I’ve lost follower acquaintances for saying this, so I’m saying it again: If you think that Statistical Nonsense Machines (wrong terms “AI” or “ML”) make art, you don’t have a clue what art is.
No, really. Go study it.
Art is sociological artifact. Remove the cognition to create interpreted intent in relation to the sign and signified, and the concept of “art” is removed.
Literally *not* art.
@Herstory Would probably disagree even from the rather naive “tool” construct. The reason is rather straightforward.
The *logic* behind the sign / signified relationship is critical to the *interpreter*. That is, feeding the Statistical Nonsense Machine a prompt is a fundamental *disconnect* between this critical aspect of art-as-artifact, and mere statistical mashup.
There is a significant cognitive comprehension difference.
They theory of “tool” is predicated on top of nonsense.
@troy_s Disagree. These artifacts are created as directed by people and presented by people, which provides the cognition you indicate is absent.
Arguing otherwise is, IMO, arguing in space very much adjacent that which posits the noncogitant paint splatter makes Pollock art not art.
@millenomi I am fully amenable to this vantage, *except* in this case. The negotiation of sign to signified implicitly involves the interpreter to close the loop.
Again, definitionally, we cannot displace the *interpreter*, which in this case is not only lacking for sign-signified understanding, but also *outsources* the interpreter as well.
@millenomi The concept fails on sign and signified in the scope of the mechanics of active interpreter. (At risk of leaning hard into semiotics.)
That is, with a human interacting with a surface, the mark formed is active interpretation. Here, the sign, signified, *and active formulation* of the mark is outsourced.
Could a human form an assemblage of Statistical Nonsense? Absolutely. But the *activity* is the part being missed here. The *activity* is pure nonsense affect.
@troy_s I say this with understanding of its devaluation of the labor of the artist, who produced the traits that have been pulled into the model, and for how this is disastrous for the reduction of demand for that labor (e.g. I keep an eye on spaces that use art commercially, like trading card games, and I see an uptake in willingness in producing finished work with AI art over the commission of pieces of traditional art).
I am just really wary of exclusionary definitions of art.
@millenomi - This **is not a fscking accident**! This is an active assault on forms of knowledge and understanding. It's a Foucault-in-a-sound-bite. The entire premise is presented as "Hot Take" because the institutions of capital have *presented* the knowledge structure as such.
TL;DR: The idea that "Everything is art man" is an active force from capital. It's not. And Statistical Nonsense is a symptom.
@millenomi I can tell you do. Which is why it's a discourse.
I feel on some level it is a magician trick of capital. The Overton window on the very construct of knowledge, in this case the *definition* of "art", has been grossly hijacked by the historical awareness of a nine year old. And that doesn't give the nine year olds enough credit.
The magician trick here is equivalent to someone reading a Choose Your Own adventure book, and insisting to someone outside, that they have authorship.
@millenomi The issue is guidance of the mark. I'm sure you've experimented with even the chat versions... and they too fail in the exact same ways. The guidance of the mark is interpretive loop not only missing here, but the formulation of "meaningful marks" is missing.
Ask how a stochastic diffuse pattern forms "this is meaning" and it reveals the precise faulty foundation of the label of "art".
Most certainly nuance here, and I appreciate that it vibes like a "hot take". Nuance!
@troy_s yeah; I am willing in my definitions here to abstract over the mark as in the specific effect produced on canvas by a specific technique, since this is clearly an accident or second-order effect of the tool.
There's a lot of 'are curation and recomposition art?' and 'how much of either is here?' here as gradients, and I am willing to appreciate how much this tool implicitly pushes people over the shallower end of this pool. Yet even here I am sad to discount the agency of the prompter.
@millenomi Again, you've surely tried it. Have you noticed that there is an almost iron fisted inability to steer the mark? This is not an accident. And this is really exactly the sort of nuance of the interpreter-in-loop between sign and signified here.
And yes, I'd clearly clap for someone who takes the assemblage of clip art of Statistical Nonsense and makes a powerful piece.
But as mark-maker, it is such a shallow construct to as be almost laughable, were it not for confusion.
@millenomi I'm trying to be *very* specific here. The stochastic statistical nonsense, in the literal definition of "sense" or "meaning", is where I see a critical fault line.
That is, if I asked you "What is the meaning rule that guides the stochastic diffusion of dots toward or away from something?", how would you answer?
I feel this is where the key issue is.
@emmjemmyjammy And we need to actually focus on the *mechanics* of the creation; the interaction of the human with the formulation.
That is, if we are desperate to take the naive (and false) concept of “tool”, despite it also failing on sign and signification formulation, it *also* fails.
Why?
Because the fundamental mechanic of the *active interpretation*, during the formulation of the marks themselves, is outsourced to mere simulacrum and pure meaningless mimesis.
Okay, but that’s just playing fancily with definitions. In that sense, it’s obviously not art.
But I personally like AI art and can sometimes strongly relate to an art piece created by a piece of code, and/or find it very beautiful…
@troy_s my thoughts on this. We have a next-level Turing Test: not "Is this human?" but "Is this creative?"
@troy_s here is a brief thought experiment. say someone commissions a painting. the customer is very very specific about what they want it to depict -- objects, their relation to each other, poses, gestures, facial expressions, whatever.
from this description, two paintings are made, one by a human and another by typing the description into one of these programs. is one of these products art, and the other something else?
@StephanSchulz See the many responses to the naive notion of “tool” here in this thread. Does not qualify as a tool when it outsources the feedback loop between the sign, the signified, and the interpreter.
We ignore the abject disconnect of meaning due to the Statistical Nonsense diffusion pattern, it *fails* on the interpreter front in that the loop of mark making is outsourced to someone’s else’s code driven nonsense of “meaning”.
@StephanSchulz So I implore you to consider the specifics of the mark making itself, and to understand how wildly different it exists from say, a chisel.
1. The “meaning” directionality is outsourced; the “decision” to move toward or away from a mark.
2. The invisible simulacrum nonsense above, is placed atop of *other authorship* to further distort the mark making.
Reading a randomized set of words as a Choose Your Own Adventure is not authorship.
@troy_s Putting new features atop other authorship is indispensable for all art. Consider Warhol's Soup Cans - he uses existing art and rearranges it. Or john Cage's 4'33 - it only exists in contrast to all formal music the preceded it.
Also consider that many artists use random elements - an extreme case is found art, but Jason Pollok certainly did not plan every individual splatter.
@troy_s That is a good point, what people want when they say "art" these days would be better termed "illustrations".
(Like, every RPG these days is expected to be filled with illustrations)
@troy_s I totally agree.
Machines can never make art without an underlying understanding and desire to convey message and meaning.
But an artist can use a tool to create art.
What if the artist replaces a paint brush with a computer? Does it cease to be art?
I don’t have any good answers, but your message spurred some intellectual curiosity in me.
@anders I think these are all valid questions.
On the subject of “tool” it fails miserably as well. The “meaning” is driven by stochastic diffusion guidance, and as such, the interpreter-sign-signified loop is (a failure of course on even sign and signified) is *snapped* via the outsourcing of the interaction between the interpreter and the mark.
To be clear, a human can create a powerful piece via assemblages of Nonsense, but the singular piece *does not qualify*.
troy_s 
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