I really like this perspective. One thing I am a little stuck on is the concept of “intent” - it feels a little too neat to compare the lack of intent in AI to the form of intent in the work of an artist like Judith Scott, who surely HAD an intent of some sort in her creative process. Disabled artists challenge the concept of artistic “genius,” but to me because there is a *different* form of thinking going on, not a lack of thinking, or a total absence of thinking like in AI. Not sure if I am being clear, or maybe this is an oversimplification of what you are saying. Also, in AI art there is the added layer of the input of the human who interacted with the AI, who I had assumed intended/expected the images to be off kilter.
I don't think the analogy is perfect, but I think both (Scott and AI) show the ways that intention can be divided, or opaque, or at least semi absent. In AI art, there is a human who has some intent, and then there's also this element of randomization. The question, "who created this? who is responsible for this?" is something modern artists have been playing with for a long time; think of John Cage's Silence for example.
Loved the article. But I have a problem with the way AI is used. To me AI is still a predictive text tool. Sure it has expanded to longer and longer sentences and use of other media - including creating stock images of women eating salads.
I used to write google search poems (I think I've seen you write one?), which really was inspired by some early McSweeney's post about things a person working at Barnes and Noble would hear when they told customers the book they were looking for was on the table behind them. It was 30 iterations of "Any closer and it'd have bit me." Slightly different.
It is funny to start a common phrase and see what predictive text fills it in with. It can be art if it reveals something about life. Which I think is fantastically easy to do. But I appreciate your insight that it is what is broken or disabled that creates the necessary tension to make something art, and not a stock photo.
Anyway, good stuff. Not sure what my point about AI is other than I feel like it is still a tool and not an actual creator, if that makes sense. Even if you ask an AI a really vague question like, "AI, go make art" it seems to me the "Intelligence" is still coming from the outside.
Now I'm getting way off point: it also brings up the idea that the "art quality" is created after the fact by viewers or outside eyes. Like Alice says, names are useful to people that use them (something like that). So things created without intention only can be art in context of our society. But that is true of everything, right? I gotta go back to work. I don't know what I'm talking about.
"... It can be art if it reveals something about life..... Which I think is fantastically easy to do"
exactly...We humans are programmed to over actively look for patterns and meaning even when there IS none, which is one of the more striking features of AI...It really DOES make you have to examine the role of the viewer in ways that 'agent created art' doesn't. Agent created art assumes a 'conversation' between artist and viewer, which still exists albeit on a much leaner definition of "artist"...decisions are STILL being made IOW
This is fantastic and I had to share it with a few friends. We've had some deep(ish) discussions about AI and art and writing, and this feels like a great addition to our ongoing chats. Thanks!
I'm kind of speeding through a week's worth of reading this evening, so maybe I missed it, but these AI generated images of women are not just "skinny," but some look emaciated. They remind me of models and the ensuing spikes in the numbers of anorexic young women in the 90's.
I don't know that they perfectly line up but both essays touch on the questions of kitsch and how we perceive intentionality:
--------------------------
"You could not recuperate Del Rey into any narrative of female empowerment, and you also could not deny that she was making exactly the music she wanted to make — she is more of an old-fashioned singer-songwriter than any of her peers, with a distinctive, coherent sensibility that provides a throughline for her entire catalogue. Even Taylor Swift, who is much praised for her writing, tends to sound different depending on her producer: The Antonoff songs sound like Antonoff songs, the Max Martin songs sound like Max Martin songs, the National albums sound like National albums, etc. Del Rey changes producers, but every song sounds like Lana Del Rey.
Del Rey embodied female authorship without female empowerment. This made her a puzzle that no-one could put together — at least, not on the terms pop feminism put forth. It was easier to conclude she was some nth-level ironist, a “queer performance artist” pretending to embody the worst of heteronormativity, than it was to admit that she might have bad ideas. So that’s what most people did: Constructing elaborate theoretical justifications for her work and going on and on about the subversive “persona” of Lana Del Rey, when she herself said she was just singing about her life wearing clothes she thought were pretty."
Huh. I mean, I don't know that Del Rey is the final arbiter of the meaning of her music and I think if she said she was just singing about wearing clothes, that's probably at least someone ironic? Idk; I'm not a huge, huge Del Rey fan, but I don't think she's a fool. Like she seems to be pretty clearly singing about femininity/female embodiment, and the ways they can be limiting/suffocating/pleasurable.
I think guys especially should be at least somewhat careful about declaring that femininity is shallow, disempowering, unintelligent, I guess. There's not a great history there.
Oh, sorry. And, yes, I can completely understand why you'd have that reaction but, in the context of his other writing, I don't take it as simple dismissal (at the end of the essay Doyle talks about continuing to enjoy Del Ray and concludes, "On “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing” (Lana, like all of us, has evidently been getting into Fiona Apple) she pleads with her listeners that, though she is “regrettably a white woman" she's "got good intentions, even if I’m one of the last ones.” I believe she means it. It’s always best to believe that Lana Del Rey means what she says. People aren’t always the best judges of their own intentions, though: “I’m going to take you for all that you’ve got,” she sang on “Money Power Glory,” and I believe she means that, too. ")
Wow. What a great fucking article.
thanks!
(:
I really like this perspective. One thing I am a little stuck on is the concept of “intent” - it feels a little too neat to compare the lack of intent in AI to the form of intent in the work of an artist like Judith Scott, who surely HAD an intent of some sort in her creative process. Disabled artists challenge the concept of artistic “genius,” but to me because there is a *different* form of thinking going on, not a lack of thinking, or a total absence of thinking like in AI. Not sure if I am being clear, or maybe this is an oversimplification of what you are saying. Also, in AI art there is the added layer of the input of the human who interacted with the AI, who I had assumed intended/expected the images to be off kilter.
I don't think the analogy is perfect, but I think both (Scott and AI) show the ways that intention can be divided, or opaque, or at least semi absent. In AI art, there is a human who has some intent, and then there's also this element of randomization. The question, "who created this? who is responsible for this?" is something modern artists have been playing with for a long time; think of John Cage's Silence for example.
Indeed. Prompting the AI and flagging results for collection. Is that not curation?
Loved the article. But I have a problem with the way AI is used. To me AI is still a predictive text tool. Sure it has expanded to longer and longer sentences and use of other media - including creating stock images of women eating salads.
I used to write google search poems (I think I've seen you write one?), which really was inspired by some early McSweeney's post about things a person working at Barnes and Noble would hear when they told customers the book they were looking for was on the table behind them. It was 30 iterations of "Any closer and it'd have bit me." Slightly different.
It is funny to start a common phrase and see what predictive text fills it in with. It can be art if it reveals something about life. Which I think is fantastically easy to do. But I appreciate your insight that it is what is broken or disabled that creates the necessary tension to make something art, and not a stock photo.
Anyway, good stuff. Not sure what my point about AI is other than I feel like it is still a tool and not an actual creator, if that makes sense. Even if you ask an AI a really vague question like, "AI, go make art" it seems to me the "Intelligence" is still coming from the outside.
Now I'm getting way off point: it also brings up the idea that the "art quality" is created after the fact by viewers or outside eyes. Like Alice says, names are useful to people that use them (something like that). So things created without intention only can be art in context of our society. But that is true of everything, right? I gotta go back to work. I don't know what I'm talking about.
Ai is definitely just a tool. So yes, the intention comes from the person making the prompt and examining or choosing the results.
"... It can be art if it reveals something about life..... Which I think is fantastically easy to do"
exactly...We humans are programmed to over actively look for patterns and meaning even when there IS none, which is one of the more striking features of AI...It really DOES make you have to examine the role of the viewer in ways that 'agent created art' doesn't. Agent created art assumes a 'conversation' between artist and viewer, which still exists albeit on a much leaner definition of "artist"...decisions are STILL being made IOW
This is fantastic and I had to share it with a few friends. We've had some deep(ish) discussions about AI and art and writing, and this feels like a great addition to our ongoing chats. Thanks!
thanks! glad it was helpful.
I'm kind of speeding through a week's worth of reading this evening, so maybe I missed it, but these AI generated images of women are not just "skinny," but some look emaciated. They remind me of models and the ensuing spikes in the numbers of anorexic young women in the 90's.
Those salad pictures are fucking CREEPY.
Interesting piece! I took an Intro to AI course in the Fall and now I'm trying to keep up with emerging stuff.
Very interesting post (and I appreciated your note about how substack is a good home for this sort of essay). I find myself thinking about it in connection with Jude Doyle's piece yesterday on Lana Del Rey -- https://jude-doyle.ghost.io/lana-del-rey-red-scare/?ref=jude-doyle-newsletter
I don't know that they perfectly line up but both essays touch on the questions of kitsch and how we perceive intentionality:
--------------------------
"You could not recuperate Del Rey into any narrative of female empowerment, and you also could not deny that she was making exactly the music she wanted to make — she is more of an old-fashioned singer-songwriter than any of her peers, with a distinctive, coherent sensibility that provides a throughline for her entire catalogue. Even Taylor Swift, who is much praised for her writing, tends to sound different depending on her producer: The Antonoff songs sound like Antonoff songs, the Max Martin songs sound like Max Martin songs, the National albums sound like National albums, etc. Del Rey changes producers, but every song sounds like Lana Del Rey.
Del Rey embodied female authorship without female empowerment. This made her a puzzle that no-one could put together — at least, not on the terms pop feminism put forth. It was easier to conclude she was some nth-level ironist, a “queer performance artist” pretending to embody the worst of heteronormativity, than it was to admit that she might have bad ideas. So that’s what most people did: Constructing elaborate theoretical justifications for her work and going on and on about the subversive “persona” of Lana Del Rey, when she herself said she was just singing about her life wearing clothes she thought were pretty."
Huh. I mean, I don't know that Del Rey is the final arbiter of the meaning of her music and I think if she said she was just singing about wearing clothes, that's probably at least someone ironic? Idk; I'm not a huge, huge Del Rey fan, but I don't think she's a fool. Like she seems to be pretty clearly singing about femininity/female embodiment, and the ways they can be limiting/suffocating/pleasurable.
I think guys especially should be at least somewhat careful about declaring that femininity is shallow, disempowering, unintelligent, I guess. There's not a great history there.
Jude hates me, btw. I still like his writing, but mostly try to stay away from him at this point.
Oh, sorry. And, yes, I can completely understand why you'd have that reaction but, in the context of his other writing, I don't take it as simple dismissal (at the end of the essay Doyle talks about continuing to enjoy Del Ray and concludes, "On “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing” (Lana, like all of us, has evidently been getting into Fiona Apple) she pleads with her listeners that, though she is “regrettably a white woman" she's "got good intentions, even if I’m one of the last ones.” I believe she means it. It’s always best to believe that Lana Del Rey means what she says. People aren’t always the best judges of their own intentions, though: “I’m going to take you for all that you’ve got,” she sang on “Money Power Glory,” and I believe she means that, too. ")
Spoons and teeth, spoons and teeth. If it’s disarming, or otherwise engaging, it’s art. I really miss the “is it art” bot on twitter.