small team "teaches" the machine, but what if AI means the machine goes out to the great wide world and "learns" from others?
This is such a thought-provoking discussion. Reminds me of this local restaurant I sometimes go to, where there are big oil paintings on canvas of what looks like Manhattan in the rain. When we asked the proprietor about it, we were told the paintings were actually made by a computer, not a person. But even so I still really enjoy looking at the paintings, and they still really really look like Manhattan in heavy rain, and evoke the feeling of being there, overlooking the drenched city, and it makes me wonder about this question of whether it's art. And then there's the kind of painting or picture that gets hung in a hotel room or something, mostly just for atmospheric flavour. I assume someone must have made them, but I feel no connection with them, really, and I don't have a great answer for why, but I think I almost consider the computer-painted canvasses as more "art"-y. Is it because it looks more like what I've come to expect from an art gallery? Would i feel the same way if I saw it in a hotel room? I don't know. Very rambling comment, sorry. Really great video.
Cities in the rain are a popular cliche because they're emotive. We've all been in that situation. It's very sensual - the sounds of cars passing in the rain, worrying about splashes, feeling our feet heavier than usual, as we pick up wet shoes and step in more puddles, holding umbrellas that pull at our hair, as we wonder how much longer we'll be stuck in this, while taking in the smell of wet air, and enjoying the lights reflecting in the street. There's a lot to enjoy about the situation and its safe, dry, pictorial representation. I can't speak to the work you described because I haven't seen it. Asking whether it's art is usually the wrong question, although, if there's something about it you like, it most likely had a human mind involved - after all, it was a person who decided to call it the final version, package it, and sell it. All that matters is that you enjoy it, and possibly find some inspiration. And, your comparison to hotel art - there's plenty of art made by humans that's utterly uninspiring crap. Hotels just buy more of it because it's cheap and uncontroversial.
lailedcat Maybe it is more arty because the fact that it is made by a computer challenges your understanding of what can be art whereas the hotel painting is a perfectly unchallenging piece and setting.
This is almost the exact question I asked myself when I first saw the northern lights. Except machines were replaced by nature. I would like to answer this by a writer's cliché; The reader is by far the most important agent in a book's life.
A few years ago on a vlogbrothers video John talked about how he had married someone more intelligent then he is. And although I still hold his intelligence very high, I see what he was talking about. I look up to people like y'all. Honest to God you are real and honest idols, realistic and admirable.
i think this is kind of what you were alluding to in the video, but It's my belief that AI in itself is the art, never mind it's application. One must concept, concoct, then write an AI to achieve goal(s) that will then become compelling a group or individuals, & thus I think it's the execution of this process that is the art in question. You for example in the video used Deep Dream to make a piece with a selfie, you essentially used a tool to make art in which you can then take that art & share to compel others, you should be credited the artist of your deep dream image I'd argue, just as I wouldn't credit After Effects or the programming team behind the software if I make some sweet graphical art; In summary I think art is the summation of tools & assets used to evoke, which often can be a deeply nested equation. But I mean, what do I know, I am open to any & all rebuttals. bring it on 😁
I went to get my MFA very late in life and was confronted with art that without context seemed meaningless. A billboard of a a bed with body indentations only on one side seemed ridiculous to me. In context it makes me cry. A string of LIghtbulbs on a dimmer. Without context, pass it by. Knowing the "story", awesome. My concern is with trying to keep the elitism out of art. Giving context so everyone can understand and feel it, rather than it being an insider experience. but there is so much to know in order to feel. (in some art)
Recently the singer and producer Arca (Alejandra Ghersi) released a remix album of "Riquiquí", a track from her 4th studio album "KiCK i". The remix álbum consists in 100 versions of the same song, but remixed by an Artificial Intelligence software. It's mesmerizing to notice the gradual changes of the song. Some are very similar to the original, some are highly different. The cover art for the album is a HQ Code that leads to a link were "Riquiquí" is being simultaneously played and mixed. That means every second is unique, you will never hear the same thing twice. The 100 versions are actually some very few recorded examples of what this software is still doing, like 100 pictures of a recurrent moment being lived (life, actually)
I see everything in this inexplicable universe as art, and the whole is art in itself. We see art as something made by people, but in reality, we are also art created by the universe. For me, there is no division between beehives, anthills, architecture, toilets, paintings, etc. The only value art has is that which we place on it, and this is only an outcome of personal preference. We talk about it as if it were a tangible thing when in reality it is not. The only human factor that can be brought to the table is to speak on behalf of meaning, but even then, it does not always have meaning.
'one of the reasons you might appreciate art-- sentimental though it maybe-- is because it's a connection between you and another human being. you may be separated by centuries or continents. but you're spending time with a piece of paper that someone else spent time with. you're contemplating an arrangement of forms or an idea that once resided in the mind or presence of someone other than you.' i just needed to type it out and stare at it to appreciate how well written this is thank you for putting that feeling into words
Those Scumak pieces reminded me of Fordite. Fordite is a substance made up of layers of paint that accumulated over the years at a Ford car factory, and can be really pretty. It is an unintended waste product of an industrial process and yet has aesthetic value. In my eyes it is the ultimate machine made art.
Aha! Thanks for bringing this up. Just looked up images of Fordite, and what I noticed was how much it matters how the Fordite is processed, cut, and presented. Just like natural stones!
I draw a line between machines that receive instructions from people to create art, and machines that receive instructions and then learn on their own. In that case, a machine develops an own sensibility for art which is significantly different from a camera obscura. Very interesting video! And also for some reason, machines making art on their own still freak me out
It is not as easy to draw that line. Even a simple script can collect and process data without human interference. It is hard to define what is learning in a way other than "these algorithms belong to a class of algorithms that we define as machine learning". But really, machine learning or artificial intelligence (in a sense that is used by computer scientists, not general AI) is just an umbrella term. ML is learning in a sense that it adjusts it's some set parameters (if we're talking about parametric models, the k-means, for example, doesn't have even that and it's still ML), but other algorithms also often adapt their behavior. A simple example would be your phone sorting apps by frequency of usage or your browser suggesting frequently used values in web forms. The main difference is how complex is the function inside, and how complex should be your algorithms to consider it "learning on it's own"
I love watching your videos. I just started teaching in university and I feel like I'm still learning a lot. I feel like I get a new appreciation for art because of these videos.
I recently saw "Manifest, Generative Theses of a Robot" by robotlab, which consists of a giant robotic arm using a pen to write randomly generated sentences on paper. The paper is then cut by the robot and dispensed to the audience. Albeit the sentences being random, it can be interesting to interpret them and search for meaning in something where no meaning was intended. This by itself makes it interesting art, because can a human truly create something without having some kind of meaning in mind?
Sounds like fun. Was it? There's a history of artists embracing this kind of randomness and absurdity. The Dadaists loved it, as did the Surrealists: ruclips.net/video/wtPBOwE0Qn0/видео.html. This also reminds me of the art game the artist Pablo Helguera told us about, where you combine lines from different plays to make a new one: ruclips.net/video/yF6dB7Uignc/видео.html.
I think this question is a bit misplaced. Art made by computers is a bit like looking at a nature preserve, it's beautiful, it awesome, it can make you think about deep and complex issues. But part of what we generally except as art is that what we are looking at is an artist attempting to share something with us. Art without an artist is art, but we have to think about it differently then we normally do.
But it's not always obvious whether a piece is made by a human or AI. Do you suspend judgment about whether a piece is 'art' until you learn if it has a human artist? If you found that a favourite piece of your's was in fact computer generated, would that diminish you feelings towards it? Or would you feel the same way but no longer consider it art? I find this topic so interesting!!
I think there's more than one way to experience art, and as you say, machine generated art deserves a different appreciation.
4 года назад
As an IA student this video has being absolutely thought provoking. I would say it totally depends. I specialize in Machine Learning and Optimization so I'm wondering things like: * Does the algorithm has goals in the form of one or more objective functions? if it does, what are the (human) values it's optimizing? * Is the algorithm a learner? if it is then is it a supervised or an unsupervised learner? (were the examples humanly labeled as good or bad before learning?) or were the examples ranked (by a human) before learning? * Is there agency by the machine? does it have instrumental goals? can it change them? can the machine change its decisions? My intuition tells me that: * If the machine is not a learner then it's an automaton, and automatons should be seen just as tools, so the credit should reside on the programmers. They have done collaborative art. * If the machine is a learner though, the deal is very blurry. It depends in what it has learned. Has it learned to recognize art? (are the examples pieces of art?) or has it learned to recognize dogs? Because the latter is just a tool used by programmers doing collaborative art, but the former is at least more than that. I figure many analogies: * I wouldn't say my blender is an artist if I use it to create things that look like art * I would say sunsets look like art but I don't call nature an artist. Art and beauty are different things. * I wouldn't say I'm an artist if I teach art to my son and then my son makes things that look like art. I would say he is. * If my son makes things that look like art just by following my instructions, but he has not received information about art beyond that or I'm sure he cannot understand why he's making the stuff, I wouldn't call my son an artist. * If my son accidentally makes a beautiful mess I wouldn't call that art and I wouldn't call him an artist. * I would probably be a terrible father.
I love this video, especially the questions it asks about why art is compelling. I find archaeological artifacts and anthropological study compelling the same way I find art compelling--it's part of why I love to tell stories. To quote you in this video, "It's a connection between you and another human being." Art and Anthropology foster empathy across "centuries or continents."
I like art, but I'm not a huge art buff. However, what Sarah said about part of the appeal of art being a sense of connection to another person hit a chord with me. I had always thought that perhaps I liked more "traditional" art as compared to more abstract or modern art was because I just found it more aesthetically pleasing. However, that comment made me realize that perhaps some of what I find lacking in those forms of art is a more direct connection to someone--whether it's an artist through whose art I can see snippets of their life, environment, or history or the subject of the art itself, which may be a person, object, or landscape I can more easily connect to the experiences of both myself and others. Thanks for prompting me to re-examine my feelings on art in this way!
What a great video!! Started watching this channel past week and i'm loving it so deply, it's changing my perception on art, comunication, freedom and power, the way i see and make my own art, myself, etc.
I think that it is important to think about the ideas of originality, where ideas come from and how that fits into the narrative of human art. How can we "connect the dots" between output and input. When humans first started creating art, were they going beyond just copying down what they see. That being, having an input with a visible direct line to the output.
Great video thanks. I especially like how you allocate the person at the end of the thread yet you do not comment on what contains that personality. That is a beautiful mindset (and by extension rethorik) which may be way ahead of this time!
Some of my favourite works are the images generated by the early Zeuss machine, an early computer. I don't actually know how it generated them but I just find it fascinating as the first step into the imagination of the digital world.
Great video! I really liked the historical context and the discussion of "what's compelling" being a personal decision. For me, I love the visual possibilities of style transfer. Not all of the results are compelling, but many have a quite beautiful abstract quality. Here is a video I love that my friend Isaac made, transferring the style of Monet to NYC: vimeo.com/175269046
So I generally prefer conventional art, and while I understand that for other people newer forms like abstract art might be beautiful, I generally don't get it. But I got surprised seeing how much I loved Paine ''s artwork! The liquid falling and solidifying, each time into a unique piece, is just so amazing and beautiful! It actually reminds me of something I read "At home in the universe" , as sand falls grain by grain, most grains fall uneventfully, some bring about smaller catastrophes, and others bigger as the entire structure falls and start anew, and how it is difficult for us humans to predict which grain will cause which, due to the excessive detail of data required. Paine's artwork captures this. ❤
This video is extremely timely. I'm currently working on an essay for university on whether work generated by artificial intelligence can be considered art. I really enjoyed this perspective, and I'll have to include some of the examples you used in my research
In the case of 'Scumak No. 2', mentioned in the video, I would definitely say that the machine itself is an artwork and an artist. Since the machine itself can cause us to think about the topics raised in the video, as well as it produces work that relates back to its origin which is similar to the example of the 'Power Figure (Nkisi N'Kondi: Mangaaka)'. I would argue that the tools used in the process of creating a work are essential to the result, and therefore can be included in the idea of the work. Where the tools become part of what someone might take away from the experience, without it being present. By extension of this the artist and the means by which the work is made are integrale to the creation where context can change and enhance the persons interpretation and resulting idea.
I'm not very qualified to comment on such a complex question but I think I can share my views. When I look at a piece of art, I usually consider two things."How it made me feel and what it was meant to share?" Sometimes the first one matters more than the second and other times the opposite. But most often I tend to search for the prologue of an art piece because it meant something to me and I wonder what it meant to the one, whoever or whatever it maybe, who made it. It doesn't really matter to me if the art is made by a human or a machine but I do want to know the backstory of an art when I see one. I want to know how the artist felt while making it and how similar or different it is from my experience. This helps me make a connection beyond all odds. In fact, I would like to think of the machine that makes art as an art in itself. Thank you for such a great video. I've developed my interest in art through Art Assignment. So, thank you! :)💗
I have such a split mind when it comes to this subject. On one hand, I strongly believe that art's meaning comes not from the artist, but from the audience. We project our own meaning onto art regardless of the artist's intentions, so art made by machines can still have that effect. I was particularly moved by the white paint pieces, for instance. However, one of my favorite aspects of art is that I can connect with someone who was alive hundreds of years before me. One of my favorite pieces are a pair of ancient statues, a man and a woman, that I believe date back 40,000 years. The woman is sitting on her ample bottom, with her hands on her knee and staring up at the sky. I aboslutely love her! I think it's because even though an unbelievable span of time separate us, we can still understand one another and connect. I can't really have that connection in machine-made art, so it adds a sterile coldness to my appreciation of it. It's not that it is bad, it's just that is lacks the humanity for me.
This is a topic I had never really thought of before watching this video but is very interesting to me. Personally, I feel as though machine generated art is not truly art. For art to excite me, it has to represent something that the artist is feeling emotionally about something or someone. For an art piece to truly grab my eye and interest, I want to know the thought process and meaning behind the piece. Everything from the inspiration of the work, to the duration it took to complete the piece, and the authors thought on the final product are all important to me when determining what I view as art that interests me. Machines will not be able to produce true art until they have the programming to be able to build emotions and personal feelings for themselves.
Interesting video, I think that question concerning who set the reaction in motion is integral to the idea of authorship, though some may argue authorship has no pertinence to value. Regardless, I find those unexpected flaws and marks from the maker to be part of the joy of experiencing art, which is inevitably why I'm slower to be interested in fully digital art. I find digital to be the most interesting when process is at the forefront, as you can usually load that process with commentary and allegory, and in that narrative and the "how" to it being played out seems so much more compelling than pixelated images designed to meet a pre-programmed aesthetic taste. Plus there is a quality to the traditional processes (film especially comes to mind) that simply can't be replicated through the work of a machine. But I digress, and I'm always open to new ideas and processes, so one may come along and change my mind eventually. Although as a side note/plea: can we not give Damien Hirst more airtime (however brief it may be)? He's a plagiarising hack who got big due to a combination of trends and shock jock tactics, and his work just takes up space for other artists doing similar and more interesting work either before or during his current trend-hopping. He seems more of a cult of personality/celebrity than of creative force.
please make a "the case for" daniel johnston, not enough people know about his music and art. He makes beautiful inspiring works and he is truly an artist. He doesn't get enough of the recognition he deserves. He has schizophrenia and bpd and is such a strong and inspiring human being, anyone who knows his music will say the same.
I think it's interesting, too, to think about how we misunderstand one another, and how that overlaps with how we perceive artists and their work. Like, when we see a work of art, we can't possibly understand everything the artist put into their work (stylistically, practically, emotionally, etc.)--and so how does that experience of imagining an artist differ depending on whether the artist was sentient or not?
Just out of curiosity, how many subscribers have taken an art history course? It would be great if you could make a poll to find out this info, mayne stratify, by how much formal art history training they have. Highschool, some uni, masters, etc
lol that Damien Hirst quote 6:40 "Every single spot painting contains my eye (sure he only glanced if he even saw), my hand (you mean you're assistance), and my heart." (Available at sotheby's xD)
At first glance it seems that he's asserting his direct personal involvement in each artwork produced by his studio so that each work is attributed to him (and therefore worth millions) rather than from his studio (and thus potentially less desirable/valuable). But then again, many of the most prolific artists in the Western canon had studios and as long as the master's hand is detected in prominent places, these works are attributed directed to the master even though lesser hands also worked on them...
"Let's assume for a moment that there is a work of art that we can accept as truly separate from human involvment": can nature produce art by itself? Are rock formations or clouds art?
I feel like to answer this question, first we need to think about what art is. I generally divide art into two: what brings us a sense of beauty and what brings us a perspective about ourselves, or about humanity. In our time we generally come across art that brings us a sense of beauty because of the social media and the popularity of art. people generally dont look deeper into art these days, they just like it and it passes. and i feel like the art that brings us a perception, a point of view must be a higher form of art than the first one. Because it can be both beautiful and it can also evoke your consciousness to a next level. and the second category generally becomes what it is through time. i feel like the art generated by the machines are just beautiful things that gives us a sense of beauty, but it can also be more valuable in the future, regarding what will happen in the future. If we look at the old art works that are really popular and we dont understand why, it is because they give us a perception of our past and that is why they are more valuable now, then before. AI is a new and a topic to discuss and i am still not sure because it doesnt have the emotions, the desire, the passion of a art that is made by a human, but it still has a complexity of its own and AI is basically a artificial consciousness and the artificial in this context means the information is gathered from us, the humans. i feel like they can be considered as collages, the art that we made is being re-written by the machines.
As an artist, and someone who is generally very interested in these sorts of topics, the answer, I think, is no: machines cannot create art. I say this because I firmly believe that art is an act of the will. Art, essentially, is someone deciding to create a thing that they recognize as " art. " They WILL the art into being, through whatever medium or means they deem fit. Machines, at least, not yet, have our sort of intent, not even " AI ". They have ones, zeroes, algorithms, commands, data, coding and so on. They are missing a soul, you could say. The machine is not deciding on it's own to make something it personally believes to be art. Machines do not say " Hey, bro's! Imma make some sweet digital art without any one or anything programming me to do so and it will MEAN something!!! " No. They are just that: programs. They were fed data, told to essentially " do a thing " with that data, and the person telling them to do that " thing " didn't intend to make art with the AI as their medium. Their is no meaning, no emotion, no independent intent, no choice in that " thing " the computers generate, no aesthetic direction due to the machines personal tastes, and so on. There is no act of WILL from the machine, or the humans who built them (presumably no act of will on the part of the humans, might I add. Perhaps some programmers did and do intend to create art using AI. I do't know) Machines are not free. Human beings are free to do whatever we want. We can destroy ourselves, starve ourselves, make governments, join a religion, brag all day long about that Kanye West T I just bought for, like, a million dollars, make abstract rectangles in a certain medium to represent our concept or harmony, etc. These AI can't do that. Like that program the host used on Instagram that is directed to see dog faces in everything. Perhaps you could say that she willed art into existence through the program, but the machine definitely didn't. It was made to make a bunch of dog faces, and that's what it tried to do, nothing more, nothing else. Now, I am making many assertions about the definition of art, free will and I do have a limited knowledge of AI, and so on, but this is my stance. 🙂 P.S I forgot to mention this, but a question has been raised in the comments about whether or not seeing a piece of art that I adore, then found out was generated by AI, would lessen my appreciation for it. For me, it does, because there's nothing there. I read the poem at the beginning of this video, and I felt disappointment and sadness wash over me. It was, indeed, beautiful, seemingly masterfully crafted with a deep message or story behind it. Yet, in reality, it's nonesense. It was a gorgeously generayed puff of smoke signififying nothing. It's empty and hollow inside by nature. The words I read contained literary meaning, but meant nothing.
Lol well maybe you don't see beauty in vapid puffs of smoke, but I do. And I think you were just objectively wrong in saying that people creating AI don't intend to create art with it. Is an AI designed to win chess games a work of art? Maybe not. But a learning algorithm designed to write poetry? I mean that's inherently willful and artistic. To say otherwise seems absurd. Why else would someone have developed an algorithm to write a sonnet?! Are sonnets not "art"? It would be cognitively dissonant to say otherwise. The dog-face-dream tool, if you will, is no different a transformation than to print and make copies in different colours. But it is more. It is like an absurd piece of instructional art: "Put a picture in this program and watch how an intelligence fed on dog faces makes it look. How do you feel?" What was moving to me about that poem in this video was not reduced by what you interpret as a facade or a hollow vessel devoid of soul. What was moving to me was the serendipitous moment of finding a beautiful juxtaposition of words in such a random space. Machine algorithms are subhuman. They're viral. And that space's rules were curated by a person. Machines are like homonculi with imperfect and savagely primitive soul-like energies, or they can be, if you want to feel that. That's what I feel when I read poems like that. Or when I look at a work like those crimson polyurethane blobs. Is it not art to will a machine to make art? I am reminded humourously of alchemy and especially how it's presented in the 2003 anime Fullmetal Alchemist. In the story alchemical human transmutation is taboo: so, attempting to bring someone back to life will result in a homunculi, a soulless possibly evil powerful human shaped monster that can feed on humans to grow more powerful. It seems to me like you think artists are performing a taboo by asking us to view the works of their homunculous machines and algorithms as art. I think what seems like your anxious rejection of something that "can't" or shouldn't have a soul creating art is inspiring. I can't help but feel that your reaction whether precedented or unexpected is interesting and exciting. In my imagination I tend to lean towards a hidden kind of wishful animism toward the world. So I take a little schadenfreude in what I read to be your zealous reactionary no to "Can machines make art?" Cheers!
I've always taken issue with the assertion that having a designer of the algorithm invalidates the creative agency of that algorithm. I mean, people have lots of factors affecting them which they have no control over yet deeply influences the things they create. People are acted upon by the people they spend time around, the art they consume, and the area they live in. All of these are external factors that act on people to adjust their ideas about what they would like to create. In my mind this is hardly any different from an AI artist setting a group of initial rules for creation and preferences, then letting the machine generate new content by acting on data sets. And just like all those external factors I mentioned above, how the machine will interpret and use those external influences is often unpredictable. I think when you talk about future AI with personality, that's really getting at the heart of why people don't think of machine-generated art as art; we want an identifiable human-like entity to be the creator because we want to think of art as something unique to the human experience. But I think it's very likely that when we get to strong artificial intelligence, its experience of the world is going to be drastically different from our own, and it's possible that it won't really be anything we can relate to. Would that meaning gap preclude anything they create from being art? That seems a bit...closed minded.
I see it as a "setting in motion" genre of art with a long history of artists embracing chance and accident in their work. Roxy Paine built the machine to create the Scumak, setting the process in motion with no control over the final form. The same way a programer creates an algorithm, sets a process in motion, but doesn't control the final form. This is definitely the art of our time and climate change is our grandest work of all. We collectively set the process in motion and it (we) will be creating new forms for many years to come.
I really enjoy your youtube channel, it has indeed opened my eyes to the world of arts and humanities, I would really appreciate if you can share with us your thoughts on Non - Western artists. I ask because I have come in contact with a few people who dismiss African or Indian artform just because they think it is too simplistic and amateur when compared with the European school of art. Once again love your work.
What I appreciate when I look at AI art is the unique perspective of something that is not quite alive. It makes me question the truth and validity of the human viewpoint I've been brought up thinking to be absolute fact. But being able to see reality through a completely different lens brings me to a greater understanding of the universe. It's true that there's a lot to be gleaned about the algorithm's creators from the specific manifestation of this new perspective, but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate this other worldly view of our world for its take on truth.
I used to make jewelry for Tiffany & Co. some of which was designed by Paloma Picasso. While one could argue that I made mass produced copies of art in a sense, no one would argue that the machine was the artists. The machine in question was a complex CNC turning center with a sophisticated computer for a brain and was following a program thousands of lines long to make the items in question. Picasso designed the piece and a programmer interpreted that piece in lines of code. So in this case it was a collaboration. Clearly the authorship goes primarily to Picasso. One day I was taking a stroll through a part of our city on my way to a park where I intended to take photographs of nature. On the way I found an oil slick floating on a puddle. The colors were an interesting random pattern of iridescent swirls. I took several photographs of this oil slick. Later I took hundreds of photos of nature, mostly birds. I showed my photos to a friend who has an art gallery and he commented that he thought I was not a fan of abstract art yet here I had wonderful abstract art in my camera. I was confused until he pointed at the oil slicks. He was completely uninterested in any of my nature photos but bought the rights to three of the oil slick photos and has sold roughly a hundred and twenty to date and I've earned about 1700 in royalties from them. They are interesting but I'm not sure I would call them art. I think that at some point whether accidently or through some sort of deliberate act, artificial intelligence will create something that someone will interpret as art if it has not already done so. I'm more inclined to think that the paintings made by elephants and gorillas are more authentically art than what could be produced by a machine intelligent or not. But then art is defined by each individual not by consensus or by a limited number of official art appreciators. One can frame virtually anything and hang it on their wall and call it art and perhaps to them it is. I have poster copies of a handful of my favorite paintings hanging on my walls. I have some of my own work hanging on my walls. I have photos and other things hanging on my walls. Not everything that hangs on my walls is art nor does it have to be. Not everything is beautiful that is on my walls nor does it have to be. But I think that there has to be something visually satisfying about a work to be able to call it art. That's it. The definition of art, the only one that really matters is that it is visually satisfying to the person looking at it and critics be damned.
I love how murky this topic is makes you think. This is a thought: While context is everything I think you can look at certain works done by a robot or AI and give it the full credit of making the piece like the Scumak installation. My reasoning being while context is everything and a human was apart of the initial design or intention of the piece if you give the credit to the artist who made it rather than the machine that would be equivalent to giving the credit to the father of an artist who made a piece of work or that artist's mentor who taught them. And that doesn't seem right, another example is a drawing done by an elephant (while actually cruel) it would be wrong (I think) to give the trainer the credit for the drawing rather than the elephant. Sure the trainer taught the elephant but it was the elephant that drew it. no? The elephant can be considered a machine in this instance but we (humans) are more likely to give the elephant the credit for the piece.
All complex algorithms bear the mark of their creator, because the biases of a programer are inescapable. Every decision that a neural network makes was informed by data that was chosen by a human. Pick any AI in use today; that mechanical mind was engineered to think a certain way, and then it was trained on specific information chosen by it's designer. If this program produces results that are considered "inadequate," then it will be revised until the desired effect is achieved. In this sense, writing code can be an artistic practice in itself, as there is just as much "push and pull" in this process as there is in any medium. In other words, yes, algorithmic art is worthy of admiration. Remember, photography was once an emergent technology, and some early critics considered it to be devoid of artistic merit as well
this is super interesting! i think the question at hand with ai art for me is "where's the humanity?" because that's probably one if the most fascinating and compelling parts of art for me. and if we can find humanity in the fact that something so different can creat something so similar to what a human would envision, and marvel at that, great! yet sometimes when there's no human behind the machine, it can sometimes feel distant, and however much i'm impressed by the advanced technology i feel something lacking-the humanity aspect. idk if that makes sense, but this was such a cool video and good food for thought :^)))
If anyone is contemplating what makes us human anymore. I say, it’s what we communicate deeper than the canvas. It’s not just the final result, or the process, it’s what the artists say about the art. As humans, we can honestly say talk about how we personally feel about our own creations. That is what makes us human, and I’m sure we’re not going to have that taken away from us.
This was a very well made video, i came into it just believing machines just don't make art, and granted I still believe that. Since to me at least a machine is made by a human and therefore if it creates something deemed artistic it is ultimately made by the human who either programmed it to do that kind of thing or otherwise. Despite that it was interesting to see you elaborate on why you believe machines can make art, great video! :)
I was going to comment "Art is shared experience" then it appeared in the video. I once read that nature can't be art and that somehow is true. Is the Angel Falls art? I don't see how it can be. But there's shared experience of appreciating it's beauty and power. Short answer: Don't know.
And yet a well taken photograph of Angel Falls would by all accounts be considered Art. Do we appreciate it for it’s actual beauty or because we connect with the feeling of the photographer seeing something beautiful and being compelled to take a picture of it?
My instinct is it's the shared experience. You can appreciate the beauty and wonder of nature (of course) but that's different from art. Eg you're standing with a friend at the foot of the Angel Falls, both of you appreciating it's awesomeness but there's no art going on just yet. Then he takes out a camera, photographs the Falls, and shows you the image. Now there _is_ art going on. So you look at the object and there's no art but you look at an image of the object and there is art. I'm not totally convinced this is absolutely the last word on What is Art but I do think there's something there to ponder. I'm also trying to imagine the last person in the world painting a picture. That would be art, surely, even though there was no-one to share it with.
Maybe one key point is the choice. The algorithms made the piece. But they also made dozens or hundreds, thousands, or millions of other pieces. But someone chose that specific one. Maybe that's where the art, the shared experience comes from. It's another person saying, "Look at this." The art is not in the creating of the object, the art is in the creating of the shared experience.
AI generated work makes me think of the long history not of artist as tool user or technology user but artist as tool and technology inventor. The reason I draw a distinction here is because it is often thought that technologists invent technology that is later used by artists to make art. Asking whether it is the AI or the artist which creates the work is the same as asking whether the camera or the photographer makes a picture. It's a false division. Historically there has been a reciprocal relationship where a tool is made, an artist uses the tool to create some work, the tool being used is found wanting, the artist thinks of ways to improve the tool, the tool is incrementally improved, thus being improved is used to create new work, and the cycle goes on and on forever. That cycle is the history of technology. Being an artist is half about making art and half about creating and improving the tools (cultural and physical) used for making art. AI make nothing on their own, under the hood they are really simple. They are authored systems. Capitalism has quirks but I wouldn't give it any rights of authorship.
This is a great video. Very interesting and informative. I couldn’t help but wonder while watching however, why did nobody take a lint roller to her sweater? Y’all did her dirty for that.
I think to me it really doesn't matter who or what created the art. Through this show I really got a new perspective towards what art is or can be. In my opinion we all construct the definition of art ourselves and that's why what is art to me, might not be for you. That seems unsatisfying and we'll still generalize, but I just don't think there is an one-size-fits-all answer to the question.. #constructivism
Remember those 3-D art works that were made ( I think by a machine) from meticulous detailed little pixilated blobs, that when a viewer "unfocused their eyes" then they could see the 3-D image hidden inside the matrix ?
One definition of art by the british young artists is "Anything declared as art by the person who created it" but what if it wasn't created but rather discovered like the Mandelbrot set? It has complexity and coherence but no intentionality. The surrealists tried to remove intentionality from work by using dice or darts thrown at a dictionary. To summarize, on single definition of art will work for everything. I look forward to computer generated art that helps me understand myself.
i always thought of art as communication, which i reckon is two way. So if someone tries to say something, thats art, anything we do is sorta art. If someone tries to understand something, thats art too. eg. if you can see something not man made, you make it art by trying to understand it, by just paying attention to it. but what's good art, and what's worthwhile art?? that's the sort of thing i'm trying to figure out.. any suggestions?
well it motivates me and inspires me, and so does the art by people but yeah i do feel there is a lack of connection cuz i dont completely get algorithms but it's inspiring nevertheless
Any time the subject of machine art comes up these two quotes come to mind "All this machinery Making modern music Can still be open-hearted" -- Rush, Spirit of the Radio “More than iron, more than lead, more than gold I need electricity. I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber. I need it for my dreams.” - Racter, The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed
I like the notion of authorship they discuss. I think it comes down to intention and agency. Those drip sculptures didn't just happen; someone played around with it, thought it looked cool, and then wanted to show other people that this thing looks cool. So until the AI "decides" to make a painting based on either intention to make art, or intention to show "found art" to others as an example of artwork, I don't think the AI should be considered the artist.
IT does matter; wheather a human or Machine does make things either way. The reason is because gnome adder what channels we receive creative beauty through, our Phil ter will then be able to harmonize in a unique weigh.
Whats important about art for me is the feeling it gives me. Typically absract / modern art doesnt give me the feeling I look for in art. I can appreciate some but not all and I suppose that goes for more realistic art.
This is a good question, and I'm of many minds, almost simultaneously. On the one hand, art is a self-expression for the creator, a creation into the world born of their consciousness and a collection of their intent, message, emotions, feelings, skill, and personality. Can an AI have this? Likely not yet, which would nullify the idea of AI created art. On the other hand... art is also a self-expression for the viewer/experiencer, a creation into their inner world born from their consciousness and the context they bring to it, developing message, meaning, feelings, and intermingling with their personality, largely independent of the artist's intent. Given that, does it matter if the artist had no intent (or if we get a different feeling or meaning out of what they wanted)? I'd say no, it doesn't matter if it still connects with you on a certain level -- so by that then AI created art can most certainly be art. Like many things, in the end I come to rest in that there's a middle ground between these two, and I'd say it's even more like in the middle of a polygon rather than a single line, with many other aspects of what art might or might not be that don't involve the species/aliveness of the creator. An AI may not be able to share something or themselves the way we think of it from a human perspective, but if a viewer can derive emotion and meaning from it, then I'd say its art. :)
I think there's a very important collective reflection to be had about what constitutes personhood? At what level of autonomous thought does an AI become a person? Does it ever? And what are the rights of those AI persons? Is it ethical to switch them off? We're not there yet, but I think we will get there, and I find it important to think about this before the first AI starts begging for its life. Maybe this is what AI art can do, prompt this conversation.
I see AI art as the new Jackson Pollock. Pollock could control certain parameters of each pain splatter, such as the color, amount, and general location on the canvas of the paint splatter. Despite knowing these parameters, the result was still somewhat up to random chance. Likewise, AI art takes specific instructions such as ‘find all the things that look like dog faces’ and through a process that even the programmers can’t quite predict, it makes images. Both the paintbrush and computer are technologies designed to obtain specific results (paint strokes and computations respectively) being instead used to obtain semi-random ones.
On the question of originality: Setting aside for the moment the question of whether the AI needs to be 'conscious' for its creation to be considered 'art', I think the degree to which its programmer(s) is responsible for the AI's work varies, and isn't binary. Even if all the causes of the work can be traced back to a human, that human didn't exist in a vacuum either. It's like...if someone has a kid who grows up to be an artist after the parent encourages artistic pastimes and signs them up to art classes, or even teaches it all themselves. We'd still call a work of art made by the kid at least partially 'original'. So why not the art made by a programmer's brainchild?
Im a bit confused about Ai. As I understand it is experiemental at the moment- it is coming very soon? can you help to clarify I get mixed messages on this.
I like to try to appreciate robot art. I'd love for it to be so absurdly abstract and unrelatable to people; totally alien from the human experience. But I'd also love it if people could resonate with it. Wouldn't it be fascinating to relate to something not of your world? Perhaps if done today, relating may say something more of the appreciator than the robot, but maybe someday that won't be the case. Maybe that doesn't matter anyway, because feeling represented in any art can be too awesome to take away from someone. It's like expanding what it could mean to experiece and can make it easier for more individual realities to be appreciated and rep't in art. And I guess that's kinda cool
"Does it matter if an artist is sentient or not" .... better question ... do non-sentient entities intend "art" or is it more that we assign that value to an entity manufactured object or event?
Machines can definitely be used to manufacture/generate art but I'm not convinced that they can' "make" art... because it takes human perception to recognise something as art. Can machines recognise a piece of art, or even think about the various factors that create its value as an artistic object/experience, which is in turn completely subject to irrational human perception/judgment? I'm not convinced that machines can even recognise what art is... because art is is so arbitrary.
Imo, art is self-expression first and foremost. And the further it gets detached from the author, the less I like it. These machines do not express anything though, they just work the programs they were given, they don't have conscience. I don't think a machine could ever create a piece of art, because human nature is chaotic and flawed. And those flaws we make when creating an art work, are part of the work itself. A human can decide to paint a couple of dots in a corner of a painting, representing moles on his/her lover's face, or decide to not finish drawing a boat, conveying how he/she never had a chance to finish building a boat with the deceased father. There's so much inconcievable in the human mind, that computer would never get. You can program it to reflect implanted memories, but it's never gonna be eccentric about it, it's never gonna shock or surprise people with it, it can never be truly creative.
Someone noted below, you could just as easily ask if nature creates art - a sea shell, a sunset, a waterfall, etc. We enjoy them for their beauty the same as a work of art. We can contemplate them. They have context and back stories, the same as anything else. You can extract philosophical tidbits from them. But, do they have intent, and doesn't intention matter? What do we connect to more, a beautiful sunset, or a beautiful piece of music? Which makes us more human? Which makes us more proud to be human? Which teaches us more about who we are? Which expresses our emotions and condition better? Which is more useful? In the end, it's up to you if you consider nature art, the same as any other machine. But, as an artist, what would you rather dedicate your life to? A practice where you choose what you want to make, how the work will look, and what it will communicate? Or, do you really want to produce failed experiments of goop on a conveyor belt? Art is about attempting perfection, excellence. Why give up control to an unthinking machine? The effects are cheap gimmicks, like the background music of this video. The digital images produced by algorithms and shown here are just curios. Dog eyes mean nothing without expression, gleaned by an artist who cares enough to capture it. That's what all this boils down to - do you care enough to make art or not? I could care less if a robot designed my mattress, so long as it's safe and comfy. A road sign? Sure, go ahead, as long as it's easy to read and understand. But, my art? My music? Are we really that lazy? A good way to think of AI art at this point in time is to consider the spell checking function that RUclips uses as we type here. It's smart enough to tell me that RUclips is not a word, but it can't tell the difference between 'its' and 'it's', or which is correct, because it really has no idea what we're saying. Until that changes, I say we should be thankful for the help, but roll our eyes at calling AI an artist.
So what do you make of Artbreeder.com? I have mixed feelings about it. It _feels_ like, on some level, it invalidates what I do. It's so fascinating, though, and I want to see all it can show me. I mostly have it generate portraits. When it comes to portraits the most popular subject matter by far seems to be pretty girls and grotesque monsters, and sometimes grotesque girls.
Art that exists as a simple fact of nature is rare. Nearly all art that comes from AI was made by people. Someone had to turn the dial, pull the lever, or describe the thing you're seeing. Also important to remember that there are a lot of different kinds of ai art, and a lot of different tools to make it. I use ai's as a means of self expression, the same way I would if I were painting. The process just happens faster, in most cases. One thing I would point here, is that just because ai's were used during the production of a piece, that doesn't necessarily mean there's less work involved.
The artists that create the machines that generate art are basically like the artists that created various other art making machines like paint brushes or musical instruments.
As I remember definition of art from school - art is everything what human creates, so I believe machines is art. Otherwise if we think that things machines creates by themselves is art as well, it changes everything and for me seems rather terrifying.
As a programmer, I'd argue that attributing the authorship to the algorithm is DANGEROUS since it removes accountability to the person. If an algorithm behaves in a way that is harmful, then somebody still needs to be held accountable. If we remove the authorship of art from the human and give it to the machines, doesn't that set a precedent?
😂🤣😃😄😅😆
Interesting! Maybe it would be cool if robo-art went mainstream,. then ignited a bit ol discussion about where authorship goes (all as a much more palatable way to begin the discussion of AI, and how we go about safely developing it).
This is largely semantics, but the person who controls the program can be held responsible for any damage it causes while the program is still given “credit” for the art it produces.
Yes but at what point if ever does the artificially intelligent machine become intellectually independent from their creator? One could argue that God made us and thus the painting I painted last week was actually painted by God. If a machine possessing artificial intelligence runs amuck and kills someone, does that mean the author of the program is to be sent to the death chamber? I think these are questions for philosophers and legislators to argue over.
You mean any author of AI would be responsible for keeping track of his creation and intervening when it does harm. I heard of one algorithm in an advertising robot that ended up finding out people with bipolar disorder as easy prey. Clearly wrong from an ethics point of view but how is a machine to know if nobody tell it.
Seems straight forward as long as one author or a small team "teaches" the machine, but what if AI means the machine goes out to the great wide world and "learns" from others?
This is such a thought-provoking discussion. Reminds me of this local restaurant I sometimes go to, where there are big oil paintings on canvas of what looks like Manhattan in the rain. When we asked the proprietor about it, we were told the paintings were actually made by a computer, not a person. But even so I still really enjoy looking at the paintings, and they still really really look like Manhattan in heavy rain, and evoke the feeling of being there, overlooking the drenched city, and it makes me wonder about this question of whether it's art. And then there's the kind of painting or picture that gets hung in a hotel room or something, mostly just for atmospheric flavour. I assume someone must have made them, but I feel no connection with them, really, and I don't have a great answer for why, but I think I almost consider the computer-painted canvasses as more "art"-y. Is it because it looks more like what I've come to expect from an art gallery? Would i feel the same way if I saw it in a hotel room? I don't know. Very rambling comment, sorry. Really great video.
Cities in the rain are a popular cliche because they're emotive. We've all been in that situation. It's very sensual - the sounds of cars passing in the rain, worrying about splashes, feeling our feet heavier than usual, as we pick up wet shoes and step in more puddles, holding umbrellas that pull at our hair, as we wonder how much longer we'll be stuck in this, while taking in the smell of wet air, and enjoying the lights reflecting in the street.
There's a lot to enjoy about the situation and its safe, dry, pictorial representation. I can't speak to the work you described because I haven't seen it. Asking whether it's art is usually the wrong question, although, if there's something about it you like, it most likely had a human mind involved - after all, it was a person who decided to call it the final version, package it, and sell it. All that matters is that you enjoy it, and possibly find some inspiration. And, your comparison to hotel art - there's plenty of art made by humans that's utterly uninspiring crap. Hotels just buy more of it because it's cheap and uncontroversial.
lailedcat Maybe it is more arty because the fact that it is made by a computer challenges your understanding of what can be art whereas the hotel painting is a perfectly unchallenging piece and setting.
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This is almost the exact question I asked myself when I first saw the northern lights. Except machines were replaced by nature.
I would like to answer this by a writer's cliché; The reader is by far the most important agent in a book's life.
A few years ago on a vlogbrothers video John talked about how he had married someone more intelligent then he is. And although I still hold his intelligence very high, I see what he was talking about. I look up to people like y'all. Honest to God you are real and honest idols, realistic and admirable.
Estrella Casias wait...the host in this video is john's wife?!
kashriz95 yup. Otherwise known as "The Yeti"
kashriz95 Sarah Green
me a few years ago: "he's really smart, this is very unlikely" me after TAA: "yeah, he had a point there"
+
i think this is kind of what you were alluding to in the video, but It's my belief that AI in itself is the art, never mind it's application. One must concept, concoct, then write an AI to achieve goal(s) that will then become compelling a group or individuals, & thus I think it's the execution of this process that is the art in question. You for example in the video used Deep Dream to make a piece with a selfie, you essentially used a tool to make art in which you can then take that art & share to compel others, you should be credited the artist of your deep dream image I'd argue, just as I wouldn't credit After Effects or the programming team behind the software if I make some sweet graphical art; In summary I think art is the summation of tools & assets used to evoke, which often can be a deeply nested equation. But I mean, what do I know, I am open to any & all rebuttals. bring it on 😁
This is fascinating, what if AI is both the art and the artist?
I went to get my MFA very late in life and was confronted with art that without context seemed meaningless. A billboard of a a bed with body indentations only on one side seemed ridiculous to me. In context it makes me cry. A string of LIghtbulbs on a dimmer. Without context, pass it by. Knowing the "story", awesome. My concern is with trying to keep the elitism out of art. Giving context so everyone can understand and feel it, rather than it being an insider experience. but there is so much to know in order to feel. (in some art)
Recently the singer and producer Arca (Alejandra Ghersi) released a remix album of "Riquiquí", a track from her 4th studio album "KiCK i".
The remix álbum consists in 100 versions of the same song, but remixed by an Artificial Intelligence software. It's mesmerizing to notice the gradual changes of the song. Some are very similar to the original, some are highly different.
The cover art for the album is a HQ Code that leads to a link were "Riquiquí" is being simultaneously played and mixed. That means every second is unique, you will never hear the same thing twice. The 100 versions are actually some very few recorded examples of what this software is still doing, like 100 pictures of a recurrent moment being lived (life, actually)
I see everything in this inexplicable universe as art, and the whole is art in itself. We see art as something made by people, but in reality, we are also art created by the universe. For me, there is no division between beehives, anthills, architecture, toilets, paintings, etc. The only value art has is that which we place on it, and this is only an outcome of personal preference. We talk about it as if it were a tangible thing when in reality it is not. The only human factor that can be brought to the table is to speak on behalf of meaning, but even then, it does not always have meaning.
Bro
Y'all gotta revisit this with current Ai art discourse in mind.
id love to see a video about art vs craft
"vs"
They both might or might not compete with each other in different cases, imo
'one of the reasons you might appreciate art-- sentimental though it maybe--
is because it's a connection between you and another human being.
you may be separated by centuries or continents.
but you're spending time with a piece of paper
that someone else spent time with.
you're contemplating an arrangement of forms or an idea
that once resided in the mind or presence of someone other than you.'
i just needed to type it out and stare at it to appreciate how well written this is
thank you for putting that feeling into words
Those Scumak pieces reminded me of Fordite. Fordite is a substance made up of layers of paint that accumulated over the years at a Ford car factory, and can be really pretty. It is an unintended waste product of an industrial process and yet has aesthetic value. In my eyes it is the ultimate machine made art.
Aha! Thanks for bringing this up. Just looked up images of Fordite, and what I noticed was how much it matters how the Fordite is processed, cut, and presented. Just like natural stones!
I draw a line between machines that receive instructions from people to create art, and machines that receive instructions and then learn on their own. In that case, a machine develops an own sensibility for art which is significantly different from a camera obscura.
Very interesting video! And also for some reason, machines making art on their own still freak me out
Space Babies i make the same distinction
Good point 👌🏽
It is not as easy to draw that line. Even a simple script can collect and process data without human interference. It is hard to define what is learning in a way other than "these algorithms belong to a class of algorithms that we define as machine learning". But really, machine learning or artificial intelligence (in a sense that is used by computer scientists, not general AI) is just an umbrella term. ML is learning in a sense that it adjusts it's some set parameters (if we're talking about parametric models, the k-means, for example, doesn't have even that and it's still ML), but other algorithms also often adapt their behavior. A simple example would be your phone sorting apps by frequency of usage or your browser suggesting frequently used values in web forms. The main difference is how complex is the function inside, and how complex should be your algorithms to consider it "learning on it's own"
I love watching your videos. I just started teaching in university and I feel like I'm still learning a lot. I feel like I get a new appreciation for art because of these videos.
I recently saw "Manifest, Generative Theses of a Robot" by robotlab, which consists of a giant robotic arm using a pen to write randomly generated sentences on paper. The paper is then cut by the robot and dispensed to the audience.
Albeit the sentences being random, it can be interesting to interpret them and search for meaning in something where no meaning was intended. This by itself makes it interesting art, because can a human truly create something without having some kind of meaning in mind?
Sounds like fun. Was it? There's a history of artists embracing this kind of randomness and absurdity. The Dadaists loved it, as did the Surrealists: ruclips.net/video/wtPBOwE0Qn0/видео.html. This also reminds me of the art game the artist Pablo Helguera told us about, where you combine lines from different plays to make a new one: ruclips.net/video/yF6dB7Uignc/видео.html.
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@@theartassignment 🤖
I think this question is a bit misplaced. Art made by computers is a bit like looking at a nature preserve, it's beautiful, it awesome, it can make you think about deep and complex issues. But part of what we generally except as art is that what we are looking at is an artist attempting to share something with us. Art without an artist is art, but we have to think about it differently then we normally do.
That's a really helpful way to think about it--like experiencing nature, whose forces you may or may not understand.
But if there's intelligence in a machine creating art, isn't that still an entity trying to transmit something to us?
Whatever way you get the most out of
But it's not always obvious whether a piece is made by a human or AI. Do you suspend judgment about whether a piece is 'art' until you learn if it has a human artist?
If you found that a favourite piece of your's was in fact computer generated, would that diminish you feelings towards it? Or would you feel the same way but no longer consider it art?
I find this topic so interesting!!
I think there's more than one way to experience art, and as you say, machine generated art deserves a different appreciation.
As an IA student this video has being absolutely thought provoking. I would say it totally depends. I specialize in Machine Learning and Optimization so I'm wondering things like:
* Does the algorithm has goals in the form of one or more objective functions? if it does, what are the (human) values it's optimizing?
* Is the algorithm a learner? if it is then is it a supervised or an unsupervised learner? (were the examples humanly labeled as good or bad before learning?) or were the examples ranked (by a human) before learning?
* Is there agency by the machine? does it have instrumental goals? can it change them? can the machine change its decisions?
My intuition tells me that:
* If the machine is not a learner then it's an automaton, and automatons should be seen just as tools, so the credit should reside on the programmers. They have done collaborative art.
* If the machine is a learner though, the deal is very blurry. It depends in what it has learned. Has it learned to recognize art? (are the examples pieces of art?) or has it learned to recognize dogs? Because the latter is just a tool used by programmers doing collaborative art, but the former is at least more than that.
I figure many analogies:
* I wouldn't say my blender is an artist if I use it to create things that look like art
* I would say sunsets look like art but I don't call nature an artist. Art and beauty are different things.
* I wouldn't say I'm an artist if I teach art to my son and then my son makes things that look like art. I would say he is.
* If my son makes things that look like art just by following my instructions, but he has not received information about art beyond that or I'm sure he cannot understand why he's making the stuff, I wouldn't call my son an artist.
* If my son accidentally makes a beautiful mess I wouldn't call that art and I wouldn't call him an artist.
* I would probably be a terrible father.
Update on this topic plz! 2022 got Dall E 2 and stable diffusion
This aged well...
I love this video, especially the questions it asks about why art is compelling. I find archaeological artifacts and anthropological study compelling the same way I find art compelling--it's part of why I love to tell stories. To quote you in this video, "It's a connection between you and another human being." Art and Anthropology foster empathy across "centuries or continents."
I like art, but I'm not a huge art buff. However, what Sarah said about part of the appeal of art being a sense of connection to another person hit a chord with me. I had always thought that perhaps I liked more "traditional" art as compared to more abstract or modern art was because I just found it more aesthetically pleasing. However, that comment made me realize that perhaps some of what I find lacking in those forms of art is a more direct connection to someone--whether it's an artist through whose art I can see snippets of their life, environment, or history or the subject of the art itself, which may be a person, object, or landscape I can more easily connect to the experiences of both myself and others. Thanks for prompting me to re-examine my feelings on art in this way!
Meghan Jenks I feel the same way. You’ve put into words what I never could!
My fav AA so far. Really outdid yourselves with this, guys.
ruclips.net/video/FqrHmKo-cm4/видео.html thats what I told my last girlfriend
What a great video!! Started watching this channel past week and i'm loving it so deply, it's changing my perception on art, comunication, freedom and power, the way i see and make my own art, myself, etc.
I think that it is important to think about the ideas of originality, where ideas come from and how that fits into the narrative of human art. How can we "connect the dots" between output and input. When humans first started creating art, were they going beyond just copying down what they see. That being, having an input with a visible direct line to the output.
SO DEEP. Finally a thoughtful channel.
I do wonder what's to be said on the subject 5 years later, with more sophisticated tools
Great video thanks. I especially like how you allocate the person at the end of the thread yet you do not comment on what contains that personality. That is a beautiful mindset (and by extension rethorik) which may be way ahead of this time!
Some of my favourite works are the images generated by the early Zeuss machine, an early computer. I don't actually know how it generated them but I just find it fascinating as the first step into the imagination of the digital world.
It also goes back to the designer of the app or the operator of the app being credited to each creations.
Great video! I really liked the historical context and the discussion of "what's compelling" being a personal decision. For me, I love the visual possibilities of style transfer. Not all of the results are compelling, but many have a quite beautiful abstract quality. Here is a video I love that my friend Isaac made, transferring the style of Monet to NYC: vimeo.com/175269046
this video is amazing. super compresed, highly well explained! thank you!
So I generally prefer conventional art, and while I understand that for other people newer forms like abstract art might be beautiful, I generally don't get it. But I got surprised seeing how much I loved Paine ''s artwork! The liquid falling and solidifying, each time into a unique piece, is just so amazing and beautiful! It actually reminds me of something I read "At home in the universe" , as sand falls grain by grain, most grains fall uneventfully, some bring about smaller catastrophes, and others bigger as the entire structure falls and start anew, and how it is difficult for us humans to predict which grain will cause which, due to the excessive detail of data required. Paine's artwork captures this. ❤
This video is extremely timely. I'm currently working on an essay for university on whether work generated by artificial intelligence can be considered art. I really enjoyed this perspective, and I'll have to include some of the examples you used in my research
Glad to be of service ;)
Did you ever write the essay?
If so I'd love a discussion with you as I'm penning a script around the idea. Would you be interested in talking? :)
In the case of 'Scumak No. 2', mentioned in the video, I would definitely say that the machine itself is an artwork and an artist. Since the machine itself can cause us to think about the topics raised in the video, as well as it produces work that relates back to its origin which is similar to the example of the 'Power Figure (Nkisi N'Kondi: Mangaaka)'. I would argue that the tools used in the process of creating a work are essential to the result, and therefore can be included in the idea of the work. Where the tools become part of what someone might take away from the experience, without it being present. By extension of this the artist and the means by which the work is made are integrale to the creation where context can change and enhance the persons interpretation and resulting idea.
I'm not very qualified to comment on such a complex question but I think I can share my views. When I look at a piece of art, I usually consider two things."How it made me feel and what it was meant to share?" Sometimes the first one matters more than the second and other times the opposite. But most often I tend to search for the prologue of an art piece because it meant something to me and I wonder what it meant to the one, whoever or whatever it maybe, who made it. It doesn't really matter to me if the art is made by a human or a machine but I do want to know the backstory of an art when I see one. I want to know how the artist felt while making it and how similar or different it is from my experience. This helps me make a connection beyond all odds. In fact, I would like to think of the machine that makes art as an art in itself. Thank you for such a great video. I've developed my interest in art through Art Assignment. So, thank you! :)💗
I have such a split mind when it comes to this subject. On one hand, I strongly believe that art's meaning comes not from the artist, but from the audience. We project our own meaning onto art regardless of the artist's intentions, so art made by machines can still have that effect. I was particularly moved by the white paint pieces, for instance. However, one of my favorite aspects of art is that I can connect with someone who was alive hundreds of years before me. One of my favorite pieces are a pair of ancient statues, a man and a woman, that I believe date back 40,000 years. The woman is sitting on her ample bottom, with her hands on her knee and staring up at the sky. I aboslutely love her! I think it's because even though an unbelievable span of time separate us, we can still understand one another and connect. I can't really have that connection in machine-made art, so it adds a sterile coldness to my appreciation of it. It's not that it is bad, it's just that is lacks the humanity for me.
Detective Del Spooner: Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a... canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?
Sonny: Can _you?_
(I, Robot 2004)
This is a topic I had never really thought of before watching this video but is very interesting to me. Personally, I feel as though machine generated art is not truly art. For art to excite me, it has to represent something that the artist is feeling emotionally about something or someone. For an art piece to truly grab my eye and interest, I want to know the thought process and meaning behind the piece. Everything from the inspiration of the work, to the duration it took to complete the piece, and the authors thought on the final product are all important to me when determining what I view as art that interests me. Machines will not be able to produce true art until they have the programming to be able to build emotions and personal feelings for themselves.
Interesting video, I think that question concerning who set the reaction in motion is integral to the idea of authorship, though some may argue authorship has no pertinence to value. Regardless, I find those unexpected flaws and marks from the maker to be part of the joy of experiencing art, which is inevitably why I'm slower to be interested in fully digital art. I find digital to be the most interesting when process is at the forefront, as you can usually load that process with commentary and allegory, and in that narrative and the "how" to it being played out seems so much more compelling than pixelated images designed to meet a pre-programmed aesthetic taste. Plus there is a quality to the traditional processes (film especially comes to mind) that simply can't be replicated through the work of a machine. But I digress, and I'm always open to new ideas and processes, so one may come along and change my mind eventually.
Although as a side note/plea: can we not give Damien Hirst more airtime (however brief it may be)? He's a plagiarising hack who got big due to a combination of trends and shock jock tactics, and his work just takes up space for other artists doing similar and more interesting work either before or during his current trend-hopping. He seems more of a cult of personality/celebrity than of creative force.
please make a "the case for" daniel johnston, not enough people know about his music and art. He makes beautiful inspiring works and he is truly an artist. He doesn't get enough of the recognition he deserves. He has schizophrenia and bpd and is such a strong and inspiring human being, anyone who knows his music will say the same.
I love this channel and I love how she explains things.
I think it's interesting, too, to think about how we misunderstand one another, and how that overlaps with how we perceive artists and their work. Like, when we see a work of art, we can't possibly understand everything the artist put into their work (stylistically, practically, emotionally, etc.)--and so how does that experience of imagining an artist differ depending on whether the artist was sentient or not?
Wonderful video and extremely relevant to my degree atm, thank you! I've been binge-watching this channel lately, love it!
Just out of curiosity, how many subscribers have taken an art history course?
It would be great if you could make a poll to find out this info, mayne stratify, by how much formal art history training they have. Highschool, some uni, masters, etc
lol that Damien Hirst quote 6:40 "Every single spot painting contains my eye (sure he only glanced if he even saw), my hand (you mean you're assistance), and my heart." (Available at sotheby's xD)
At first glance it seems that he's asserting his direct personal involvement in each artwork produced by his studio so that each work is attributed to him (and therefore worth millions) rather than from his studio (and thus potentially less desirable/valuable). But then again, many of the most prolific artists in the Western canon had studios and as long as the master's hand is detected in prominent places, these works are attributed directed to the master even though lesser hands also worked on them...
"Let's assume for a moment that there is a work of art that we can accept as truly separate from human involvment": can nature produce art by itself? Are rock formations or clouds art?
I feel like to answer this question, first we need to think about what art is. I generally divide art into two: what brings us a sense of beauty and what brings us a perspective about ourselves, or about humanity. In our time we generally come across art that brings us a sense of beauty because of the social media and the popularity of art. people generally dont look deeper into art these days, they just like it and it passes. and i feel like the art that brings us a perception, a point of view must be a higher form of art than the first one. Because it can be both beautiful and it can also evoke your consciousness to a next level. and the second category generally becomes what it is through time. i feel like the art generated by the machines are just beautiful things that gives us a sense of beauty, but it can also be more valuable in the future, regarding what will happen in the future. If we look at the old art works that are really popular and we dont understand why, it is because they give us a perception of our past and that is why they are more valuable now, then before. AI is a new and a topic to discuss and i am still not sure because it doesnt have the emotions, the desire, the passion of a art that is made by a human, but it still has a complexity of its own and AI is basically a artificial consciousness and the artificial in this context means the information is gathered from us, the humans. i feel like they can be considered as collages, the art that we made is being re-written by the machines.
As an artist, and someone who is generally very interested in these sorts of topics, the answer, I think, is no: machines cannot create art. I say this because I firmly believe that art is an act of the will. Art, essentially, is someone deciding to create a thing that they recognize as " art. " They WILL the art into being, through whatever medium or means they deem fit. Machines, at least, not yet, have our sort of intent, not even " AI ". They have ones, zeroes, algorithms, commands, data, coding and so on. They are missing a soul, you could say. The machine is not deciding on it's own to make something it personally believes to be art. Machines do not say " Hey, bro's! Imma make some sweet digital art without any one or anything programming me to do so and it will MEAN something!!! " No. They are just that: programs. They were fed data, told to essentially " do a thing " with that data, and the person telling them to do that " thing " didn't intend to make art with the AI as their medium. Their is no meaning, no emotion, no independent intent, no choice in that " thing " the computers generate, no aesthetic direction due to the machines personal tastes, and so on. There is no act of WILL from the machine, or the humans who built them (presumably no act of will on the part of the humans, might I add. Perhaps some programmers did and do intend to create art using AI. I do't know) Machines are not free. Human beings are free to do whatever we want. We can destroy ourselves, starve ourselves, make governments, join a religion, brag all day long about that Kanye West T I just bought for, like, a million dollars, make abstract rectangles in a certain medium to represent our concept or harmony, etc. These AI can't do that. Like that program the host used on Instagram that is directed to see dog faces in everything. Perhaps you could say that she willed art into existence through the program, but the machine definitely didn't. It was made to make a bunch of dog faces, and that's what it tried to do, nothing more, nothing else. Now, I am making many assertions about the definition of art, free will and I do have a limited knowledge of AI, and so on, but this is my stance. 🙂 P.S I forgot to mention this, but a question has been raised in the comments about whether or not seeing a piece of art that I adore, then found out was generated by AI, would lessen my appreciation for it. For me, it does, because there's nothing there. I read the poem at the beginning of this video, and I felt disappointment and sadness wash over me. It was, indeed, beautiful, seemingly masterfully crafted with a deep message or story behind it. Yet, in reality, it's nonesense. It was a gorgeously generayed puff of smoke signififying nothing. It's empty and hollow inside by nature. The words I read contained literary meaning, but meant nothing.
Lol well maybe you don't see beauty in vapid puffs of smoke, but I do. And I think you were just objectively wrong in saying that people creating AI don't intend to create art with it. Is an AI designed to win chess games a work of art? Maybe not. But a learning algorithm designed to write poetry? I mean that's inherently willful and artistic. To say otherwise seems absurd. Why else would someone have developed an algorithm to write a sonnet?! Are sonnets not "art"? It would be cognitively dissonant to say otherwise. The dog-face-dream tool, if you will, is no different a transformation than to print and make copies in different colours. But it is more. It is like an absurd piece of instructional art: "Put a picture in this program and watch how an intelligence fed on dog faces makes it look. How do you feel?"
What was moving to me about that poem in this video was not reduced by what you interpret as a facade or a hollow vessel devoid of soul. What was moving to me was the serendipitous moment of finding a beautiful juxtaposition of words in such a random space. Machine algorithms are subhuman. They're viral. And that space's rules were curated by a person. Machines are like homonculi with imperfect and savagely primitive soul-like energies, or they can be, if you want to feel that. That's what I feel when I read poems like that. Or when I look at a work like those crimson polyurethane blobs. Is it not art to will a machine to make art? I am reminded humourously of alchemy and especially how it's presented in the 2003 anime Fullmetal Alchemist. In the story alchemical human transmutation is taboo: so, attempting to bring someone back to life will result in a homunculi, a soulless possibly evil powerful human shaped monster that can feed on humans to grow more powerful. It seems to me like you think artists are performing a taboo by asking us to view the works of their homunculous machines and algorithms as art.
I think what seems like your anxious rejection of something that "can't" or shouldn't have a soul creating art is inspiring. I can't help but feel that your reaction whether precedented or unexpected is interesting and exciting. In my imagination I tend to lean towards a hidden kind of wishful animism toward the world. So I take a little schadenfreude in what I read to be your zealous reactionary no to "Can machines make art?" Cheers!
I've always taken issue with the assertion that having a designer of the algorithm invalidates the creative agency of that algorithm. I mean, people have lots of factors affecting them which they have no control over yet deeply influences the things they create. People are acted upon by the people they spend time around, the art they consume, and the area they live in. All of these are external factors that act on people to adjust their ideas about what they would like to create. In my mind this is hardly any different from an AI artist setting a group of initial rules for creation and preferences, then letting the machine generate new content by acting on data sets. And just like all those external factors I mentioned above, how the machine will interpret and use those external influences is often unpredictable.
I think when you talk about future AI with personality, that's really getting at the heart of why people don't think of machine-generated art as art; we want an identifiable human-like entity to be the creator because we want to think of art as something unique to the human experience. But I think it's very likely that when we get to strong artificial intelligence, its experience of the world is going to be drastically different from our own, and it's possible that it won't really be anything we can relate to. Would that meaning gap preclude anything they create from being art? That seems a bit...closed minded.
I see it as a "setting in motion" genre of art with a long history of artists embracing chance and accident in their work. Roxy Paine built the machine to create the Scumak, setting the process in motion with no control over the final form. The same way a programer creates an algorithm, sets a process in motion, but doesn't control the final form. This is definitely the art of our time and climate change is our grandest work of all. We collectively set the process in motion and it (we) will be creating new forms for many years to come.
This video is so thought- provoking. Love it!
I enjoy this channel. Always something new that makes me think. Good job.
I really enjoy your youtube channel, it has indeed opened my eyes to the world of arts and humanities, I would really appreciate if you can share with us your thoughts on Non - Western artists. I ask because I have come in contact with a few people who dismiss African or Indian artform just because they think it is too simplistic and amateur when compared with the European school of art. Once again love your work.
What I appreciate when I look at AI art is the unique perspective of something that is not quite alive. It makes me question the truth and validity of the human viewpoint I've been brought up thinking to be absolute fact. But being able to see reality through a completely different lens brings me to a greater understanding of the universe. It's true that there's a lot to be gleaned about the algorithm's creators from the specific manifestation of this new perspective, but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate this other worldly view of our world for its take on truth.
I used to make jewelry for Tiffany & Co. some of which was designed by Paloma Picasso. While one could argue that I made mass produced copies of art in a sense, no one would argue that the machine was the artists. The machine in question was a complex CNC turning center with a sophisticated computer for a brain and was following a program thousands of lines long to make the items in question. Picasso designed the piece and a programmer interpreted that piece in lines of code. So in this case it was a collaboration. Clearly the authorship goes primarily to Picasso. One day I was taking a stroll through a part of our city on my way to a park where I intended to take photographs of nature. On the way I found an oil slick floating on a puddle. The colors were an interesting random pattern of iridescent swirls. I took several photographs of this oil slick. Later I took hundreds of photos of nature, mostly birds. I showed my photos to a friend who has an art gallery and he commented that he thought I was not a fan of abstract art yet here I had wonderful abstract art in my camera. I was confused until he pointed at the oil slicks. He was completely uninterested in any of my nature photos but bought the rights to three of the oil slick photos and has sold roughly a hundred and twenty to date and I've earned about 1700 in royalties from them. They are interesting but I'm not sure I would call them art. I think that at some point whether accidently or through some sort of deliberate act, artificial intelligence will create something that someone will interpret as art if it has not already done so. I'm more inclined to think that the paintings made by elephants and gorillas are more authentically art than what could be produced by a machine intelligent or not. But then art is defined by each individual not by consensus or by a limited number of official art appreciators. One can frame virtually anything and hang it on their wall and call it art and perhaps to them it is. I have poster copies of a handful of my favorite paintings hanging on my walls. I have some of my own work hanging on my walls. I have photos and other things hanging on my walls. Not everything that hangs on my walls is art nor does it have to be. Not everything is beautiful that is on my walls nor does it have to be. But I think that there has to be something visually satisfying about a work to be able to call it art. That's it. The definition of art, the only one that really matters is that it is visually satisfying to the person looking at it and critics be damned.
I love how murky this topic is makes you think. This is a thought: While context is everything I think you can look at certain works done by a robot or AI and give it the full credit of making the piece like the Scumak installation. My reasoning being while context is everything and a human was apart of the initial design or intention of the piece if you give the credit to the artist who made it rather than the machine that would be equivalent to giving the credit to the father of an artist who made a piece of work or that artist's mentor who taught them. And that doesn't seem right, another example is a drawing done by an elephant (while actually cruel) it would be wrong (I think) to give the trainer the credit for the drawing rather than the elephant. Sure the trainer taught the elephant but it was the elephant that drew it. no? The elephant can be considered a machine in this instance but we (humans) are more likely to give the elephant the credit for the piece.
That's because elephants are alive and they seem closer to us, which is funny because machines are much more similar to us
Wonderful video
All complex algorithms bear the mark of their creator, because the biases of a programer are inescapable. Every decision that a neural network makes was informed by data that was chosen by a human. Pick any AI in use today; that mechanical mind was engineered to think a certain way, and then it was trained on specific information chosen by it's designer. If this program produces results that are considered "inadequate," then it will be revised until the desired effect is achieved. In this sense, writing code can be an artistic practice in itself, as there is just as much "push and pull" in this process as there is in any medium. In other words, yes, algorithmic art is worthy of admiration. Remember, photography was once an emergent technology, and some early critics considered it to be devoid of artistic merit as well
For the record, I primarily work in sculpture and digital hybrid media, so I'm a bit biased ; )
this is super interesting! i think the question at hand with ai art for me is "where's the humanity?" because that's probably one if the most fascinating and compelling parts of art for me. and if we can find humanity in the fact that something so different can creat something so similar to what a human would envision, and marvel at that, great! yet sometimes when there's no human behind the machine, it can sometimes feel distant, and however much i'm impressed by the advanced technology i feel something lacking-the humanity aspect. idk if that makes sense, but this was such a cool video and good food for thought :^)))
i loove that idea that "nothing is independent"!! ur so smart so cool so good thank u
If anyone is contemplating what makes us human anymore. I say, it’s what we communicate deeper than the canvas. It’s not just the final result, or the process, it’s what the artists say about the art. As humans, we can honestly say talk about how we personally feel about our own creations. That is what makes us human, and I’m sure we’re not going to have that taken away from us.
This was a very well made video, i came into it just believing machines just don't make art, and granted I still believe that. Since to me at least a machine is made by a human and therefore if it creates something deemed artistic it is ultimately made by the human who either programmed it to do that kind of thing or otherwise. Despite that it was interesting to see you elaborate on why you believe machines can make art, great video! :)
DAMN YOU WILLIAM GIBSON! In particular the novels Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. A very compelling argument for AI created art.
I was going to comment "Art is shared experience" then it appeared in the video. I once read that nature can't be art and that somehow is true. Is the Angel Falls art? I don't see how it can be. But there's shared experience of appreciating it's beauty and power. Short answer: Don't know.
And yet a well taken photograph of Angel Falls would by all accounts be considered Art. Do we appreciate it for it’s actual beauty or because we connect with the feeling of the photographer seeing something beautiful and being compelled to take a picture of it?
My instinct is it's the shared experience. You can appreciate the beauty and wonder of nature (of course) but that's different from art. Eg you're standing with a friend at the foot of the Angel Falls, both of you appreciating it's awesomeness but there's no art going on just yet. Then he takes out a camera, photographs the Falls, and shows you the image. Now there _is_ art going on. So you look at the object and there's no art but you look at an image of the object and there is art.
I'm not totally convinced this is absolutely the last word on What is Art but I do think there's something there to ponder.
I'm also trying to imagine the last person in the world painting a picture. That would be art, surely, even though there was no-one to share it with.
Nature is reality. Like life. Art imitates life.
Art is heart. It is made with spirit. Machines don't have it.
Maybe one key point is the choice. The algorithms made the piece. But they also made dozens or hundreds, thousands, or millions of other pieces. But someone chose that specific one. Maybe that's where the art, the shared experience comes from. It's another person saying, "Look at this." The art is not in the creating of the object, the art is in the creating of the shared experience.
Oh I like this way of thinking of it. I'd like to see an AI select their "favorite" output to share with others.
That sonnet shook me.
AI generated work makes me think of the long history not of artist as tool user or technology user but artist as tool and technology inventor. The reason I draw a distinction here is because it is often thought that technologists invent technology that is later used by artists to make art. Asking whether it is the AI or the artist which creates the work is the same as asking whether the camera or the photographer makes a picture. It's a false division. Historically there has been a reciprocal relationship where a tool is made, an artist uses the tool to create some work, the tool being used is found wanting, the artist thinks of ways to improve the tool, the tool is incrementally improved, thus being improved is used to create new work, and the cycle goes on and on forever. That cycle is the history of technology. Being an artist is half about making art and half about creating and improving the tools (cultural and physical) used for making art. AI make nothing on their own, under the hood they are really simple. They are authored systems. Capitalism has quirks but I wouldn't give it any rights of authorship.
Hey, thanks for your great videos. Can you make a case for artistic/arts-based research and implicit knowledge?
This is a great video. Very interesting and informative. I couldn’t help but wonder while watching however, why did nobody take a lint roller to her sweater? Y’all did her dirty for that.
Thanks for the content it's really interesting!
I think to me it really doesn't matter who or what created the art. Through this show I really got a new perspective towards what art is or can be. In my opinion we all construct the definition of art ourselves and that's why what is art to me, might not be for you. That seems unsatisfying and we'll still generalize, but I just don't think there is an one-size-fits-all answer to the question.. #constructivism
Remember those 3-D art works that were made ( I think by a machine) from meticulous detailed little pixilated blobs, that when a viewer "unfocused their eyes" then they could see the 3-D image hidden inside the matrix ?
One definition of art by the british young artists is "Anything declared as art by the person who created it" but what if it wasn't created but rather discovered like the Mandelbrot set? It has complexity and coherence but no intentionality. The surrealists tried to remove intentionality from work by using dice or darts thrown at a dictionary. To summarize, on single definition of art will work for everything. I look forward to computer generated art that helps me understand myself.
i always thought of art as communication, which i reckon is two way. So if someone tries to say something, thats art, anything we do is sorta art. If someone tries to understand something, thats art too. eg. if you can see something not man made, you make it art by trying to understand it, by just paying attention to it.
but what's good art, and what's worthwhile art?? that's the sort of thing i'm trying to figure out.. any suggestions?
well it motivates me and inspires me, and so does the art by people but yeah i do feel there is a lack of connection cuz i dont completely get algorithms but it's inspiring nevertheless
Any time the subject of machine art comes up these two quotes come to mind
"All this machinery
Making modern music
Can still be open-hearted"
-- Rush, Spirit of the Radio
“More than iron, more than lead, more than gold I need electricity.
I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber.
I need it for my dreams.”
- Racter, The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed
I like the notion of authorship they discuss. I think it comes down to intention and agency. Those drip sculptures didn't just happen; someone played around with it, thought it looked cool, and then wanted to show other people that this thing looks cool. So until the AI "decides" to make a painting based on either intention to make art, or intention to show "found art" to others as an example of artwork, I don't think the AI should be considered the artist.
Trevor Paglen would be a great artist interview for this topic
IT does matter; wheather a human or Machine does make things either way. The reason is because gnome adder what channels we receive creative beauty through, our Phil ter will then be able to harmonize in a unique weigh.
Whats important about art for me is the feeling it gives me. Typically absract / modern art doesnt give me the feeling I look for in art. I can appreciate some but not all and I suppose that goes for more realistic art.
This is a good question, and I'm of many minds, almost simultaneously. On the one hand, art is a self-expression for the creator, a creation into the world born of their consciousness and a collection of their intent, message, emotions, feelings, skill, and personality. Can an AI have this? Likely not yet, which would nullify the idea of AI created art. On the other hand... art is also a self-expression for the viewer/experiencer, a creation into their inner world born from their consciousness and the context they bring to it, developing message, meaning, feelings, and intermingling with their personality, largely independent of the artist's intent. Given that, does it matter if the artist had no intent (or if we get a different feeling or meaning out of what they wanted)? I'd say no, it doesn't matter if it still connects with you on a certain level -- so by that then AI created art can most certainly be art. Like many things, in the end I come to rest in that there's a middle ground between these two, and I'd say it's even more like in the middle of a polygon rather than a single line, with many other aspects of what art might or might not be that don't involve the species/aliveness of the creator. An AI may not be able to share something or themselves the way we think of it from a human perspective, but if a viewer can derive emotion and meaning from it, then I'd say its art. :)
I think there's a very important collective reflection to be had about what constitutes personhood? At what level of autonomous thought does an AI become a person? Does it ever? And what are the rights of those AI persons? Is it ethical to switch them off?
We're not there yet, but I think we will get there, and I find it important to think about this before the first AI starts begging for its life. Maybe this is what AI art can do, prompt this conversation.
I see AI art as the new Jackson Pollock.
Pollock could control certain parameters of each pain splatter, such as the color, amount, and general location on the canvas of the paint splatter. Despite knowing these parameters, the result was still somewhat up to random chance.
Likewise, AI art takes specific instructions such as ‘find all the things that look like dog faces’ and through a process that even the programmers can’t quite predict, it makes images.
Both the paintbrush and computer are technologies designed to obtain specific results (paint strokes and computations respectively) being instead used to obtain semi-random ones.
On the question of originality: Setting aside for the moment the question of whether the AI needs to be 'conscious' for its creation to be considered 'art', I think the degree to which its programmer(s) is responsible for the AI's work varies, and isn't binary. Even if all the causes of the work can be traced back to a human, that human didn't exist in a vacuum either. It's like...if someone has a kid who grows up to be an artist after the parent encourages artistic pastimes and signs them up to art classes, or even teaches it all themselves. We'd still call a work of art made by the kid at least partially 'original'. So why not the art made by a programmer's brainchild?
she's an awesome reader !
Im a bit confused about Ai. As I understand it is experiemental at the moment- it is coming very soon? can you help to clarify I get mixed messages on this.
Art is humanity
I like to try to appreciate robot art. I'd love for it to be so absurdly abstract and unrelatable to people; totally alien from the human experience. But I'd also love it if people could resonate with it. Wouldn't it be fascinating to relate to something not of your world? Perhaps if done today, relating may say something more of the appreciator than the robot, but maybe someday that won't be the case. Maybe that doesn't matter anyway, because feeling represented in any art can be too awesome to take away from someone.
It's like expanding what it could mean to experiece and can make it easier for more individual realities to be appreciated and rep't in art. And I guess that's kinda cool
What do you guys think about the new product ‘Van-Go’? A kind of dot-to-dot teamplate for painters.
Do you have a link? I can not find it and don't know what you are talking about.
faradayscienceshop.com/collections/van-go-paint-by-number-kits
"A true work of art takes at least an hour!" - Lucy Van Pelt
Can machines experience art?
"Does it matter if an artist is sentient or not" .... better question ... do non-sentient entities intend "art" or is it more that we assign that value to an entity manufactured object or event?
I think all that matters is if it is compelling to you.
Machines can definitely be used to manufacture/generate art but I'm not convinced that they can' "make" art... because it takes human perception to recognise something as art. Can machines recognise a piece of art, or even think about the various factors that create its value as an artistic object/experience, which is in turn completely subject to irrational human perception/judgment? I'm not convinced that machines can even recognise what art is... because art is is so arbitrary.
Imo, art is self-expression first and foremost. And the further it gets detached from the author, the less I like it. These machines do not express anything though, they just work the programs they were given, they don't have conscience. I don't think a machine could ever create a piece of art, because human nature is chaotic and flawed. And those flaws we make when creating an art work, are part of the work itself. A human can decide to paint a couple of dots in a corner of a painting, representing moles on his/her lover's face, or decide to not finish drawing a boat, conveying how he/she never had a chance to finish building a boat with the deceased father. There's so much inconcievable in the human mind, that computer would never get. You can program it to reflect implanted memories, but it's never gonna be eccentric about it, it's never gonna shock or surprise people with it, it can never be truly creative.
Someone noted below, you could just as easily ask if nature creates art - a sea shell, a sunset, a waterfall, etc. We enjoy them for their beauty the same as a work of art. We can contemplate them. They have context and back stories, the same as anything else. You can extract philosophical tidbits from them. But, do they have intent, and doesn't intention matter? What do we connect to more, a beautiful sunset, or a beautiful piece of music? Which makes us more human? Which makes us more proud to be human? Which teaches us more about who we are? Which expresses our emotions and condition better? Which is more useful?
In the end, it's up to you if you consider nature art, the same as any other machine. But, as an artist, what would you rather dedicate your life to? A practice where you choose what you want to make, how the work will look, and what it will communicate? Or, do you really want to produce failed experiments of goop on a conveyor belt? Art is about attempting perfection, excellence. Why give up control to an unthinking machine? The effects are cheap gimmicks, like the background music of this video. The digital images produced by algorithms and shown here are just curios. Dog eyes mean nothing without expression, gleaned by an artist who cares enough to capture it.
That's what all this boils down to - do you care enough to make art or not? I could care less if a robot designed my mattress, so long as it's safe and comfy. A road sign? Sure, go ahead, as long as it's easy to read and understand. But, my art? My music? Are we really that lazy? A good way to think of AI art at this point in time is to consider the spell checking function that RUclips uses as we type here. It's smart enough to tell me that RUclips is not a word, but it can't tell the difference between 'its' and 'it's', or which is correct, because it really has no idea what we're saying. Until that changes, I say we should be thankful for the help, but roll our eyes at calling AI an artist.
So what do you make of Artbreeder.com?
I have mixed feelings about it. It _feels_ like, on some level, it invalidates what I do. It's so fascinating, though, and I want to see all it can show me.
I mostly have it generate portraits. When it comes to portraits the most popular subject matter by far seems to be pretty girls and grotesque monsters, and sometimes grotesque girls.
Cory Arcangel’s “Super Mario Clouds” is presented here as a “video” artwork?
Seriously? Why does all recent art history end up under Video Art label?
Art that exists as a simple fact of nature is rare. Nearly all art that comes from AI was made by people. Someone had to turn the dial, pull the lever, or describe the thing you're seeing. Also important to remember that there are a lot of different kinds of ai art, and a lot of different tools to make it. I use ai's as a means of self expression, the same way I would if I were painting. The process just happens faster, in most cases. One thing I would point here, is that just because ai's were used during the production of a piece, that doesn't necessarily mean there's less work involved.
The artists that create the machines that generate art are basically like the artists that created various other art making machines like paint brushes or musical instruments.
As I remember definition of art from school - art is everything what human creates, so I believe machines is art. Otherwise if we think that things machines creates by themselves is art as well, it changes everything and for me seems rather terrifying.