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Has anyone noticed how much vitriol there is towards AI-generated art? Over the past year it's slowly grown into something quite ferocious, though not quite ubiquitous. I'm starting to feel (almost) as if it's outside the overton window to admit to using or liking AI art. Like I said, it's not ubiquitous, but maybe it's getting there. Pretty much any thread I ever see that features AI art (outside of specialty groups devoted to AI interest) has many vocal detractors accusing AI art of being trash and stealing from real artists.
While my mind is not fully made up on the issue of whether AI art is "good", if you ask me, I wouldn't say that it's bad that AI learns from "stealing" from artists. Honestly, ask absolutely anyone who's learned anything creative: learning art is all about learning how to steal from people. I know it's not completely analogous, but I don't personally believe that it should be bad for AI to learn by stealing while it's okay for human artists to learn by stealing.
More than anything, I'm kinda surprised there's this strong sentiment, and willingness to call out AI art and its proponents as being some sort of evil in the world. Maybe it's mostly because people get off on being judgy these days, and believing they have some sort of moral high ground, and less that they actually care about artists? I'm not sure, but I would have thought the Butlerian Jihad would have started for something more severe than art.
No. That's not it.
I'm not, typically, a moralist. I hate cancel culture; I hate people who act like they can judge others. I roll my eyes equally at leftists who work themselves into knots over sexism and racism, and trads who gnash their teeth at the withering away of the values of yesteryear. Whatever happened, I ask, to freedom? Isn't anyone going to stand up for freedom? Freedom, the most protean of all ideals, against the dreary weave of thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots: the freedom to dare and dream, the freedom to be true to what is one's ownmost, no matter how idiosyncratic, no matter how questionable or uncanny.
But freedom has a limit; it is, after all, only one ideal among many, one concept among many, no matter how charming of a concept it may be. I can't actually bring myself to get upset if someone gets canceled over AI art. That's how high the stakes are for me - my other "principles" turn to dust in the face of this reality. This makes me a hypocrite; but so what? If I contradict myself, then very well, I contradict myself. Some instincts are too powerful to be ignored.
I think most people have a limit like this - the limit beyond which talk of "freedom" reveals itself to be a hollow game, a luxury to be reserved for more genteel times, a mirage that dissipates when it is confronted with something of genuine weight and seriousness. AI art is that limit for me; other people will have their own, and I will try not to judge them for it, even when I find their beliefs to be incomprehensible. For the individuals who truly have (or at least claim to have) no limit, no possible limit to freedom, we might rightly view them with suspicion. Attempting to subsist on a spiritual diet consisting of nothing but the NAP alone is the veganism of the soul; it is lacking a certain red-blooded vitality, there is something missing. There can be no great love without great hatred.
The fact that you are so perplexed by the response is, indeed, part of the frustration.
Why, though? What is it about AI art that prompts such outrage?
I'm an artist. The AI is pretty clearly doing what I do. Any argument I see for objecting to AI art applies equally well to artists generally. To the extent that AI art infringes on copyright, we all infringe in exactly the same way when we learn to draw by copying other peoples' work. AI is very likely going to put me out of a job. But why should this be objectionable? My job is a job. The AI won't take away my ability to draw or paint or model. To the extent that it reduces the value of my drawing and painting and modelling to zero in an economic sense, why is this a bad thing, when it wasn't a bad thing to invent lace machines or lathes or jackhammers or whatever other labor-saving machines we might care to name? It won't stop me from making the art I actually care to make, and while the idea of having to change careers is quite scary, I certainly won't be in this boat alone, and I imagine that we have a reasonable collective chance of muddling through.
...But then, why would you expect others to respect your own appeals to freedom, when you've concluded that no one actually cares about Freedom as such as a terminal value? You roll out the Shall Nots for something as trivial as AI generated art, but don't want people to roll them out for sexual ethics or homogeneity of values?
I take the "A" view on AI art, and you take the "B" view.
I may still fall back on appeals to freedom at times out of laziness or force of habit, but I've been gradually trying to work it out of my vocabulary for a while now. If the best argument you have in favor of something is "well, you could just not tell me to not do it", then that is a little lame. With regards to sexuality, for example, I believe that a libertine sexual ethos is part of a system of spiritual values that can be given its own positive defense on its own independent merits.
In that discussion, "A" is something approximating "we are huddled around a small kernel of knowledge, surrounded by vast, dark unknowns, hoping to grow that kernel a little larger", and "B" is something approximating "We reside in a well-lit framework of knowledge that encompasses the small, fragmentary set of unknowns that remain to be eliminated", where these are referencing what we comprehend about the real world and our place in it.
But even before AI, art is our creation, is it not? Where within art are the vast unknowns that could loom over us?
We make images for our own pleasure. We find that some images please us more than others. We discover rules and techniques that optimize the pleasure generated by the images; these rules and techniques clearly derive from our own psychology and history and nature, but they seem both discoverable and explicable, and can and have been reduced to engineering. What part of this does not fit within the "B" perspective? What realities of art does it neglect, which could form an argument for "A"?
With regards to philosophy and epistemology, I would argue that "A" is better, because it better fits observable reality and the historical record, while "B" appears to me to consistently generate notable disasters; a straightforward argument from prudence. But commercial and popular art of the sort we are discussing here is inherently frivolous, so where would an argument from prudence even be grounded?
Again, I am an artist by trade and by temperament. I do not claim to have perfect insight into the nature of Art, but neither do I accept bald assertions of deeper mysteries wholly unknown and invisible to me. I have spent the better part of a lifetime observing how the sausage gets made; I can accept that there may be things of value that I do not understand or am not wired to appreciate, but I also can observe that much of what people claim to value as "art" is in fact pretention covering for laziness or naked greed. I have known too many artists to believe that the pursuit of or mere association with art confers any special virtues beyond those innate to discipline and skill, or indeed any significant insight into philosophy or truth. Beauty and Truth are not synonyms, at least for any common definition of those terms.
All that being said, what am I missing? What is the "A" view, with regards to art?
I could supply a list of concrete examples, drawing from works in the canons of painting and literature, and discuss certain persistent interpretive difficulties with those works. You might then be persuaded to agree "ah yes, there is something unknown about that work", or you might not. I could discuss the intimate relationship that art bears to subjective experience; how the mere fact of our subjectivity is itself quite awe-inspiring and miraculous, how we are very far from being transparent to ourselves, how we are very far from understanding why we do what we do or why we feel what we feel, or even what we feel when we feel. How many mysteries there are in what is ostensibly most intimate. But I think all that would be somewhat beside the point, because my intuition here is that the disagreement is one of fundamental attunement; it can't be resolved by any finite list of examples or arguments.
In an interview, Derrida (who was a Jew) was asked if it was time to eject Heidegger (who was a literal member of the Nazi party, and, depending on who you ask and which documents you place the most evidentiary weight on, a somewhat enthusiastic and unrepentant one) from the philosophical canon. After all, hadn't his politics discredited even the ostensibly "apolitical" portions of his philosophical work? Wasn't it time to simply leave him behind as an embarrassing accident in the dustbin of history? Derrida's response was, "No. Of course not. There is still so much that remains unread in Heidegger." (He, of course, could not have meant this literally - Heidegger was his greatest philosophical influence, and Derrida had read all of his works cover to cover multiple times, and lectured on them extensively.)
Does that mean anything to you? When you look at... anything - a person, a work, a system, a phenomenon - are you struck by the impression that there is so much that remains unread? Do you want to believe that there is so much that remains unread?
Simply wrong! Just, not even correct at all! And by that I mean, yes, what you have described here is indeed a process that can actually take place; the process is physically realizable. But the process thus described has little in common with what I think art could be, or should be. And if you think that this is all that art is good for, then it's unclear why you would go into art instead of the pharmaceutical industry.
Let me respond with some clarifying questions first.
Suppose that there were no God; even if you think this is absolutely inconceivable, try to grant it as a hypothetical. What would become of the "A" view then? Would it still make sense, in any context, or no? If there were no God, would reality shrink to the point that we actually could master it all in a rational, calculated way?
Are there certain attitudes - wonder, awe - which, when applied to mortals and their deeds, can easily be construed as a category error at best and blasphemy at worst?
Basically, I would like to determine the extent to which the light of the Almighty makes everything else seem dull in comparison.
Another clarifying question. Would you say that you support the "A" view because:
There are certain enigmas which deserve respect; one must learn not to exceed one's station; we are all strangers dwelling in a strange land, and like all guests we must be gracious to our hosts; or
It is a contingent, empirical truth that there are a number of facts about reality which remain unknown, and therefore, on a rational cost-benefit analysis, we should refrain from hasty action. But in principle, if we could learn enough true facts, we may not need to be as prudent.
I've been speaking about art as a totality - all of it, across time and space, not just one kind or type. And furthermore I disagree that commercial art is "frivolous". There is no single fact about a work's provenance, medium, or content that can identify it as "frivolous" - that is always a determination that must be made on an individual basis. End of Evangelion for example is an exemplary film, plainly a creative triumph of the first order, despite it being a thoroughly "commercial" work and having a mass theatrical release.
If I tell you that I highly value Duchamp's The Large Glass, more than the large majority of representational works that would traditionally be considered "technically correct", would you believe that I'm being sincere? Or is this just pretension and laziness? I encourage you to be honest; I won't take it as a violation of charity if you say that I'm lying, or deluded.
I never said it did.
I never said they were.
No, I don't think you are. Trade yes, temperament no.
From what I've been able to glean from your posts on this forum, I don't think I've seen much that would indicate to me an "artist's temperament". You seem to have a good head on your shoulders: sturdy, even-tempered, concerned with practical matters, not prone to strong emotional disturbances in either direction. Concrete rather than idealistic. Perhaps your self-image is entirely different, but this is how you come off in your posts.
Of course there may be certain domains where you recognize that no finite method of analysis is up to the task any longer; where you have no choice but to abase yourself before something greater and "lose your head" for a moment. But this by itself does not make one an artist. The mystic is undoubtedly sincere in the feeling of oceanic vastness he experiences when he communes with the Divine, but the mystic is not an artist. In fact the two types are fundamentally opposed; the artist is this-worldly in a way that the mystic cannot be.
I don't want to give the impression that I know exactly what an artist must be, or that there's only one way to be an artist. Undoubtedly, multiple types of people can be artists. Artists can have substantial political and philosophical disagreements with each other, and neither of them is less of a "real artist" for it. But nonetheless, if the phrase "artist's temperament" is going to mean anything at all, then it must be something determinate, to the exclusion of what it is not; and I don't really see how it applies to you.
I love the act of creation, of weaving new things out of my imagination and building them up into something approximating reality, drawing connections between them, rolling them up into a big katamari-ball of associations and idea-connections and emotional inductions. This act brings me great joy and delight, and has all my life since I achieved self-awareness.
I love sharing these creations with others, and seeing joy and delight spark in their eyes, hearing their laughter and excitement, seeing them experience the induced triumph or sorrow or conviction as what I've made sweeps them up and carries them along, even if only for a moment or two. I love the communion with others innate to this act, the joyful seduction of drawing them out of the material and mundane into the immaterial and fantastical.
I am vain enough to desire that it is my creations that should strike a fire in their minds, that some part of me should take root in those around me, to see some part of myself reproduced in the mind of others. I want to make a mark on those around me.
But in much the same way, I love partaking in the creations of others, being swept away or inspired in turn, and I love taking pieces of what they have made and kitbashing them together into something "new" of my own. I love finding the Buddha-nature in something, finding which parts of it hook and pull, which motivate, where the payload lies and through which channels the current flows, and I love how this knowledge, once gained, strengthens and invigorates my own creations. It's a push and pull, give and take, cooperation and competition, like all of the best things in life. This, to me, is the essence of the "artist's temperament", the center around which any dividing line should be drawn.
Do you disagree? And if so, how would you define the center of the "artist's temperament"? The distinction that stands out from what you've written appears to be the idea of the mysterious, the numinous, the "losing of one's head", the encounter of something incomprehensibly vast or primordial. You are correct that I see art from a "B" perspective, or close enough for purposes of discussion. What I don't get is where you're getting the makings of an "A" perspective from with regards to art, other than sheer assertion. I can imagine that there's some sense I lack, some frequency I'm deaf and blind to, but I can also imagine an invisible dragon in my garage. How to proceed?
More on this soon, hopefully.
I would define it in terms of two central interrelated traits. I will try to be clear and direct, with specific examples:
The artist is someone who regularly experiences complex and exotic states of the soul. Not all emotions are created equal; some are more refined and subtle than others. Suppose we compare "sadness" with "melancholy". A child can be sad, there's nothing special about it; the child sees a baby duck fall down and hurt itself, he feels bad for it, he is sad. It's a simple stimulus-response relationship. With something like melancholy on the other hand, as compared with simple sadness, the list of initial requirements is longer. It requires one to have a certain amount of temporal history, as well as a certain self-reflexivity. Reflecting on lost opportunities, thinking about what could have been, gazing wistfully into the distance - it is sad, yes, but the inflection is different. It can start to mix with positive overtones as well - the sheer pleasure of reflecting on one's own life narrative and taking a bird's eye view of it. The artist ascends the scale of refinement to increasingly unusual and uncommon experiences, experiences and emotions that may be so rare they don't even have a name yet.
The artist is someone who perceives (in the widest possible sense of "perceives") features of people, objects, events, and phenomena that are ignored or unnoticed by non-artists. There is nothing artistic (in the sense of, exemplifying the artist's temperament) about appreciating the beauty in a sunset, because everyone already knows that sunsets are beautiful. It's well-trodden territory. The artist sees beauty in things that other people don't (yet) recognize as beautiful; or he sees ugliness where other people don't (yet), or he perceives entirely new properties that have yet to be named. Ideally we would like his observations to be veridical in some sense, and not just the idiosyncratic hallucinations of a madman; the ultimate test for this is whether his works are persuasive. The greatest mark of success of a work of art is if it makes people say "yes, I had never noticed that before; I had never noticed that such and such was so beautiful, or so ugly - but now I do". And, finally, the observations that the artist first pressed into physical form eventually pass over into common sense - everyone simply knows that such and such is beautiful, or ugly, or whatever, it's just always been obvious.
To be clear, this is a description of a temperament, a set of psychological traits. You can have a person who makes art but doesn't possess this temperament, and you can have a person who possesses this temperament but doesn't make art. The two are independent.
I do think that these traits are correlated with what one might call the stereotype of the "tortured Romantic soul" - a certain moodiness, a certain angst, a certain emotional volatility. But it's not a one-to-one causal relationship. There can be people who instantiate the traits I described but don't fit the stereotype.
I don't think I can really go further on this until you answer the clarifying questions I posed with regards to your views on the "A" view itself and how it stands with God. Crucially, I need to understand: are the thoughts I have expressed here just entirely foreign to you, or are they thoughts that are familiar to you, and it's just that you don't understand how anyone could have these thoughts about art in particular?
I believe you have described yourself as a non-utilitarian in the past. Where does utilitarianism end for you? Where do you draw the line and say "no, this right here, this is beyond the reach of any rational cost-benefit analysis, and I won't hear another word about it"? Because that's how I feel about art. You presumably have something similar in your own experience, so you can use that as an analogy for understanding my experience. Does that make sense?
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