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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Will AI bring back beauty?

Looking at midjourney's top pieces of art I am struck by the beauty in them. They contain detail, high degrees of realism even when depicting surrealist themes. They tend to be symmetrical and often portray idealized versions of reality. AI art tends to portray archetypal depicitions of its motifs and often excludes blemmishes, dirt and grime.

Compare it with corporate memphis a primarily human generated art form that has gained significant traction in the public space in the past decade. This is the most expensive painting painted by a living woman.

Compare the buildings drawn by the AI with the best exterior of 2022 in Sweden according to architects.

AI gives people what it gets positive feedback from. It gives people what they want. People want visually stunning rather than the output of the art community.

That midjourney stuff is utter pabulum. It's only beautiful by the most shallow and insipid standards of beauty. The kind of "beauty" that would rank Thomas Kinkaide's paintings above Rembrandt's, because the former is bright and sparkly while the latter is brown and muddy. Or the kind of "beauty" that would consider N*SYNC's music superior to Bach's because the former's is free of dissonance and the later's is rife with it.

I don't particularly like the human art you linked either, but at least the artists are trying to do something interesting. We can do better than ugly modern art without resorting to saccharine crap and calling it beauty.

AI gives people what it gets positive feedback from. It gives people what they want.

Marvel movies and McDonalds chicken nuggets are examples of giving people what they want. Mass appeal produces boring hyperpalatability, not greatness.

Or the kind of "beauty" that would consider N*SYNC's music superior to Bach's because the former's is free of dissonance and the later's is rife with it.

It's more like preferring N*Sync to Schoenberg or Berg, not Bach.

Bach, in this analogy, is Notre Dame, the Gothic cathedrals, the gargoyles and filigree.

Schoenberg, in this analogy, is the building linked above. Gray concrete and straight lines.

And I don't blame anyone for preferring this to that, and given the choice of neither choose the other. And I like Pierrot Lunaire. It doesn't have much in the way of melody. It doesn't have much in the way of harmony. The lack of structure is glaring and intentional. That's brutalism in music, to my ears, and while brutalism may have a bad rap, it's widely disliked for a reason.

The real question: what is the musical equivalent to Corporate Memphis? Is that what NSync really represents?

The real question: what is the musical equivalent to Corporate Memphis? Is that what NSync really represents?

No. There isn't necessarily one style that would key to Corporate Memphis exactly, but you have to think about the intended purpose. Corporate Memphis isn't art as much as it is design. The guy drawing that stuff is specifically drawing it so it can be used on some corporate website, not so he can have a gallery opening and sell it at Southeby's. Hell, no one even knows the guy's name, as he's just an employee of some design firm. the closest musical equivalent to graphic design is what is known as Library Music. Once music started being used in television, it became increasingly clear that the lower budgets weren't always conducive to hiring a music director to write original cues for each week and having a full orchestra record it. So companies formed that would hire staff composers who would be writing and recording constantly, and these companies would package the music by mood and market it to budget-conscious productions. KPM was probably the best-known of these companies, and their demonstration records are prized among a certain breed of collectors. Their best-known tune is probably "Heavy Action" by Johnny Pearson, which became the theme to Monday Night Football, but they were in business for a long time and you still occasionally hear their stuff. For example, YouTuber Jon Bois has used their stuff in the background of his Chart Party videos.

Check out this YouTube playlist if you want to get an idea of what this stuff sounded like: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4Dbs6zJG23Y&list=PLiYfiJ4rWjUvAPUyWIGxW6Uz29cOQC_lz&index=2

One thing the online Library Music cult won't recognize, though, is that the business is still going strong today. With the explosion in web content the market for cheap licenseable music is as strong as ever. Admittedly, the newer stuff coming out is consciously designed to mimic popular styles, whereas the stuff from the '70s was much more sophisticated and was often a genre unto itself. Here's a link if you want to sample what modern library music sounds like: https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/genres/

You probably don't know any of these songs but the style is ubiquitous, as it aims more for a generic representation of a style and mood rather than an expression of the artist's feelings.