Interesting that the concept that the computer is somehow doing the art itself, missing the point that a computer is a tool just like a paintbrush, was even around in '71.
One wonders when the paintbrush was invented if people argued people should still finger paint, and that the paintbrush alienated artists from their work. There's a tendency to see all technology from before you were born as natural, and anything newer as unnatural.
What i find boring with western art is that it is completely dependent on the critic and the discourse statement, in text, that must accompany any "serious" work of art.
Zen and objects created under that philosophy makes no distinction between "high" and "low" art. There are multiple other approaches outside of the western paradigm.
The writer of the article is selling a monetary-driven agenda, as they are dependent on getting paid for their strong-worded texts, while refusing to address that particular elephant in the room, connecting western art and discourse. How tedious.
I live near a large art museum that has, for each piece, a plaque with the name, artist, year, and at most a paragraph or two of usually-historical context (and sometimes not even that).
Did we read entirely different articles? The one posted above is very much a creed against money-driven fads among artists.
The works of the great masters can be appreciated even by children. They speak for themselves.
The author is still around - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieder_Nake
And still has lots to say - https://twitter.com/carlcanary
Automated computer generated art is as beautiful as the greatest paintings.
Do we end up calling the team of programmers whom coded the program——Artists, or is it just the user of the powerful program? Artist in the traditional sense?
I remember working out at Muir Woods years in the 90’s. A new guy was telling me what he wanted to do with his life. He told me he wanted to become a computer Artist.
I remember both of us debating at what point is the tool more powerful than the person. He was dead set on computer art is just art. Their was no line to cross.
I’m still unsure. I don’t want to get into a debate either.
(If the guy I had the conversation with happens to read this, I hope you are doing well. I hope you are in this industry, and happy. I always felt you were going to make it big.)
As someone who paints daily and has made a lifetime study of painting, including visiting museums locally and worldwide, as well as trying to stay abreast of the "state of the art" of the use of computers in art (as well as writing software as a day job for decades), I am puzzled by this statement.
The greatest paintings, "in the flesh," simply have a punch and an impact that, to my eyes, has not been rivaled by the "state of the art" in digital renderings of any kind, or indeed in any works where a mechanical process is anything but a small factor in the completed work.
I would be fascinated to see what you consider to be examples of "automated computer-generated art" that rivals the works of Rembrandt, Titian, Velazquez, or anyone in the top tier of art history. Those artists are world-famous (not just now, but for centuries) for a reason, but you often have to get in the same room with the works to see why.
But how about tracing-paper? Or even a camera obscura? [1]
[1] https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/11/vermeer-secret-to...
A brush works with marks.
The latter is a larger infinity.
It's like the difference between digital and analog. Or raster and vector. Or map and territory.
Likewise symbols and brushmarks. I can describe brushmarks that could never be physically realized.
Yes, that art might be created by a black box unconscious neural network, but there’re still minds who: developed algorithms, had a vision of an art project, put together training datasets, set up the software, filtered output, and finally published the resulting art in some context (or set up a publication pipeline).
This further prompts an exercise in how a single human artist in some ways can be described as a neural network—that takes external reality as input, runs it through some layers (the lens of one’s mind) and produces art as output—and, similarly, might not always deserve the entirety of the credit: there’s inevitably someone with good taste (a curator, a mentor, a community, etc.) who “set up” the artist, who first recognized artist’s work, who pestered the artist to publish (or dissuaded from publishing work that wasn’t so good), who helped artist get published and gain the confidence to produce more art, and so on.
https://github.com/johnalexandergreene/Forsythia/tree/master...
Then the project sorta met its natural end, and then I sorta moved on
https://victorqribeiro.itch.io/qubes
https://www.outpan.com/app/99694412f2/qubes
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.victorribe...
you can also play it in any of these links
You can listen here: https://plaza.one/
Or you can get the streaming link and listen on your favorite audio player
It's actually uncannily prescient, politically and economically.
Is it even that? Art is to baseball as NTF is to baseball cards. It's something loosely associated with the art.
My real gripe with NFT is that collectibles--art, baseball cards, whatever--can be put on display. There's something to be said for tangible things.
"Indifferent as many critics and curators were, there were some responses to computer art that were considerably more severe. In fact, computer art has aroused the kind of extreme resentment that characterized many of the idolatry controversies scattered through the history of art. Beyond the sabotaging of computers, physical attacks have been made on artists for their involvement with such devices, and the careers of art curators have been significantly damaged by their participation in computer art exhibitions. Though it is commonly accepted that computer art was unpopular upon its arrival, many are unaware of the level of vitriol directed toward computer artists. In a case reaching the levels of harassment and personal attack, Grace Hertlein reported that she was called a “***” and “traitor” by a fellow artist, who saw her choice of medium as morally questionable and as a complete rejection of authentic artistic traditions"[1]
All sounds very similar to whats happening to a lot of artists thanks to Memo Akten's cryptoart.wtf name and shame site.
[1]: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/when-the-machine-...
I don’t think that’s fair. Artists should be aware of the impact of their work and that site served to educate a great number of people on the ecological harm of NFT art.
That isn’t to say that those artists deserve to be harassed about it though.
The best way to get these properties is to make a physical object and to make it unique either through craftsmanship or artificial constraint (a limited edition print run, for example).
Unless constrained by the artist, machine generated works do not have the property of uniqueness. They produce something more like poetry — infinitely reproducible art in the form of pure data sculpted at the human scale.
A photograph when presented as a computer image consists of pure data: but is it art? Was it taken at a moment in time in the real world? The uniqueness and craftsmanship is right there in the process of capture.
After re-reading the article, I think it's best understood by considering each paragraph a completely unconnected topic. (I'm not being snarky here.)
Not only does the artist code the artwork into what they consider to be the finished piece, they then curate the output of that system to pick out items that are of particular appeal.
Sure, many people may think that the director is the central figure, (often foolishly) even going so far as to almost completely discounting the impact others have, however I don’t think many people would be willing to completely discount the DoP, editor, screenwriter, etc. as artists in their own right, with their own contributions to the finished artwork.
As such your argument seems suspicious and weird. Sure, actual people were also involved in the creation of this hypothetical computer generated final artwork in different roles but can you be so quick to dismiss the contribution of the software?
I don’t think this is as easy to discount as you make it sound.
It's much safer to frame it as a question about tools - which it isn't - than about politics and power structures.
Analogy: telephone is like real-life conversation -> chat is like telephone -> social media is like chat -> now look where we are.
Basically, someone needs to smear fruit on a rock or punch a tree if they want to reach me. Otherwise, it's not art, just graphic design...
