Does the professed difficulty of getting the robot to draw what you want impact that glib treatise on the nature of art, or are we instantly in words-don’t-matter territory?
Most code is not art. I certainly don’t care what someone experienced while making a program; I just need it to work. If a jumped-up chatbot lets people make something with only a shallow understanding of my field of expertise - great. That is the dream of BASIC, realized. If that shit works then we’ve successfully made computers a bicycle for the mind.
Just don’t let them touch networking or cryptography.
What did I say in my response that made you feel we were in “words-don’t-matter” territory? I shared my opinion on what I personally think about the meaning of artistic expression, with human experience being a vital component. You are free to hold your own opinion, and to share it, and act in whatever way you like, so long as you aren’t harming others.
Then meaning does not simply come from ‘the struggle, the challenges.’ Art is a sprawling complex aspect of human existence, and once again, a new thing has people making grand assertions for why only the old ways are real art. Directly addressing these philosophical declarations often results in open hostility. I’m not sure passive-aggressive ‘agree to disagree, good day’ is much better. Why’d you say anything if you don’t wanna talk about this?
Never once implied that the meaning of art is simple, or stems only from one area of human experience. What I said is that without struggle, it is meaningless. That isn’t to say art is always a struggle, not even close, it certainly gets easier as you hone your craft, whatever that may be. But it is from the struggle against each challenge along the way that the artist grows more resilient, more passionate; it is through that struggle that their personal flair takes shape. And unless you quit, there will always be some new challenge to overcome. Life imitates art or whatever… The difference between advancement in tools throughout history is that it never once took the doing part out of the process of the art, or stripped the artist of their agency with what is to be done after the doing of the art is finished. A chatbot prompter is not creating anything, instead they are paying a company to proliferate the continued theft of actual artists. True creatives aren’t going anywhere. We do what we do because we love the doing. Destination is not everything, it never has been, and for some (I’d wager most) it is the least enjoyable part of the process. Thank you for sharing your opinion, and thank you for entertaining mine.
You kinda did, though. And then repeated it here. Then immediately contradicted it. You are unsuccessfully splitting hairs as if a sweeping absolute has nuance.
Indirect effort is still effort. CGI artists don’t draw the frames that audiences see. “The destination” is rendered by a computer, from their work. It’s obviously more direct than simply describing the scene - but there’s a gradient, not a cutoff. If someone spends a week fighting any tool to get exactly what they want, then it’s not a trivial push-button affair, and the result is a reflection of their desire and experience.
Even for generated art, you can feed in a blurry approximation, or have it modify a finished-looking image. You can photoshop the output and loop it back through. Hell, a generated video could animate a scene you painted on canvas. To insist that’s not just lesser, but utterly disqualified, is not a defensible assertion.
Consider this Neural Viz video. It’s mostly people talking to-camera. You might insist they could’ve done that with real actors… but that’s the thing, this tech can do anything you might do with real actors. Would you suggest that no amount of telling actors what to say and do makes someone an artist? Why is this silly bullshit not art, when a version wiggling GI Joes in front of the camera would be?
I don’t see the contradiction. I do see that there is a fundamental divide between what you and I consider art. As I alluded to in my previous reply, art is the journey. That is my personal take after many years of engaging with many artistic pursuits. If you don’t like my opinion, based on my subjective experience as an artist… I don’t really know what else to say to you. As I keep saying, feel free to hold and exercise you own opinion, based on your own experience.
If that journey is multiple days of fucking with these tools, why does that not count? Why is this the only technology immune to human expression?
I don’t need the constant reminders of what an opinion is - but you might need a refresher on what arguments are. If you give a reason for an opinion, people will often assume that’s why you believe something, and address it in a way that may alter your conclusion.
Does the professed difficulty of getting the robot to draw what you want impact that glib treatise on the nature of art, or are we instantly in words-don’t-matter territory?
Most code is not art. I certainly don’t care what someone experienced while making a program; I just need it to work. If a jumped-up chatbot lets people make something with only a shallow understanding of my field of expertise - great. That is the dream of BASIC, realized. If that shit works then we’ve successfully made computers a bicycle for the mind.
Just don’t let them touch networking or cryptography.
What did I say in my response that made you feel we were in “words-don’t-matter” territory? I shared my opinion on what I personally think about the meaning of artistic expression, with human experience being a vital component. You are free to hold your own opinion, and to share it, and act in whatever way you like, so long as you aren’t harming others.
… so does it count or not, when someone spends just as long fighting these tools to express what they want?
I don’t see that as art, no. I am not the arbiter of universal objective truth though, so feel free to form and exercise your own opinion. Godspeed.
Then meaning does not simply come from ‘the struggle, the challenges.’ Art is a sprawling complex aspect of human existence, and once again, a new thing has people making grand assertions for why only the old ways are real art. Directly addressing these philosophical declarations often results in open hostility. I’m not sure passive-aggressive ‘agree to disagree, good day’ is much better. Why’d you say anything if you don’t wanna talk about this?
Never once implied that the meaning of art is simple, or stems only from one area of human experience. What I said is that without struggle, it is meaningless. That isn’t to say art is always a struggle, not even close, it certainly gets easier as you hone your craft, whatever that may be. But it is from the struggle against each challenge along the way that the artist grows more resilient, more passionate; it is through that struggle that their personal flair takes shape. And unless you quit, there will always be some new challenge to overcome. Life imitates art or whatever… The difference between advancement in tools throughout history is that it never once took the doing part out of the process of the art, or stripped the artist of their agency with what is to be done after the doing of the art is finished. A chatbot prompter is not creating anything, instead they are paying a company to proliferate the continued theft of actual artists. True creatives aren’t going anywhere. We do what we do because we love the doing. Destination is not everything, it never has been, and for some (I’d wager most) it is the least enjoyable part of the process. Thank you for sharing your opinion, and thank you for entertaining mine.
You kinda did, though. And then repeated it here. Then immediately contradicted it. You are unsuccessfully splitting hairs as if a sweeping absolute has nuance.
Indirect effort is still effort. CGI artists don’t draw the frames that audiences see. “The destination” is rendered by a computer, from their work. It’s obviously more direct than simply describing the scene - but there’s a gradient, not a cutoff. If someone spends a week fighting any tool to get exactly what they want, then it’s not a trivial push-button affair, and the result is a reflection of their desire and experience.
Even for generated art, you can feed in a blurry approximation, or have it modify a finished-looking image. You can photoshop the output and loop it back through. Hell, a generated video could animate a scene you painted on canvas. To insist that’s not just lesser, but utterly disqualified, is not a defensible assertion.
Consider this Neural Viz video. It’s mostly people talking to-camera. You might insist they could’ve done that with real actors… but that’s the thing, this tech can do anything you might do with real actors. Would you suggest that no amount of telling actors what to say and do makes someone an artist? Why is this silly bullshit not art, when a version wiggling GI Joes in front of the camera would be?
I don’t see the contradiction. I do see that there is a fundamental divide between what you and I consider art. As I alluded to in my previous reply, art is the journey. That is my personal take after many years of engaging with many artistic pursuits. If you don’t like my opinion, based on my subjective experience as an artist… I don’t really know what else to say to you. As I keep saying, feel free to hold and exercise you own opinion, based on your own experience.
If that journey is multiple days of fucking with these tools, why does that not count? Why is this the only technology immune to human expression?
I don’t need the constant reminders of what an opinion is - but you might need a refresher on what arguments are. If you give a reason for an opinion, people will often assume that’s why you believe something, and address it in a way that may alter your conclusion.
Agreed. Tools aren’t the problem generating all the slop, it’s the vibe coding mentality.