But it goes something like, “People go to a rock show to see someone believe in themselves.”
I think the reason why art and creativity will only become more valuable over time is because it’s one of the most primal and powerful ways humans express and connect with each other.
I think AI will be involved in art going forward, but as a tool not the source.
However, would there ever be a point where AI gets writer’s block or is criticized for being un-original?
I’m guessing there’s a Star Trek TNG episode featuring Data that covers that topic.
A hundred years from now there will be a bunch of computer files and digital art by long-gone people that we will highly value - because they give us proximity to someone's mind and experience and thinking. At the same time, we say "art," we so often talk about the thing hanging on the wall (in our commodified culture), but how it got there is central to its meaning. A great painting is a literal recording of the arm movements of the painter, standing in front of the canvas as we now are. A computer file can also be an expression, but its provenance is so much murkier. AI drowns out the conversation completely, and is only trained on data that already exists. Apprentices finished old master paintings, Warhols were made in a factory, but we still felt proximity to the thinking and point of view. That for me is what gets wiped away by AI. It is like a literal embodiment of groupthink, when what art really is, is a conversation with a messy, thinking, human person on a human scale.
You make astute observations as ever, Elle! Humans are nothing if not creative, and what I keep coming back to is this: who do we make art for if not for ourselves?
Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Ai Weiwei, and many others didn't "make" their art. And we don't care about the names of the people who put their hands on those works (or at least we don't credit them). Can we say that we value Jeff Koons' Rabbit because of the human touch? Early modern painters had studios with apprentices who finished their work, but it was really Pop art that separated the crafting of the artwork from the original idea -- and challenged the whole authenticity of art. How radical, then, is a "prompt" to an AI?
Thank you for your writing, Elle. I wrote on the same topic, and came to some of the same conclusions, in an essay a few weeks ago on the role of human consciousness in how we should value art. I do disagree slightly, and maybe it’s just semantics, on the idea that art’s value is in how interesting it is, and that a specific human artist having made it is what makes it more interesting and in turn more valuable. Rather, I feel that human art is valuable because it’s a firsthand communication of the contents of a human mind. A Picasso’s monetary value may go up by virtue of being a Picasso even if it’s a simple line, but how much the market values art doesn’t equate to its artistic value. That comes from the artist’s intent, and how that intent is communicated, and how impacts the audience. Anyway, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on where we align and where we don’t: https://open.substack.com/pub/taylorberrett/p/whats-it-like-to-be-only-human-art?r=e79kh&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
What is the value of art in the age of AI?
I don’t know the attribution to this quote...
But it goes something like, “People go to a rock show to see someone believe in themselves.”
I think the reason why art and creativity will only become more valuable over time is because it’s one of the most primal and powerful ways humans express and connect with each other.
I think AI will be involved in art going forward, but as a tool not the source.
However, would there ever be a point where AI gets writer’s block or is criticized for being un-original?
I’m guessing there’s a Star Trek TNG episode featuring Data that covers that topic.
A hundred years from now there will be a bunch of computer files and digital art by long-gone people that we will highly value - because they give us proximity to someone's mind and experience and thinking. At the same time, we say "art," we so often talk about the thing hanging on the wall (in our commodified culture), but how it got there is central to its meaning. A great painting is a literal recording of the arm movements of the painter, standing in front of the canvas as we now are. A computer file can also be an expression, but its provenance is so much murkier. AI drowns out the conversation completely, and is only trained on data that already exists. Apprentices finished old master paintings, Warhols were made in a factory, but we still felt proximity to the thinking and point of view. That for me is what gets wiped away by AI. It is like a literal embodiment of groupthink, when what art really is, is a conversation with a messy, thinking, human person on a human scale.
You make astute observations as ever, Elle! Humans are nothing if not creative, and what I keep coming back to is this: who do we make art for if not for ourselves?
Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Ai Weiwei, and many others didn't "make" their art. And we don't care about the names of the people who put their hands on those works (or at least we don't credit them). Can we say that we value Jeff Koons' Rabbit because of the human touch? Early modern painters had studios with apprentices who finished their work, but it was really Pop art that separated the crafting of the artwork from the original idea -- and challenged the whole authenticity of art. How radical, then, is a "prompt" to an AI?
Thank you for your writing, Elle. I wrote on the same topic, and came to some of the same conclusions, in an essay a few weeks ago on the role of human consciousness in how we should value art. I do disagree slightly, and maybe it’s just semantics, on the idea that art’s value is in how interesting it is, and that a specific human artist having made it is what makes it more interesting and in turn more valuable. Rather, I feel that human art is valuable because it’s a firsthand communication of the contents of a human mind. A Picasso’s monetary value may go up by virtue of being a Picasso even if it’s a simple line, but how much the market values art doesn’t equate to its artistic value. That comes from the artist’s intent, and how that intent is communicated, and how impacts the audience. Anyway, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on where we align and where we don’t: https://open.substack.com/pub/taylorberrett/p/whats-it-like-to-be-only-human-art?r=e79kh&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post