Creating art, even via using something like Photoshop, is a skill that takes years of learning and practice to do well. Most people who appreciate art appreciate not only the art itself, but the time and skill that went into its creation.
When someone short-circuits the whole creative process by putting a prompt into a machine and having it spit out an art, there's nothing to appreciate.
How to you estimate the 'time and skill' that went into the creation of a random piece of art? Is a portrait that took 50 hours to paint inherently more worthy than a virtually identical one that took 5 hours? Is the slower artist the better artist? Is a Bob Ross 'happy little trees, body of water, mountain in background'-image not artistically valuable because he does it in 20 minutes?
As for skill: I would argue that a random Banksy takes a lot less skill than the average Artemisia Gentileschi (admit it: you had to look her up). Yet, one is celebrated art, the other is virtually unknown and at best 'one among many baroque northern-Italian painters'.
Those are earnest questions, I want to understand the recently-recurring time-and-skill argument. What sort of people honestly look at a picture and ask 'yes, but how long did it take to make? How long had the artist to be trained for this?'
> one is celebrated art, the other is virtually unknown and at best 'one among many baroque northern-talian painters'.
Who claims that 'baroque northern italian painters' are not artists? If anything, an unknown painter is much closer to art with capital A than Banksy, in the traditional hierarchy. So this is a weird framing.
As for time, this is both time taken to create and time spent practicing to reach a certain level of artistry. A speed painter is still an artist, and they reached their speed not by using an AI shortcut but by spending long hours practicing.
The underlying question is how do we tie art and legitimacy: society has always tied both, which is why we have institutions tasked with assigning legitimacy (museums), a hierarchy of art forms where the longest lived are seen as superior (painting over photography), and artists gain prestige not from a single art piece, but from a consistent production of works that are tied together by a shared identity.
On the other hand, a lot of the "pro" AI art discourse I've seen often boiled down to attempts to disconnect art from legitimacy. That's a tough hill to climb.
Pretty strong statement, an as such needs a non-tautological proof. Rich people buying rare things as what society should consider art may not exactly fit that bill.
The thing is what is considered art at any particular time is very nebulous and quite often tied to what the rulers of a country would allow. Trying to say that modern institutions get to decide what art is and isn't is also going to cause definition problems. Does folk art not recognized by museums count at art. The said people who like it would say it does.
Does a person who spends a small amount of time creating something that others consider art, even though that's not what they do, nor will they do it again, have they actually made a piece of art?
Simply put trying to put these rules on the ethereal concept of art quickly devolves into pedantry that makes actual enemies in fields were factions say their ideas are the only true art, and other factions that attempt to destroy the concept altogether.
I was pointing out that time and skill are not universal markers of 'worthy' art. The fact that a random graffiti guy is celebrated, a "big A" artist is unknown is a direct indication that time and skill needed are of little concern in the long run.
> a hierarchy of art forms where the longest lived are seen as superior (painting over photography),
I think this is a bold take - comparing an art form that has been around in a meaningful way for 2000 years to one that has been around for 100 years. Also, if that was true, and not just survivorship bias, shouldn't we consider sculptures and cave wall paintings superior to oil paintings?
Photography, by the way, was considered 'unworthy' by 'real artists' for decades because 'there is no art involved in pointing a box at a tree and pressing a button'. That sounds awfully like the AI debate of today, doesn't it?
> artists gain prestige not from a single art piece, but from a consistent production of works that are tied together by a shared identity.
Or is it that an artist does produce more than one piece of art over their lifespan, so they can, in fact, survive, and, once they become popular with one painting, their other stuff is retroactively elevated?
Art one-hit wonders (or low-hit wonders) do exist. Van Gogh is known for the night sky and the sunflowers, virtually nothing else (unless you are an afficiado). Da Vinci is known for the Mona Lisa - if you are an enthusiast, you might know the Salvator Mundi - the Vitruvian Man I consider less art and more technical drawing. Dürer is known for the hands, the rabbit, and a self-portrait. Shepard Fairey is only known for the "Hope / Yes, we can"-poster.
> On the other hand, a lot of the "pro" AI art discourse I've seen often boiled down to attempts to disconnect art from legitimacy.
That may be related to the circumstance that most of the Anti-AI backlash comes from mediocre artists who do mostly derivative works. If your portfolio consists of furry porn and a broody Heath-Ledger-Joker sitting down, with 'HA HA HA' scribbled over it, sorry, that makes you a 'media / creative', but not an artist with a bit A ... You are essentially doing what the AI is doing: Take an idea, rehash it, minimally, then put it down on paper/your Wacom tablet. If all you bring to the table is 'I suffered for this', your market just shrank to people who enjoy your suffering.
Art is not artistry, art is the idea. As such I find the concept of a 'Street-art Darth Vader' covered in colorful tags that's basically an AI image directly or post-processed more interesting than the 'real artist with colored pencils' Darth Vader in a classical pose that the artist got from a superman comic book cover.
> How to you estimate the 'time and skill' that went into the creation of a random piece of art?
You don't. Unless that's the kind of thing you're into, I guess.
> Is a portrait that took 50 hours to paint inherently more worthy than a virtually identical one that took 5 hours? Is the slower artist the better artist? Is a Bob Ross 'happy little trees, body of water, mountain in background'-image not artistically valuable because he does it in 20 minutes?
You can't quantify art that way. People work at different speeds. I can appreciate that something took some number of hours without knowing the precise number of hours.
> As for skill: I would argue that a random Banksy takes a lot less skill than the average Artemisia Gentileschi (admit it: you had to look her up). Yet, one is celebrated art, the other is virtually unknown and at best 'one among many baroque northern-Italian painters'.
Maybe, but I'm not qualified to make that comparison. Both are beyond my level of artistic ability (I've never studied art nor practiced much). I don't know why one thing or artist gets more popular than another while another who's just as talented (or maybe even moreso) languishes in obscurity. Skill is a factor, sure, but there's no formula that I'm aware of.
> What sort of people honestly look at a picture and ask 'yes, but how long did it take to make? How long had the artist to be trained for this?'
Maybe some people think of it that way. I don't know. I've never asked those questions about any art I consume. I just think something like, "wow, this looks nice, it must have taken a while" or "what would it take to make something like this, I wonder"
> Maybe some people think of it that way. I don't know. I've never asked those questions about any art I consume. I just think something like, "wow, this looks nice, it must have taken a while" or "what would it take to make something like this, I wonder"
I think this raises an interesting question about form vs. function in art.
I was running a AD&D game on Friday. At one point, I was holding up the book to show the artwork of a monster to the group. None of us were looking at it and taking the time to contemplate the effort involved, thinking it must have taken a while, etc. I'm sure some people do - old school D&D art is definitely an area that a subset of the hobby is passionate about - but the majority of people are looking at it to help with formulating things in their mind's eye, getting a feel for things, etc.
But I will appreciate a piece of "standalone" art in a very similar manner as to how you describe.
Do most readers spend appreciable time looking at the art on the cover of their book? Do people spend a ton of time looking at album art while listening to music on Spotify? How about the art in a video game - how much of it is the point vs. something that facilitates the point - the last few times I loaded up Dwarf Fortress, it was the ASCII tileset, not the graphical version.
Do AI creations have a place where the art is supposed to be functional vs. being made for the sake of being art?
My personal experience: As an artist throughout my life, whether it be drawing, painting, or sculpting, I have been asked again and again how long it took me to make a piece. It is probably the most common question I get when I interact with people over my art. My experience has shown me people value the effort and time it takes to make something beautiful and unique.
I recently began attending events/cons to share my sculpting and it was eye opening. Not only did people frown on A.I. generated art at these events, but I had to broadcast that my sculpting was not 3D printed. Quite a few visitors to my table let me know they appreciated my work was handmade.
And on top of those things, I'd add that good artists use that time to deepen the work and their understanding of the work.
If you're doing, say, factory work, you can just zone out. You do the same thing over and over, and you do it well enough, but your mind is somewhere else.
But somebody who's truly during art is present in the work as they're doing it. They're up to something. I think that's a big part of why the work of serious artists changes over time. It's an exploration.
In contrast, look at some kitch producer like Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light™. He was clearly successful financially. But I'd argue that there is little more to it than "AI" "art".
For me appreciating art always involves reaching for an understanding of the artist and the humanity we share. An Ansel Adams print is lovely, but ultimately I end up thinking not just about the image or the landscape. I think about being in the landscape. About the process of getting that one perfect photo. About what drives a person to seek that and to go to such incredible lengths. About how Adams saw the world.
If I'm going to think hard about some GenAI output, I'm going to appreciate the technology that went into it. But there's no more to think about the prompter than there is about somebody picking out clip art.
> Most people who appreciate art appreciate not only the art itself, but the time and skill that went into its creation.
I call BS on this. Most people like something striking or beautiful or thought proviking. For the vast majority, the time or skill barely comes into context. You meant connoisseurs perhaps.
Text-based browsers are also great for just reading hypertext documents. I've been using a combination of a text-based rss reader and web browser to keep up with the sites I care about, and I can tear through my collection of articles pretty quickly
My house has a problem with little black ants that pest control services never could quite take care of. Spiders kept trying to set up shop near a window, but I would always knock the web down. Once I relented and let the spiders do their thing my ant problem went away. All I need to do is clean up a few ant corpses in the fall, which is a tradeoff I'm willing to make.
> I disagree with a notion that a page needs to work without javascript. It is only design choice of author.
Sure, I guess, but if a site that's primarily text doesn't work without Javascript then that's a design failure. I sometimes use a browser like links2 because eliminating everything but text can sometimes help me focus. If the site displays nothing, I'm probably not going to bother reloading it in a different browser just so I can render the text.
(It's a nonissue for this site, which appears to render fine in links2.)
Precisely. I have made my own e-cards to send to friends to commemorate holidays and outings. All HTML + CSS, responsive and looks fine on all devices.
> Hey team! I find journaling for a fictive audience to be more effective personally; since it forces me to try digest my thoughts for an external listener.
Okay, but I don't understand the benefit of writing to an entirely fictitious AI construct instead of writing to the ideal of the kind of reader you'd eventually like to have.
I mean, I get that it's frustrating to pour effort into writing something that effectively nobody reads (i.e. you never connect with a wider audience), but engaging with an entirely fictitious audience seems hollow to me.
If I'm just jotting down personal notes, I use a pen and a notepad. If I need to transcribe anything into my long-term notes, then I can do that at the end of the day/week/whatever, when I review what I wrote down.
When someone short-circuits the whole creative process by putting a prompt into a machine and having it spit out an art, there's nothing to appreciate.