I know a lot of people who do art for a living. They are basically treated like shit by capitalism. Nobody respects how much time, effort and training goes into art. Art is fucking hard. You get paid next to nothing for it.
Unless you sell your soul to work in advertising/marketing. Then you get paid only slightly more than nothing. You are also now expected to churn out a fuckton of art each day if you want to keep your job. Enjoy watching everything unique, creative and special be sucked out of your art by higher-ups that demand safe, soulless corporate art. Enjoy being told you're expendable and easily replaced so you work an extra 5 hours unpaid that night. Working conditions in some advertising agencies are close to resembling sweatshops with how they exploit their junior artists in particular. I knew someone that used to work 7 days a week, even though they weren't paid on weekends. They worked until midnight (unpaid overtime) only to start again at 8am the next day again. That's how 'competitive' the industry is. They eventually had a nervous breakdown and changed careers.
Art being some bourgeoise thing where a beret-wearing snob sells a photo of piss for 5 trillion dollars is not the norm (as funny as that would be). The norm is backbreaking work for very little in return, like every other job title that isn't CEO, Manager, or Landlord.
So yeah, even though I'm fascinated by AI art and don't think it would necessarily be a bad thing if it was being used in a socialist setting, I think artists have every right to be upset that tech bros are finding a way to suck even more life out of art.
In short, creatives get treated like shit. Thinking art isn't real work is chud-level shit.
Thinking art isn’t real work is chud-level shit.
:100-com:%. It’s literally the same brainworms as “baristas aren’t working class”.
No idea why some dudes are so obsessed with gatekeeping the working class when it’s a pretty straightforward thing to determine if you pull your head out of your ass.
Do you get paid for labor or do you get part of the money from others labor? Simple as that
Art is one of the main things that makes this shithole worth living in. Imagine if we outlawed all music tomorrow. Think of all the industry halls that play radio all day to keep the workers sane, think of people in their offices, think of people at the dentist, in a traffic jam, etc... It'd be bloody barbarism.
It's not my revolution if I can't dance.
It's the difference between a game like Disco Elysium and a game like Candy Crush clone 69
Art being some bourgeoise thing where a beret-wearing snob sells a photo of piss for 5 trillion dollars is not the norm (as funny as that would be).
Yup. An artist with a commercial empire is a businessperson first and foremost, however they choose to style theirself. Booges like to play pretend at being artists, farmers, and reusable rocketship designers but all they know how to do is eat shit and tweet
it's crazy how a lot of people's public image of the art world is andy warhol or jeff koons or some insane shit like that. from that angle i can see how people think art is bougie nonsense, but the reality is that these are capitalists masquerading as artists. indeed, the question is real—can true art even exist in a profit-driven economy? does capital not pervert the very art it claims to create?
You WORK for a living, or you OWN THINGS for a living.Is this an absolute rule? No, of course not. But it's gonna point you in the right direction far more often than not...
Algorithmically generated images are interesting. In an ideal setting, it allows for artists to supplement their work, freeing them to put time and attention where they like. Under market conditions, it's going to produce some absolute garbage that's also ludicrously overvalued. And that's funny.
Yeah the problem with ai art, like any automation under capitalism, is that it means people lose jobs and can't support themselves. Not that it has "no soul" or whatever. Same for the people who turn into intellectual property lawyers on the topic of training data for the model.
Nothing is good in a capitalist setting, thats why we must make sure that tech is free, open source, and held in common
Stable diffusion can be used by anyone, its free, and that also includes professional artists. They'll still produce high quality art but hey maybe itll speed things up for them and make shit less of a terrible grind. Its not anywhere near being able to meet the standards of various companies but it will make things easier for the pros.
i work in a creative field and yeah i started because i was a painter and dedicated my life to it and when it was time to get a job the most realistic thing was to be a designer in a marketing firm which quickly was hell. everything was soulless and not just soulless but actively oppressive towards the employees and especially the customers. i did work long hours, often working 9-9PM because the higher ups had a "hare-brained idea" that needed to be completed in less than one day so it could be tested the next day and probably thrown out by the third day. an insane work culture. so i left to do freelance and now i make significantly less money (very significantly less than median wage also) than before but at least i'm not treated like shit and abused.
i had a friend who came to america to work in the music industry. he was a very talented mix engineer and he worked with artists you've definitely listened to and heard. pop stars, very famous people. he was abused like fuck at that job, working for 24 hours straight, keeping studios open for artists who never showed up after 8 hours of prep, people got fired for putting the mixing straws at the coffee table upside down. the line for people wanting a job was down the block essentially. you could get fired for nothing because somebody would replace you right away. he left that abusive environment to do freelance work where he wasn't treated like shit and, like me, he now gets paid less than a mcdonald's wage to produce music for a youtube channel with hundreds of thousands subscribers. he works behind the scenes and gets paid a fraction of what they profit off of what is essentially his work. to be fair the singer who sings on his tracks gets paid the vast majority of the money and she's a creative too, but moreso than a creative she is an influencer.
anyway, these are two concrete examples from my life exemplifying what you're talking about here. as far as the ai art discussion goes, i assume these are techbros who think tech will change the world and we just need to adapt. in a sense, that's true, but the sad reality is that this is all in service of capital and beyond the argument about living wages for artists (which is super important) it's also the death of art as a form of expression for the human experience. if ai art defines the next era then we will not have 'art' we will simply have data mashed together.
there was also a recent discussion about how art is bougie decadence and i don't agree with that at all either but i do empathize with the sentiment that rich people can pay to win at art. trust me, i've watched it happen with a personal sense of jealousy my entire life, but that's not a reason to treat artists like shit or to proclaim that art is not working class.
"Do art" is too broad a category to be meaningful. Also don't take shots at my piss photo exhibit that represents literally years worth of work (piss)
“Do art” is too broad a category to be meaningful
what is a category you would find narrow enough to be meaningful? what inferences can you make about the author’s intended meaning of “do art” based on contextual clues in the rest of the post? please write 150-300 words and include proper citations in MLA formatting.
MLA formatting
:gulag: Posts by the Chicago Gang
but uh it is a bit broad, because owners and bosses can be involved in creative processes and clearly don't have the same conditions & stakes as their employees. "Proles 'doing art', as their primary job" would probably be the most unambiguous way to put it. So like a director or producer, while involved in creative decisions, their primary job is organization of artists and managing/owning capital
I'm in near complete agreement with you about this.
There's room for argument, but when it becomes "artists are aristocrats" or the steaming hot take of "most of it is just furry porn lol" it reeks of both :reddit-logo: and wrecker to me.
I love that AI doesn't work at all for all the boring shit it was supposed to free us from, but the things that make a human life worth living? The things people want to spend their time doing so badly they'll submit to the worst kinds of exploitation to be allowed to sit in the same room where it's happening? Yeah that we can automate no problem
Yea, that's pretty weird. People need to log off. A lot of saying how AI is how people themselves create. Same process. Just a bunch of weirdness.
Art is fucking hard. You get paid next to nothing for it. Unless you sell your soul to work in advertising/marketing.
A society that turns all its best artists into merchandisers will produce a public that believes art's value is predicated on its pride of place in advertising. Also, when that art is purely consumerist any kind of messaging will either become deliberately deceptive or purely aesthetic.
Art being some bourgeoise thing where a beret-wearing snob sells a photo of piss for 5 trillion dollars is not the norm
Piss Christ wasn't notable for its price tag. It was notable for its presence in media. In some sense, it was worth more because it pissed off so many people, which was the intent of the artist so... yay artist? But also this is absolutely a proletariat style of art. Its expressing a public view and resonating with a public audience. It isn't being held captive in some billionaire's wine cave to be enjoyed by a handful of snobs.
Meanwhile, I consider Bourgeois Art the purely consumerist style that is meticulously and painstakingly rendered High Fantasy Trope printed on a collectible trading card. And the value of the art is not tied to the quality or expressive character of the image, but the rarity and power-rating of the card to which it is attached.
In short, creatives get treated like shit. Thinking art isn’t real work is chud-level shit.
I like to think that the best art imparts emotion in the viewer. Ergo, anything that Triggers The Libs is top tier talent in my books.
arguably, the least bourgeois art form is street art. the voice of the city, written on the walls out of passion—in spite of arrest. if you want to see true working class art divorced from a profit motive then street art is about the purest form of artistic expression in dystopian capitalist hellworld that i can think of.
This is only true for street art that isn't just somebody's name printed on every available surface.
wrong. It's stil art, and is still outside the profit motive. There is no coherent way to exclude it.
it honestly speaks volumes about alienation when your solution to being unheard, unseen and uncared about by the systems around is to just write your name on everything you can find.
Step 1: put your name in a stylized way, often enough completely illegibly, wherever you can, at risk or heavy fine or arrest.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: profit.
https://99designs.com/blog/creative-inspiration/guerrilla-marketing/
Street art as guerrilla marketing —
Historically, street art has served as a brazen way to draw attention. What began as graffiti rooted in Hip Hop culture has transformed into an unique urban language of artistic expression.
If a significant portion of your customers are city dwellers and your brand can sustain the edginess associated with (perceived) vandalism, you might want to consider street art guerrilla marketing. The only materials you need are basic art supplies, which means this can be done on a budget, though you will want to contract an artist who specializes in this form.
Once you establish yourself as someone capable of tagging sites across the city and applying these tags at a professional grade, you've advertised your own services to potential guerrilla marketers looking to advert their own messages.
How often does some artist like HOYM or YENSO make the jump from recreational to commercial? No idea. But there's definitely a market for street art and people will recognize your name and work simply based on its public prominence.
