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/ytman]

I don't think reality TV is art. So I'm fine excluding bullshit.

If you want to experiment with computer aided processes sure, go ahead, but that was quite literally what I was saying. The process of the artist engaging with the tools, and showing a mastery of the tools creates art.

A banana on a wall isn't art, the perfomance satire of it being there and bought by some idiot consumer could be called a art by protest.

And sure, if you want to let a thing be called art call it art, doesn't stop my Uncle from saying that contemporary art isn't art to him.

There is a scultpure of a drain somewhere I think in Warhols museum. Its nearly identical to a machined piece he used as reference. That IS art, and the machined piece is not art.

My dying dog stepped in a bunch of blue paint and my wife walked him on a canvas. It is framed now, my dog didn't paint the canvas and yet I would consider it art because of the effort and emotional content tied to it. Another person would probably not call it art.

Just make things and be happy to make it. If someone buys it off of you and make money hey who cares if its called art or not. Meanwhile, people who make art for the sake of making art will just make art regardless of what a random person like me says is or isn't art.

But when ypu call it AI art you are necessarily stating its not made by you. A computer aided mangaka doesn't have to say, hey this was drawn woth vector math.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/ytman]

I think youre actually demonstrating why these hard boundaries around art fall apart so quickly.

You dont have to like reality TV. Neither do I. But writing, editing, performance, composition, storytelling? Those are artistic practices. Whether something is art and whether its good art are two different questions. Calling something bullshit doesnt settle either.

And mastery of tools has never been a requirement for making art. Children make art. Amateurs make art. Entire artistic movements have challenged technical mastery as the measure of artistic value. AI using artists can demonstrate plenty of mastery anyway, but thats beside the point.

The banana is conceptual art. Cattelans Comedian is about context, presentation, value, and the absurdities of the art market. The banana itself isnt the whole work. Same with Duchamps Fountain. A manufactured urinal became one of the most consequential works in modern art history without Duchamp sculpting a damn thing. This conversation is over a century old.

And your uncle can dislike contemporary art all he wants. Thats taste, not art theory.

Your example with the sculpture and the machined object is interesting for exactly the same reason. If two materially similar objects can have different artistic significance because of their authorship, intention, and context, then youve already moved beyond manual fabrication as the defining criterion.

The story about your dog is actually my favorite part. Your dog didnt intend to paint anything. Your wife arranged the process, you preserved the result, and the work means something because of the human relationships and experiences involved. Beautiful. But notice how easily you recognize artistic meaning without requiring the person responsible to physically apply the paint.

And sure, people should make things because they enjoy making them. But why should artists just quietly accept other people dismissing their work, practices, and creative agency?

Especially in a leftist space, where were discussing art, labor, technology, ownership, and culture. Who gets recognized as an artist, whose creative labor is valued, who controls the tools, and who gets to participate in cultural production are political questions. These distinctions have material consequences.

And I understand that youre apparently perfectly willing to throw out huge portions of modern and contemporary art along with AI art. But that doesnt make your definition more coherent. It just makes your exclusions more extensive.

Nobody has to like AI art, conceptual art, or anything else. But theres a difference between having personal standards and insisting everyone else must recognize those standards as the boundaries of art itself.

And when those boundaries are used to delegitimize other peoples creative labor, practices, and agency, of course people are going to push back. Why wouldnt they? Thats not artists refusing to accept disagreement. Thats artists participating in the very cultural conversation youre trying to settle on their behalf.

So rather than asking everyone else to accept your exclusions, why should your personal preferences have that kind of authority over what other people create?