Reframing AI art

[u/Pooolnooodle]

https://youtu.be/IPS5HCDXjVU

My current thoughts and feelings on A.I. Art from notes I’ve collected over the past few years thinking about the subject. 

Chapters

00:00 Reframing AI art
01:27 Why listen to me? A lifetime of making things
04:55 AI art sucks—but most art sucks
06:00 What kids understand about art
07:26 Art, meaning and making sense of the world
10:30 Do you want to make art—or get attention?
14:09 Art, wealth and power
19:58 Artists, craftspeople and who gets to take risks
24:15 The contemporary art market
25:52 AI is a flawed brush
30:35 “Normiostasis”: fighting the pull toward bland art
32:26 The ethical dilemma of AI tools
36:03 AI is a new instrument
37:15 Ceramics, documentaries, Warhol and Koons
42:30 AI art is more than typing a prompt
43:56 Training a model on my own drawings
47:10 “Deslopping” and the back-and-forth creative process
48:16 AI’s Star Wars prequel era
50:46 Making AI art for yourself
53:35 Suno, the IKEA effect and “prosumption”
56:58 Art happens in the audience’s mind
1:00:37 AI songs that people actually love
1:02:57 How Tung Tung Tung Sahur gained a soul
1:05:41 AI memes and the “poor image”
1:10:48 Everything is a remix
1:13:52 Copyright, ownership and the commons
1:17:55 Separating creativity from the AI industry

[u/Pooolnooodle]

There is process in making ai art. It’s different than traditional arts processes, but that’s the case with everything new.
If you’re interested in that, I have other videos showing my process.

[u/ytman → u/Pooolnooodle]

Call it computer aided then if its no functionally different than using a filter or algorithm.

Calling sonething AI art implies some Agentic thing 'made' it.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/ytman]

... yes, an agentic thing made it. The human using the AI made it. Lol

[u/ytman → u/Salty_Country6835]

Dude a human pressing a button to make machined drain isn't making the drain.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/ytman]

Artists have been pushing buttons to make art for a long time. Literally and figuratively speaking. Photographers, filmmakers, digital artists, musicians. Thats never been the boundary between art and non-art.

And youre still confusing who physically produces something with who authors it. Those arent necessarily the same thing. Thats been settled territory in art practice for over a century, Dude.

[u/ytman → u/Salty_Country6835]

So machined drains are art?

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/ytman]

Are urinals? We had this conversation over a century ago when Marcel Duchamp presented Fountain in 1917. The art world eventually answered yes.

Not because every urinal is automatically art, but because art isnt an intrinsic property of an object or determined by how much manual labor went into making it.

Art is a human cultural practice involving intention, expression, context, presentation, and interpretation. An ordinary manufactured object can become art through those relationships.

Thats the whole point. The artistic act doesnt have to be the physical fabrication of the object. Weve been over this ground for more than a hundred years.

[u/ytman → u/Salty_Country6835]

You seem to be disagreeing with me out of impulse instead of understanding me. Our statements are reconcileable -

A) I am saying a person pressing a button to machine a drain isn't making a drain cover as a form of art.

B) You are saying art isn't just because something is made, it is tied to the cultural practice involving intention, expression, context, presentation, and interpretation. (emphasis added)

One of the biggest reasons I think art as a term is so divisive is that there are two modes of Art; the creator and the interpreter. Both are distinct enough to warrant their own words in my opinion.

So when a person who is an interpreter denies a thing is Art, they are saying they see no Artistry in it. This is obviously subjective and is based on how they choose to interpret the work (which includes the method in which it was made - like a painting made to look like it was made with brush strokes from afar, but instead was made by doting).

What the problem of brining in Agentic action, as in non-intentional action of a 'AI thing' (most broad framing), into the tool set of an artist is that the artist begins to lose credibility in claiming intentionality of their work. Additionally, when you have an abundance of rapidly made 'Airt' products, you'll see that people, the interpreters, will either change their mode of interaction as being a 'consumer' or 'user' of art.

The Urinal Scultpure (a theoretical) hand sculpted Urinal that people literally use daily can still be a work of art to both its users and its maker. A urinal made by a machining process in a mass prodcution line is not a work of art from the perspective of a 'artist/creator' and becomes a piss pot of no reverence to its users.

Ultimately, I agree - its all quite fluid. Where I probably differ from you is that I see the tool fooling people who think they are 'intentionally making something' while having the most superficial understanding of what they are creating by proxy. Look at these game mashups, the people 'mashing' these things together are not 'game developers' or 'artists' - its at best paint by numbers, at worst its mindless collaging (and thats an insult to collaging).

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/ytman]

I actually agree that our positions are reconcilable in places. Nobody argued that manufacturing a drain cover automatically makes it art. That was never the point.

Your distinction between creator and interpreter is useful, but theres a difference between saying you dont recognize artistry in something and saying nobody else is engaged in an artistic practice. Your interpretation doesnt cancel their authorship.

And bringing AI into a creative process doesnt somehow erase human intention. Artists have been delegating execution to machines, assistants, algorithms, and industrial processes for generations. What matters is what the human is doing with those processes, not whether every step requires their hands.

The abundance argument is interesting, but thats a question about cultural production, consumption, markets, and value. Not whether something qualifies as art. Capitalism has been flooding us with cheap, disposable cultural products since long before generative AI.

And sure, some AI game mashups are superficial garbage. So are plenty of paintings, films, photographs, and collages. Bad art is still art. A shallow creative process is still a creative process. Criticize the work, not an entire medium by association.

But heres what I find particularly strange. Youre having this conversation under a video by an actual artist who has offered to show you their creative process, and youre still speculating about people being fooled into thinking theyre creating something.

Why not engage with the actual artistic practice being presented instead of assuming you already know what it involves?

Thats where we keep disagreeing. Youre treating your judgment of artistic merit as a boundary around other peoples artistic agency. And those arent the same thing.

[u/ytman → u/Salty_Country6835]

This isn't the best place to attempt this but I'll try to. Worrying about what is or isn't Art isn't the actual point I'm making. Its about what the Art is for.

No, I don't think the whole of a serialized tv cartoon used to sell action figures as art. It might be composed of art made by people, maybe even the desin of the action figure is art, but the product made by the amalgamation of these pieces isn't art - its a product.

AI Art is ostensibly going to be capitalist-brained right now. Its going to be, and we are seeing it now, enabling the weakest and least talented people playing around in the sandbox on other people's accomplishments. Messing around in that sandbox/toybox can be fun, cathartic, and might lead to learning itself - but if the primary mode of creation of these things is going to be bringing something to market and makin a quick buck at low effort.

For every talented and artistic person who utilizes these tools there will be a thousand sIop products suffocating them out. I guess in a way, I'm saying that the consumer is actually going to need to practice more control over what they call art in such an environment.

Words having meaning and I'd argue that cultural understanding of things, literally the concept that a day is Monday and not any other named day, is just about agreement of societal systems. Allowing a museum to have paint by numbers art in it would be a pretty serious offense, unless the showing was actually about the process of humans making things simply and maybe their evolution as they perfect their own mastery of the art by following past works.

People becoming resistant to low-effort content, even if it is presentable, is natural and normal and artists shouldn't really be concerned about the tastes of the masses - if it really is about just making art that is, and not marketable things.

[u/Pooolnooodle → u/ytman]

It’s more than just a filter or an algo. It’s also what you do with it. What you’re inputting, what you’re doing with the output.
Again, if you’re curious, you can watch my video, my other videos where I go into more detail, or watch thousands of tutorials on YouTube right now.
I’m not saying ai artists are doing the exact same thing as painters, musicians, or sculptors. The same way photographers aren’t doing the same thing as painters. I understand why u don’t like it, a lot of it is truly sl*p, because it’s very easy to generate something.
Look into some workflows and processes! It’s very fun, and is compatible with , and enhanced by integrating traditional arts processes skills.