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Culture July 17, 2017
What is the point?
New Scientist just announced the development of painting robots making artificial intelligent (AI) images and passing them off as art.
Real, human, struggling artists should be fuming. I, for sure, am.
Don’t get me wrong, I love STEM. AI is a wonderful progress in technology to help humans do things they could never accomplish before, or at least do things better and faster than humans could. But AI doesn’t belong on the canvas.
Art is the purest form of human expression, whether it be visual, written or audio. Honestly, just Google the definition of art. It’s: “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form, such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.”
“HUMAN CREATIVE SKILL AND IMAGINATION… APPRECIATED PRIMARILY FOR THEIR BEAUTY OR EMOTIONAL POWER.”
I’m not old-fashioned. I’m not anti-tech. I’m just an artist trying to make it in the world by following my passions, like every other artist before me. And since there’s no shortage of passionate artists, why support something that doesn’t have passions to pursue?
Humans using tech to produce art is fine, but once the human is taken out of the equation, it’s no longer alive. It’s not breathing, dripping with soul. It’s devoid of emotion.
Humans create art to express something, anything: political or societal commentaries, internal anxieties and angst, love, hate, joy, longing, natural emotions and pieces that all make up the human condition.
Without the human behind the art, there’s no need to express anything. There’s no introspection or battle to be won.
Artists everywhere didn’t put their hearts on their sleeves and their finances at risk for some engineer to take their dreams and stuff them into a robot to crank out a profit.
This art isn’t even special. Here are some of the paintings:
They still use the same colors, same materials, same concepts as human creations. But they don’t have stories, hidden meanings, personal intentions or sentiments. They don’t have anything going for them. They’re about as special as framing paint chips from Home Depot or random stock photos of Chinese takeout.
Without an artist, there’s no art. Without a desperate need to express and create, there’s no point.
It doesn’t matter if it looks pretty. It’s not real.
