Agree with this wholeheartedly. As these tools improve and are deployed more widely -- by people who are native to their use -- it is inevitable they will be used for humanist and artistic ends. The fear that AI can only lead to slop is the same fear that every new and innovative tool faces. It's a tool. It is not an angel nor a demon.
Surely it must be the epitome of false equivalence to equate mechanically reproduced art (originated by a human) with computer-generated illustrations (originated by an applied statistical engine)?
Have you ever made an artwork with your hands? Meaning, with your fingers and eyes manipulating the medium, not by tapping text on a keyboard?
Having done both myself, there is absolutely a difference in my opinion. It saddens me that going into the future less artisans will be inclined to make unique pieces through manual labour when they are competing with items manufactured within seconds. This means a certain kind of focus and application will no longer be developed in the brain. Regrettably the kind of traditional skills that developed from human artistic expression over millenia are faĺling aside as simplistic and immediate mechanical forms become popularised.
There is an inevitability to it, but I'll regret the passing of the era when it took physical labour, not just intellectual musings.
It is all unfolding before us in real time. It'll be interesting to observe how it pans out.
The next level AI coming within a decade, no doubt, will be micro drones that make sculptural objects from multiple mediums such as metal and textile...
They are a type of production. I believe art is generated from the imaginations of humans, not machines. Machines don't have imaginations, life experiences, feelings/emotions/suffering or mortality. I argue all that corporeality is necessary to make art.
No thanks. Art is a human expression. I'm not interested in regurgitated slop made from creative work stolen from artists. (Like me.) The more we learn about the authoritarian-loving tech bros the less i want to patronize them.
Photographers will disagree! My grandfather, a former photographer for the Baltimore Sun newspaper would have something to say about that! My friend, with a career as a photographer for National Geographic, described how long those photos took, because you might have to first build trust with the subjects before they would allow you to take pictures.
Human photographers decide what is important to record visually, what is in the frame and what is excluded, the angle, the lighting, and many other decisions that go into photography.
You might just see a photo of an elephant but someone considered which elephant, doing what, in what setting, with what background, with what permissions to access into the wildlife preserve.
Or maybe, once they realize that authoritarians with no commitment to the public good have taken creators' work without permission or compensation, they'll decide - as I have - not to patronize their products.
Maybe they will celebrate their own creative capability, the unique lens through which they view the world, their own perspectives, their inspirations, the feelings they want to convey, and they will pick up a pen, a paintbrush, or a camera.
What makes you think Benjamin was more "worried about the lack of uniqueness in mechanized reproductions" than he was excited about the democratic possibilities opened up by mechanized reproduction but worried that the masses would be drawn to fascist spectacle? People read that essay of his and latch onto his description of "aura" as though the essay were primarily an expression of mourning over (hierarchical) cultic image, rather than a call to politicize art—away from the high-velocity spectacle of Mussolini and Hitler towards "communist" aesthetics. Whatever those are exactly.
In other words, Benjamin seems opposed both to hierarchical cultic art and to the commoditization of art.
In that respect, the *production* of AI art seems precisely fit to order. Its marginal cost is near zero. Its supply is basically infinite. Quantity is a whole new quality, as Benjamin points out.
Whether or not the objective facts of its conditions of production will be reflected in the form/content of AI art that proliferates in the attention economy is another question entirely. One might even say that Benjamin's commitment to a Marxian theoretical framework for art—that reception is strongly connected to, almost determined by, art's mode of production—misses something pretty important about its subject.
I thoight it was Morris who vomited into the bushes...?
(need to consult my magic book)
thank you for this article, Henry
Oh lmk if I am wrong…
Agree with this wholeheartedly. As these tools improve and are deployed more widely -- by people who are native to their use -- it is inevitable they will be used for humanist and artistic ends. The fear that AI can only lead to slop is the same fear that every new and innovative tool faces. It's a tool. It is not an angel nor a demon.
Surely it must be the epitome of false equivalence to equate mechanically reproduced art (originated by a human) with computer-generated illustrations (originated by an applied statistical engine)?
Why?
Have you ever made an artwork with your hands? Meaning, with your fingers and eyes manipulating the medium, not by tapping text on a keyboard?
Having done both myself, there is absolutely a difference in my opinion. It saddens me that going into the future less artisans will be inclined to make unique pieces through manual labour when they are competing with items manufactured within seconds. This means a certain kind of focus and application will no longer be developed in the brain. Regrettably the kind of traditional skills that developed from human artistic expression over millenia are faĺling aside as simplistic and immediate mechanical forms become popularised.
There is an inevitability to it, but I'll regret the passing of the era when it took physical labour, not just intellectual musings.
There may be more of these artworks in the future and they may be of higher value
It is all unfolding before us in real time. It'll be interesting to observe how it pans out.
The next level AI coming within a decade, no doubt, will be micro drones that make sculptural objects from multiple mediums such as metal and textile...
Wait so novels written with a computer, movies filmed and edited on digital, and digital photography aren’t art?
They are a type of production. I believe art is generated from the imaginations of humans, not machines. Machines don't have imaginations, life experiences, feelings/emotions/suffering or mortality. I argue all that corporeality is necessary to make art.
No thanks. Art is a human expression. I'm not interested in regurgitated slop made from creative work stolen from artists. (Like me.) The more we learn about the authoritarian-loving tech bros the less i want to patronize them.
I don’t think all art is human expression, like a photograph of an elephant for example.
Photographers will disagree! My grandfather, a former photographer for the Baltimore Sun newspaper would have something to say about that! My friend, with a career as a photographer for National Geographic, described how long those photos took, because you might have to first build trust with the subjects before they would allow you to take pictures.
Human photographers decide what is important to record visually, what is in the frame and what is excluded, the angle, the lighting, and many other decisions that go into photography.
You might just see a photo of an elephant but someone considered which elephant, doing what, in what setting, with what background, with what permissions to access into the wildlife preserve.
Well someone will be using the AI in a like manner
Or maybe, once they realize that authoritarians with no commitment to the public good have taken creators' work without permission or compensation, they'll decide - as I have - not to patronize their products.
Maybe they will celebrate their own creative capability, the unique lens through which they view the world, their own perspectives, their inspirations, the feelings they want to convey, and they will pick up a pen, a paintbrush, or a camera.
What makes you think Benjamin was more "worried about the lack of uniqueness in mechanized reproductions" than he was excited about the democratic possibilities opened up by mechanized reproduction but worried that the masses would be drawn to fascist spectacle? People read that essay of his and latch onto his description of "aura" as though the essay were primarily an expression of mourning over (hierarchical) cultic image, rather than a call to politicize art—away from the high-velocity spectacle of Mussolini and Hitler towards "communist" aesthetics. Whatever those are exactly.
In other words, Benjamin seems opposed both to hierarchical cultic art and to the commoditization of art.
In that respect, the *production* of AI art seems precisely fit to order. Its marginal cost is near zero. Its supply is basically infinite. Quantity is a whole new quality, as Benjamin points out.
Whether or not the objective facts of its conditions of production will be reflected in the form/content of AI art that proliferates in the attention economy is another question entirely. One might even say that Benjamin's commitment to a Marxian theoretical framework for art—that reception is strongly connected to, almost determined by, art's mode of production—misses something pretty important about its subject.