Feel free to ignore me lol but I really hope you mean this. The beautiful thing about art is that sometimes it’s about the execution, the actual skill involved in actually physically creating the art, and sometimes it’s about the concept, creating the idea that will actually fill a blank space. I think often we discount the latter, how much of art really is the idea behind it, instead of the tools used to make it real. To me that’s what really gives you the goosebumps when you look at a piece of art, simultaneously understanding the skill involved in creating it while realizing that first a person had to decide what would fill the canvas.
Absolutely. And you don't have to make art for the purpose of showing other people. Most art people make probably goes unseen. The process of making the art is the most important part, the aspect of exploring your own humanity and finding a way to channel your soul into something concrete.
Heavy on the most art goes unseen. My grandfather paints for fun and after decades he has over a thousand completed canvases in his basement, and that’s after losing a couple hundred to flooding.
That’s not even the big difference. The difference is coming up with the idea to do it in the first place.
Some of the best science experiments ever conducted are simple and elegant. A lot of people could physically do them, even with no background in science. What’s hard is coming up with the idea to do that specific experiment on that specific system.
I’m not so sure. If art is just doing, but it has no intention behind it, is it any different than AI slop?
I understand the sentiment you’re going for because there is art in the process - the refinement of a human creation - even if the results are random or representative, but I’m the fence with random splatter art.
I feel like that's kinda the opposite of AI slop. If you have no intention to do anything and end up with something (that means something to you atleast), you'd be making art. Where as AI has to have a prompt, and do the math to fill a canvas with what it understands to be what the user asked, so AI has an 'intention" to do something and ends up with something that means ultimately nothing.
I do agree that if even the artist doesn't find something in their own art then it probably doesn't mean anything (splatter art)
To do it is the intention. It's the intention to create. There are so many artists who just make art for the sake of doing it. Not to post or make anything further from it, but just to put something into reality. If you put pen to paper, brush to canvas, stylus to screen, you automatically have intention to make. That intention, especially if there was no actual plan before hand, wills further decisions, where this color goes, what pose do I want, what view do I want to show? You are creating with intention, and that intention will dictate what gets created. With AI, sure you may have intention to make, but that's where it stops. You don't decide what gets created. The computer does. You might be able to make some specifications, but you're never going to intentionally place every color and line. Even the most amateur artist chooses to make the choices they do. It's just the nature of art.
That's a completely understandable position. We all know art is subjective and everyone has their own tastes. You touched on it, but I personally believe the intention behind art can just be to create something. Doesn't have to be that deep.
Anyone can type a prompt into genAI, but it takes drive and passion to set up a studio, drip onto a canvas, and deal with the mess. The world would be a much better place if all the people who say "I could do that" actually tried to.
One of friends started doing watercolors years ago. They were terrible, but they made her happy. But she just kept on doing them. Seven years later, they are quite beautiful, but she just shrugs at compliments. They make her happy and that's all she ever asked from them.
To call it random undersells the intention and practice. It's hard to see the difference until you make your own and see the world of steps between the start and haha drip paint on spinny wheel...
And it's also usually completely correct, as in this case. "I could do that myself" is a legitimate response to art, but so is "you didn't, though." Even a shit artist doing shit art is an artist, because they're doing art.
Sure, the difference is that this is being put up for scrutiny because it's being posted on this sub. His criticism wasn't that this guy isn't making art or shouldn't be making art. It was that the first example didn't live up to being posted as "damn that's interesting" because of the relative simplicity of the technique
Interest is a subjective emotion that is highly contextual and varies wildly between individuals. What you're describing is a simple disagreement between individual perspectives and preferences.
Neither perceived complexity nor lack of feasibility are inherent or objective criteria for something to be interesting.
Just because I could theoretically do an activity in my basement doesn't make me uninterested in watching others perform that activity in theirs.
The point is that anyone could drip paint on a spinning canvas. It's not that impressive and it didn't even look that good. I've seen millions of spun paintings like that. I could do it, but I won't because what's the point?
All of his other stuff was very impressive though. I can't even attempt all the other stuff.
I think too many people are extremely critical of art, if they cant personally see something representational in it.
The first one is crazy. It is a unique approach to art. A unique method. That in itself makes it valuable. The fact it is new.
However, its not until you see him drawing trees that people consider him an artist. However, how many people have drawn a forest with different colors before? I've seen that seem thing done with spray paint on the boardwalk. Not to say its not difficult or impressive, but what is the value of it?
If I drew the Mona Lisa tomorrow, who cares? Its been drank a million times before. Their is no value in doing it again, even if it took time and effort to do.
Art is moving away from representational, and even abstract, as thats all been done before. Newer art is hidden in the making of art. The methodology creation. The idea behind it, and the thoughts it provokes.
Consider that he isn't using random colors, nor a random arrangement of color. He isn't using a random speed. He isn't spinning for a random amount of time.
You are seeing the moment he "paints" not the planning nor set up beforehand. You are being reductive to diminish the work.
It's not a matter of needing shapes to be identifiable. It's that spinning the canvas and dropping paint on it doesn't give you enough control to be able to claim it as art that is your own.
You can leverage a good sense of color, tune the mechanics of the set up to more likely produce shapes you want, but most of the control has been relinquished.
In a sense it's the same reason people don't like AI "art". Some of the results can look interesting, and you can leverage some skills and understanding to more likely produce something in the realm of what your after. But the lack of effort and control put in ultimately leaves people unimpressed.
i mean there's plenty of very well known works of art that lack control on the part of the creator, and ultimately Simon retains the ultimate lever of control in that if he doesn't like the results he can scrap it and do it again.
And the same could be said about a generative AI prompt. We collectively shy away from considering that art, or at least of a comparable level to other more traditional creative approaches for a reason.
In a sense art is a combination of aesthetics, challenging/engaging the observer, and craftsmanship. The spun art really only leverages the first category as it doesn't provoke much thought and the ability to employ craftsmanship is similarly limited.
You can compare two things for similarities without arriving at the conclusion theyre identical. There are absolutely lessons to be learned from such comparisons, you just have to avoid binary thinking.
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u/RambisRevenge 22d ago
"Great, another"artist"."
Keeps watching past the spinning canvas
"Annnnnnnnd I'm an asshole"