Machine learning creates professional level photographs

[Norma Desmond]

The genealogy of art as a human activity is almost surely the (not entirely correct) belief that it sets us apart in the animal kingdom.

I agree.

 

Same for the genealogy of Philosophy, morality, and place in nature.

 

Things change.

[movingfinger]

The genealogy of art as a human activity is almost surely the (not entirely correct) belief that it sets us apart in the animal kingdom. It's much more an assertion of our place in ye olde chain of being than it is an essential definition of art.

 

I beg to differ. I have to believe that the etymology of 'art' as a human activity is that since the creation, either by God or the big bang, makes no difference what you assert is the source, only humans have demonstrated using creativity and imagination to make things. Why would a cave man, Aristotle, Darwin or any of us here have wanted or needed to apply 'art' to the productive activity of any non-human.entity? It wasn't for any desire or need to set us apart. Clearly the obvious facts that only we communicate with language, spoken and written, fashion tools, get into discussions such as this one here, etc, sets us apart. Perhaps some day if someone gets a film of a crow, who after using a stick to dig bugs out of a tree bark, subsequently finds that crow also etching a buffalo or condor shape into the side of the tree, then we can argue if that is 'art', or if we should coin a new word to describe anything that is the product of the imagination or creativity of avians. As in the present discussion with AI, I will come down on the side of a new word, keeping 'art' restricted to human activity. Of course that new word can reference 'art' in its definition, e.g. define avart = anything that is the product of the creativity or imagination of the avian species, also art produced by birds. For now such a word is unnecessary.

[movingfinger]

What is it about art that makes it different from an AI object which is not man-made? You haven't said.

 

Fred: Yes I say what makes the difference, I said:

The most general definition of 'art' in the Oxford Dictionary (on-line) is "works produced by human creative skill and imagination."

 

I said that was my going in premise. This definition is clearly independent of AI, it was surely articulated and formed before artificial intelligence was even thought of or imagined, except perhaps by science fiction authors.

 

As I also said if one does not agree with this definition then that's fine but it is then pointless for the two of us to dispute what is or is not art. If one defines 'triangle' to be a plane figure with "three OR MORE straight line sides" then that person will dispute my assertion that a square is not a triangle. It would be silly for that person and me to continue to argue whether or not a square is a triangle, we would simply have to agree to disagree and at least we realize where the disagreement lies. It appears that the source of our disagreement here is similar, your definition of 'art' differs from mine. We need to address this difference and then whether or nor AI is art will resolve itself.

[Norma Desmond]

Then why'd you ask if AI can be art. You already knew the answer by definition. AI is not man-made by definition and art is man-made by definition. You presupposed it.

 

At a certain time the definition of art had more to do with beauty than who made it. So, by that definition, a urinal in a museum couldn't be art because art had to be beautiful and urinals weren't beautiful. Up until a certain point in history I doubt you'd find many people advocating for seeing the beauty in urinals.

 

But urinals are art (or can be) precisely because we don't restrict art to historical definitions. Our notions of beauty and of art have evolved.

 

In the context of this thread, I would suggest that our notions of man-made and art are evolving and certainly not as simple as they used to be or we used to think they were.

[Norma Desmond]

If a Greek in Plato's time had consulted the "dictionary," he would have learned that art was representation. Had he had your fealty to accepted definitions of art, the Abstract Expressionists could not have made art. What's important to me is that, in determining whether something we are newly exposed to (because of new technology, new ideas, or new materials being used) is art, we don't allow previous definitions to rule and we allow the definition enough leeway to change to accommodate changing times, technologies, sensibilities, or cultural advances. I know that can be unsettling because it doesn't give us the same ground as something like the word "chair" that has stayed more reliably consistent over time, but I think art is somewhat unique in how we approach it and how we've always approached it. Art's lack of stable grounding in terms of definitional and category consistency may, in fact, be one of its most vital and amazing features.

[movingfinger]

Had he had your fealty to accepted definitions of art, the Abstract Expressionists could not have made art.

Fred: Why does my (actually the Oxford English Dictionary) preclude abstract expressionism being art? It is work produced by human creativity and imagination. Am I missing something subtle in abstract expressionism that I should be aware of? Unless I am then this is as straightforward as a three sided plane figure being a triangle.

 

Then why'd you ask if AI can be art.

Fred: I never asked this question. I started this thread with a rhetorical question (see the first posting) based on a google article about AI generated images being rated of 'professional quality'. The discussion by you and others evolved into what is art, can AI products be art, etc, independent of me. I thought I would jump in with my two cents to help settle the question or point out why the differences. I thought referring to the Oxford dictionary would give us something we could all agree on going in, and then there would only remain the differences of opinion on whether or not AI products fit the definition. I then gave my explanation for why I come down on the side that AI products do not fit the definition. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression and you were expecting a Socratic dialogue from me with new insights.

 

Of course you could similarly brush aside much of Euclid's amazing work. For instance, you could say to him "What's the big deal that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle sums to 180 degrees. Given your definitions, postulates and proof it's obvious."

[Norma Desmond]

Fred: Why does my (actually the Oxford English Dictionary) preclude abstract expressionism being art? It is work produced by human creativity and imagination. Am I missing something subtle in abstract expressionism that I should be aware of? Unless I am then this is as straightforward as a three sided plane figure being a triangle.

I didn't say YOUR definition precluded abstract expressionism being art. Please reread my post. I said the "dictionary" OF THE GREEKS (Plato's definition) precluded abstract expressionism from ever being art. What I'm suggesting is that, in insisting on sticking to the definition of art you found in the dictionary (which, by the way, is only one of many, many contemporary definitions you would find if you looked elsewhere, but that's beside the point), you have precluded AI-created things from being art. In other words, you are doing the same thing the Greek would have been doing by adhering to the given definition of his time and disallowing abstract expressionism. You are not disallowing abstract expressionism. You are disallowing AI-created things from being art using the same justification as the Greek of his time, which is that the dictionary definition must remain as is. Imagine the paucity of art had the Greeks and all who followed insisted, as you are, in maintaining the dictionary definition, which once was that art had to be representation. It would have been a mistake to exclude things based on the dictionary definition of representation and it's a mistake for you to exclude things based on the dictionary definition of human-made. All definitions of art throughout history have been allowed to change to accommodate new technologies, ideas, and things. It's worked that way instead of things having always to conform to the given dictionary definition in order to be considered art. I'm saying you're doing it backwards, with regards to art. Instead of restricting things because they don't fit the given definition, it would be more in keeping with the history of art to expand the definition based on new things that are being created and new technologies capable of creating them.

[Norma Desmond]

Movingfinger, I'm not an essentialist, so I don't believe there's one constant immutable (hey, sounds like soul, doesn't it!) quality that is essential to art for all time. I understand people's hesitancy to allow definitions to change. There's a foundational consistency when we adopt fixed definitions, and not doing so can feel ungrounded and unsettling, and it does make conversations harder. But defining terms like "chair" or "desk" is different from defining a term like "art." As a matter of fact, the lack of groundedness and the historically unsettling nature of drastic changes in what we consider art almost demands that we remain a bit unsettled and have difficulty discussing it. Now, I know this can be turned back on me to say I'm being essentialist because I'm actually insisting that art be constantly allowed to change, which is a constant. But that's a Heraclitean paradox (you can't step into the same river twice . . . the river remains the same river but is also ever-changing) I'm not going to get mired in. Anyway, whether I am or am not an essentialist is not the point here. It's whether we can allow changes to the definition of art and to the classes and categories and limits of things we allow to be art. I thing we've always done it and I think we should continue to allow such changes.

[Supriyo]

Can we ask the question, if humans didn't exist, would art exist?

[Norma Desmond]

Since I think there is art in spider webs, and I could conceive of spider webs existing without humans, I think art would exist without humans.

 

Though homeostasis is a human concept, I think homeostasis in the environment would exist without humans, though there would be no one to call it that.

 

Also, if humans didn't exist, another species might evolve or might already have evolved, with equal and perhaps even greater powers to make art or at least to make what we would call art if we existed to call it anything. They might call it something else, but if it fulfilled any one of our concepts of art, whether we were there or not, it would be art, IMO.

[movingfinger]

I didn't say YOUR definition precluded abstract expressionism being art. Please reread my post. I said the "dictionary" OF THE GREEKS (Plato's definition) precluded abstract expressionism from ever being art.

Fred: Ah, I'm sorry. My mistake for not fully reading your post before thinking and hitting the keyboard.

the definition of art you found in the dictionary (which, by the way, is only one of many, many contemporary definitions you would find if you looked elsewhere

Fred: Yes there are lots of definitions (which is why this thread has been so active). But the definition I chose was one of the most general. Most all other definitions are refinements or restrictions of the one I gave, e.g. defining 'art' as painting, or 'art' as a skill - most of the other definitions still fit under the umbrella of "works produced by human creativity or imagination".

I don't believe there's one constant immutable (hey, sounds like soul, doesn't it!) quality that is essential to art for all time.

Fred, here we disagree. I think there need to be some bounds, somewhere where we draw a line on the fundamental property of a word, even one as fluid as 'art'. For me that bound is produced by human creativity or imagination. As I say above that's a pretty broad umbrella, everything from Michelangelo to Picasso to Shakespeare to Frank L Wright to Beethoven to the Beatles to a talented computer programmer, to Ansel to Vivian Maier, and on and on. As I said in an earlier post if it were found that some animal, a bird say, produced something by creativity or imagination and if I were king of the world on the board of the OED updating the language, I would advocate that a different word from 'art' be applied to such creativity. I would insist that 'art' be reserved for human output. I would be open to new forms of human endeavors being called art. I made my case above for why AI produced output is too removed from the human creator to be called art in my world view.

[Supriyo]

Sorry, I used 'human' to stand for any conscious being. Please ignore that. My key point was consciousness, and whether thats involved in art at some point. I feel abstract concepts like art are to some extent dependent on the human mind, like love or sorrow. Art is also subjective right? What I call art may not be so to another person?

[Norma Desmond]

Most all other definitions are refinements or restrictions of the one I gave, e.g. defining 'art' as painting, or 'art' as a skill - most of the other definitions still fit under the umbrella of "works produced by human creativity or imagination".

I'd sincerely question that. Many, many contemporary definitions are more institutional and less about how they are produced. Many very contemporary definitions allow for an art community (experts, curators, art historians, art philosophers, art theorists, critics, artists themselves, patrons) more than anything else to determine what is art. These definitions put much less emphasis on who produced the art or how it was produced or what went into the production than on who accepts that its art and how art comes to be accepted as such. I'm not saying that fully satisfies me either, because I think there are problems with it. I tend to use a multi-faceted idea of (rather than definition of) art, partly based on all the definitions and their variety of merits that have been given to art throughout history. I tend to discuss rather than define art. It suits me better.

Edited July 29, 2017 by Norma Desmond

[Norma Desmond]

Supriyo, to me, it's a mental exercise with few rewards. If the particular formation of that tree branch is art because a consciousness attends to it in a certain way, I'm not sure it much matters to me whether it could be called art if there were no consciousness around to attend to it in that way. Because there would also be no consciousness around to ask the question. So it seems like a moot question to me.

 

In an ethics class I once took, we began by reading an essay where an author (sorry, I forget his name) who was anti-abortion stated that, since he would mind never being born, he shouldn't impose that on other potential beings. The argument against his logic was that he couldn't possibly mind never being born because he wouldn't ever be there to mind it. It's that nasty argument from potential, which can get pretty complicated but which is worth being very skeptical about, IMO.

[Norma Desmond]

I feel abstract concepts like art are to some extent dependent on the human mind, like love or sorrow.

Aren't ALL concepts, from the most concrete to the most abstract, dependent on the human mind, or a mind of some kind?

 

I don't think the concept of art is any more dependent on mind than the concept of chair or tree.

 

Now, one might argue that, not the concept, but art itself is dependent on mind whereas trees themselves are not, even though the concept of trees are.

 

I would disagree because of the formulation of the question, for the same reason I gave in my last post. I think if a tree can exist without a mind, art can exist without a mind, there would just be no one there to say so. Which gets us back to whether there could be art without a consciousness which, as I said, is a problematic question, in my opinion.

 

As to subjectivity, I don't like chalking too much up to it. Taste is subjective. But what things are art, IMO, shouldn't be as subjective as taste. That's where institutional definitions have some attraction. Because they make some of this objective, which I think it should be. That way, the meaning of art can stay flexible and can evolve, as the institutions determining art evolve, but doesn't devolve into meaninglessness, which I think happens when something becomes whatever anyone wants it to be. And there's the rub, because the newest art often is not recognized by the current institutions because artists are often ahead of these institutions. This is why I haven't found a satisfactory answer to some of these questions and a completely satisfactory definition of art and why I consider art to be the best answer to these questions, as I said elsewhere recently. I stopped taking art theory and art philosophy too seriously a while back, though I still find it fun and intriguing at times. Doing photography seemed to me the best medicine for the headaches art theory and philosophy can give me!

[Supriyo]

Aren't ALL concepts, from the most concrete to the most abstract, dependent on the human mind, or a mind of some kind?

 

Yes, they are! You caught me on that one.

 

Art should not be subjective on an individual basis, but it is to some extent subjective relative to times in history or communities, right (e.g. impressionist art not appreciated by ancient Greeks). If art didn't change with time or social evolution, we could have had an objective description of art, the same way we can describe a tree with leaves and branches. That objective description would have been valid, even if there was nobody to see it, the same way a tree exists even when no one sees it. That's where I have trouble, because art seems to cling so much to our consciousness, that I find it hard to imagine it's existence without the former.

 

Anyway, back to my camera :)

[Norma Desmond]

But I think art changes over time not just because of consciousness but because of a vast network of considerations, including culture, changing technology, changing knowledge, the changing environment, etc. The environment changes in part due to consciousness but in part not. That's important here. I think there are some aspects of why art changes that are not related to consciousness. In other words, I don't think the fact that art changes over time is tied only to subjective factors. I'm also not so sure that consciousness is subjective because I think it's physically based and that gives it a certain degree of objectivity. We can study it and are coming to understand it in more and more objective ways.

[leo_papandreou1]

"That's where I have trouble, because art seems to cling so much to our consciousness, that I find it hard to imagine it's existence without the former."

 

Well yes, lacking subjective experiences or qualia is why a tree, for example, doesn't make art by bending crookedly. Not because it wouldn't be fair to trees that grow straight but because there's no first person there (so to speak). But take enough pictures of crooked trees and suddenly you're the artist.

[Supriyo]

But I think art changes over time not just because of consciousness but because of a vast network of considerations, including culture, changing technology, changing knowledge, the changing environment, etc. The environment changes in part due to consciousness but in part not. That's important here. I think there are some aspects of why art changes that are not related to consciousness.

 

Yes, I agree. That's why I used the term 'to some extent'.

 

Consciousness itself is not subjective, but the perception associated with art as a result of that consciousness is, to some extent. That's what I was meant.

[Norma Desmond]

Well yes, lacking subjective experiences or qualia is why a tree, for example, doesn't make art by bending crookedly.

Not everyone thinks of qualia or so-called subjective experience as so special. See Dennett's Quining Qualia.

[leo_papandreou1]

Dennett denies consciousness exists, whereas (my) consciousness is the only thing I'm sure that exists.

[Norma Desmond]

(my) consciousness is the only thing I'm sure that exists.

Meh. Descartes beat you to it by 4 centuries. Time to update a bit! Live a little.

 

I guarantee you that tree you're looking at exists. I'm telling you, trust your senses (but still learn ways to verify). You're going to need those senses for art, too.

 

;-)

[leo_papandreou1]

Well, he thinks it's an "illusion". He doesn't say what it's an illusion of though, perhaps of a deeper illusion? Whoa. Edited July 29, 2017 by leo_papandreou|1

[leo_papandreou1]

I knew I'd regret "my".

 

I don't even believe that.

 

I'm just an inconspicuous filigree in the vast immanence, a split end in God's mane.

[Supriyo]

I remember, I read this article sometime back. Basically, it suggests that we don't recognize a color unless we have a word for it. If someone is brought up without contact with a particular color, say blue, he/she won't learn to recognize or separate blue from other colors. If shown the color blue, that person may identify it as green, or grey. It's because, he/she has never learned to recognize blue, and associates that color with the closest color he can think of. That seems to be supporting Dennett's claim. that there's nothing intrinsic about qualia. People compare sensations to the next closest sensation they have experienced before.

 

If I think, how the color 'blue' feels like, I think it feels like the word 'blue' :)

Edited July 29, 2017 by Supriyo