but when it’s all this mystical nonsense about the human soul or whatever
This really sounds like the attitude of someone who really doesn't like art? What is art if not an expression of humanity, the emotion of the artist and their experiences bringing them to make a particular piece of art that also inspires genuine emotion in you when you just stand there and look at it?
It doesn't sound like the kind of thing that someone who really enjoys and appreciates art would ever think. When I look at any art at the gallery I am connected with the artist that made it, who stood or sat in front of it making it, sometimes hundreds of years ago, who had a variety of life experiences vastly different to my own and made the piece with the specific intents. What is there in AI pictures that can be considered art? "Ooo this algorithm is quite good" ? That's it. There's no expression of the "human soul" because none of the weight of being human is behind it.
Now, is it an insult? I don't know about that. But it is pretty naff by comparison. Calling it soulless seems quite accurate to me at least.
:reddit-logo: is full to the brim with "objective" consumers that hate most art and only see the value in "photorealistic" pieces or ones that pander to their specific :freeze-gamer: :awooga: :pathetic: interests, in ways that could very easily be replaced by a machine, thus only caring about the novelty of someone doing something like it with a pencil or whatever.
Further, while modern technology can churn out new illustrations very quickly and often in visually pleasing way, it really does matter to me (and I know I'm not the only one) that another human being, with life experiences and a lifetime behind their work, made something versus "this is cheaper and faster, fuck you got mine" coarse reductionism regarding something that by definition is supposed to be subjectively experienced: art.
On :reddit-logo: that's the gimmick for most of them: a human being somewhat imitated the precision of a machine. Nothing else was expected, or even welcomed. It was like a trained pet doing a trick for novelty's sake.
I don't rule out that possibility, even in the present, of something eliciting a valid emotional reaction that was made entirely by a machine (trained on material that was uncredited and not paid for and that might very well make the makers of the source material live even more precarious lives, but I digress). My problem is the reductionist attitude that too many have where removing human beings from art is seen as some "objective" or even "Materialistic(tm)" good.
When I look at any art at the gallery I am connected with the artist that made it, who stood or sat in front of it making it, sometimes hundreds of years ago, who had a variety of life experiences vastly different to my own and made the piece with the specific intents.
ok i can definitely say i've never done this
like analyzing techniques being used for whatever purpose i can do (although mostly i just go "wow cool art")
Try it sometime. You're not just looking at a pretty picture, you're looking at something someone poured emotion into and intended to draw out various emotions in you, either with colour choice, aggression or softness, framing, and so on.
Try it sometime. You’re not just looking at a pretty picture, you’re looking at something someone poured emotion into and intended to draw out various emotions in you, either with colour choice, aggression or softness, framing, and so on.
For some, unfortunately, all of what you just said might be summarized as woo or mysticism because it isn't measured in a beaker in a lab.
Logical positivism, the philosophical roots of much of that arrogance, can't itself be measured in a beaker in a lab either but it keeps showing up like a recurring wart anyway.
It is woo but that doesn't make it not real? We are emotional animals and all of the above are emotional experiences. If they really wanted to break it down into some sort of laboratory understanding of the process it is a bunch of synapses firing off in the brain mixed with all the bodily chemicals and hormones and organs elsewhere in the body firing off their various influences and also being influenced by those synapses. It's real to the extent that it's an emotional reaction and experience we are capable of having to art, to history, to colour, to writing, even to specific arrangements of textures.
I've seen a few of Rothko's paintings up close and what struck me when I was standing and taking them in were the textures, these are not just images they are 3d objects and everything about them from the speed of a brush stroke to the layers imparts different feelings, you can see a fast aggressive stroke, you can see thick layered up mountains of paint, licks and crevices and blobs as much as 1 to 2cms deep at times. Your brain starts building patterns, trying to understand the image in front of it, you experience so much more than just "pretty picture".
One of the things many people need is to have this taught to them, I think part of being able to understand and engage with art is being able to take this in. For some they simply do not have the thought, they can't engage with the art at an experiential level because they've never been shown how, because ultimately doing so is an inward thing engaged by a thought process. The viewer needs to fire off the first synapses to get the entire system firing correctly.
Idk if this is a real quote, but I've heard it said that Da Vinci noted that there are three kinds of people. Those who see, those who see when shown, and those who do not see. I know from experience that I mainly reside among the latter two of those categories in terms of the extent to which I'm capable of engaging with this kind of thing. And I suspect that's probably true of the person you're responding to.
So, the thing is, that almost every art piece worth paying attention to is deeply connected to a moment in history, to politics, to religion, to culture.
Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith beheading Holofernes was created by a woman who was sexually assaulted and then humiliated by the courts when she tried to get justice. It depicts a scene from the bible where a woman uses cunning to assassinate a foreign general leading an army against her people. Artemisia was exceptional as a woman who was able to make a career of fine art in a time where that was extremely uncommon.
Artemisia's Judith Beheading Holofernes is part of a rich tradition of depicting this scene that stretches from the distant past to the modern day. By studying these paintings you can see the progression of European art through many phases. Judith Beheading Holofernes also has an important cultural role in representing how women were viewed and treated at different points in European history.
There is so much complex history and culture tied up in this theme. There are dozens of versions in dozens of artistic styles. Looking through them you can learn important things about the clothing of the time, the evolution of artistic techniques, even the evolution of European swords.
AI can't do any of this. It just slavishly remixes what was fed in to it. It's completely devoid of semantic meaning.
I never made that argument even while criticizing the technology as applied by capitalism as a theft of labor with a side effect of forcing more precarity on the working class with even less possibility of creative expression outside of the whims of the idle rich.
Are you sure that argument about souls or whatever was even being made here? It might be like the :reddit-logo: Monsanto Defense Force that accused all opposition to glyphosates to be "anti science" and for those opponents to be crystal-clutching hippies.
I ask again, was that argument being made here, on Hexbear?
Besides, it's possible to take exception to the alienating aspects of unmitigated treat machines in an unchecked capitalistic system and to value artistic endeavors by human beings (or elephants, or gorillas, or whatever else) over those products made from mostly uncredited and even stolen labor without that being knee-jerked lumped in with a religious belief, as if that was automatically a bad thing to begin with. I know more liberation theology comrades I'd throw down with than I know :reddit-logo: New Atheist types that wouldn't sell out their own family members in exchange for a warm callout tweet from :my-hero: .
I'll say it again and I'll stand by it: I am not religious but I know liberation theology comrades that I trust and support. Being nonreligious is far from automatic comrade status and in fact a lot of contemporary atheists are full blown corpo bootlickers or fash.
Again, I don't share the beliefs of my religious friends, but knee-jerk laughing at them is probably a mistake when so many "Singularity" and "Effective Altruism" New Atheist cultists (:my-hero: included) would be pleased to see us all dead.
I actually argue that it kind of does, if indirectly.
Atheism is no guarantee that someone is a comrade and being religious in and of itself is no guarantee that that person deserves to be mocked and shunned. Well fine, maybe some religions really have it coming.
No. Not even on average. In fact in my experience someone being an atheist has almost no direct influence on where they stand on a right/left axis. I'd even argue in my local area there are more right wing atheists than right wing religious people, though that may be a weird Bay Area thing.
I already said it a few times but I'll say it again once more: those "random atheists" are examples of knee-jerk derisive hostility toward religious people being ill-founded, especially when it comes to class-conscious attempts at solidarity. Being atheist is far from a guarantee that someone isn't a reactionary or worse.
If you want to score some philosophical victory on how categorically wrong religious people are as a group, it'll likely be a pyrrhic victory where lots of potential comrades are put off by the "you're not wrong, you're just an asshole" effect that tends to come from such efforts.
I don't disagree with you, except to say that alienating them from the start with :reddit-logo: tier self-congratulatory smugness and mockery instead of winning them over as a demographic over time (while having protective measures against religious bullshit infiltrating the levers of power) is a mistake.
can we stop being weird about this and just make it a matter of artists getting paid
i'd agree with it (within the current circumstances) then
but when it's all this mystical nonsense about the human soul or whatever i wanna support AI art just to spite it
This really sounds like the attitude of someone who really doesn't like art? What is art if not an expression of humanity, the emotion of the artist and their experiences bringing them to make a particular piece of art that also inspires genuine emotion in you when you just stand there and look at it?
It doesn't sound like the kind of thing that someone who really enjoys and appreciates art would ever think. When I look at any art at the gallery I am connected with the artist that made it, who stood or sat in front of it making it, sometimes hundreds of years ago, who had a variety of life experiences vastly different to my own and made the piece with the specific intents. What is there in AI pictures that can be considered art? "Ooo this algorithm is quite good" ? That's it. There's no expression of the "human soul" because none of the weight of being human is behind it.
Now, is it an insult? I don't know about that. But it is pretty naff by comparison. Calling it soulless seems quite accurate to me at least.
I agree with your take wholeheartedly.
:reddit-logo: is full to the brim with "objective" consumers that hate most art and only see the value in "photorealistic" pieces or ones that pander to their specific :freeze-gamer: :awooga: :pathetic: interests, in ways that could very easily be replaced by a machine, thus only caring about the novelty of someone doing something like it with a pencil or whatever.
Further, while modern technology can churn out new illustrations very quickly and often in visually pleasing way, it really does matter to me (and I know I'm not the only one) that another human being, with life experiences and a lifetime behind their work, made something versus "this is cheaper and faster, fuck you got mine" coarse reductionism regarding something that by definition is supposed to be subjectively experienced: art.
:cringe:
(most of those have less value than even the worst ai stuff as far as im concerned)
On :reddit-logo: that's the gimmick for most of them: a human being somewhat imitated the precision of a machine. Nothing else was expected, or even welcomed. It was like a trained pet doing a trick for novelty's sake.
reddit moment
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I don't rule out that possibility, even in the present, of something eliciting a valid emotional reaction that was made entirely by a machine (trained on material that was uncredited and not paid for and that might very well make the makers of the source material live even more precarious lives, but I digress). My problem is the reductionist attitude that too many have where removing human beings from art is seen as some "objective" or even "Materialistic(tm)" good.
ok i can definitely say i've never done this
like analyzing techniques being used for whatever purpose i can do (although mostly i just go "wow cool art")
but not this whole connection thing
Try it sometime. You're not just looking at a pretty picture, you're looking at something someone poured emotion into and intended to draw out various emotions in you, either with colour choice, aggression or softness, framing, and so on.
For some, unfortunately, all of what you just said might be summarized as woo or mysticism because it isn't measured in a beaker in a lab.
Logical positivism, the philosophical roots of much of that arrogance, can't itself be measured in a beaker in a lab either but it keeps showing up like a recurring wart anyway.
It is woo but that doesn't make it not real? We are emotional animals and all of the above are emotional experiences. If they really wanted to break it down into some sort of laboratory understanding of the process it is a bunch of synapses firing off in the brain mixed with all the bodily chemicals and hormones and organs elsewhere in the body firing off their various influences and also being influenced by those synapses. It's real to the extent that it's an emotional reaction and experience we are capable of having to art, to history, to colour, to writing, even to specific arrangements of textures.
I've seen a few of Rothko's paintings up close and what struck me when I was standing and taking them in were the textures, these are not just images they are 3d objects and everything about them from the speed of a brush stroke to the layers imparts different feelings, you can see a fast aggressive stroke, you can see thick layered up mountains of paint, licks and crevices and blobs as much as 1 to 2cms deep at times. Your brain starts building patterns, trying to understand the image in front of it, you experience so much more than just "pretty picture".
One of the things many people need is to have this taught to them, I think part of being able to understand and engage with art is being able to take this in. For some they simply do not have the thought, they can't engage with the art at an experiential level because they've never been shown how, because ultimately doing so is an inward thing engaged by a thought process. The viewer needs to fire off the first synapses to get the entire system firing correctly.
Idk if this is a real quote, but I've heard it said that Da Vinci noted that there are three kinds of people. Those who see, those who see when shown, and those who do not see. I know from experience that I mainly reside among the latter two of those categories in terms of the extent to which I'm capable of engaging with this kind of thing. And I suspect that's probably true of the person you're responding to.
So, the thing is, that almost every art piece worth paying attention to is deeply connected to a moment in history, to politics, to religion, to culture.
Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith beheading Holofernes was created by a woman who was sexually assaulted and then humiliated by the courts when she tried to get justice. It depicts a scene from the bible where a woman uses cunning to assassinate a foreign general leading an army against her people. Artemisia was exceptional as a woman who was able to make a career of fine art in a time where that was extremely uncommon.
Artemisia's Judith Beheading Holofernes is part of a rich tradition of depicting this scene that stretches from the distant past to the modern day. By studying these paintings you can see the progression of European art through many phases. Judith Beheading Holofernes also has an important cultural role in representing how women were viewed and treated at different points in European history.
There is so much complex history and culture tied up in this theme. There are dozens of versions in dozens of artistic styles. Looking through them you can learn important things about the clothing of the time, the evolution of artistic techniques, even the evolution of European swords.
AI can't do any of this. It just slavishly remixes what was fed in to it. It's completely devoid of semantic meaning.
I never made that argument even while criticizing the technology as applied by capitalism as a theft of labor with a side effect of forcing more precarity on the working class with even less possibility of creative expression outside of the whims of the idle rich.
Are you sure that argument about souls or whatever was even being made here? It might be like the :reddit-logo: Monsanto Defense Force that accused all opposition to glyphosates to be "anti science" and for those opponents to be crystal-clutching hippies.
the linked article
definitely seems like that sort of shit to me
I ask again, was that argument being made here, on Hexbear?
Besides, it's possible to take exception to the alienating aspects of unmitigated treat machines in an unchecked capitalistic system and to value artistic endeavors by human beings (or elephants, or gorillas, or whatever else) over those products made from mostly uncredited and even stolen labor without that being knee-jerked lumped in with a religious belief, as if that was automatically a bad thing to begin with. I know more liberation theology comrades I'd throw down with than I know :reddit-logo: New Atheist types that wouldn't sell out their own family members in exchange for a warm callout tweet from :my-hero: .
when did i say it was
oh, did you interpret "we" as meaning, like, hexbear posters?
Yes.
i just kinda meant like everyone in general :shrug-outta-hecks:
:data-laughing:
I'll say it again and I'll stand by it: I am not religious but I know liberation theology comrades that I trust and support. Being nonreligious is far from automatic comrade status and in fact a lot of contemporary atheists are full blown corpo bootlickers or fash.
definitely loads of atheists are cringe, i will never deny that
Again, I don't share the beliefs of my religious friends, but knee-jerk laughing at them is probably a mistake when so many "Singularity" and "Effective Altruism" New Atheist cultists (:my-hero: included) would be pleased to see us all dead.
can't we just laugh at all of these groups at once? redditors finding new and even less cool cults doesn't make religion any better
I actually argue that it kind of does, if indirectly.
Atheism is no guarantee that someone is a comrade and being religious in and of itself is no guarantee that that person deserves to be mocked and shunned. Well fine, maybe some religions really have it coming.
definitely, but on average?
No. Not even on average. In fact in my experience someone being an atheist has almost no direct influence on where they stand on a right/left axis. I'd even argue in my local area there are more right wing atheists than right wing religious people, though that may be a weird Bay Area thing.
probably, yeah, that place is cursed
It is, it is. Police robots with lethal fucking weapons almost got legalized locally, and still might be very soon. :no-mouth-must-scream:
:agony-immense:
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I already said it a few times but I'll say it again once more: those "random atheists" are examples of knee-jerk derisive hostility toward religious people being ill-founded, especially when it comes to class-conscious attempts at solidarity. Being atheist is far from a guarantee that someone isn't a reactionary or worse.
deleted by creator
If you want to score some philosophical victory on how categorically wrong religious people are as a group, it'll likely be a pyrrhic victory where lots of potential comrades are put off by the "you're not wrong, you're just an asshole" effect that tends to come from such efforts.
deleted by creator
I don't disagree with you, except to say that alienating them from the start with :reddit-logo: tier self-congratulatory smugness and mockery instead of winning them over as a demographic over time (while having protective measures against religious bullshit infiltrating the levers of power) is a mistake.
were they really, if they were put off by this sort of thing?
Yes, actually.
People don't usually start as full fledged leftists. Most people here that told their own stories started somewhere else.
Being smugly hostile toward religious people is an arrogant and self-defeating strategy in the long run.