There are two fairly similar paintings on a wall in a gallery. Both are technically impressive and of beautiful scenes of nature. One was produced by a human, the other was not. Visitors to the gallery don't know which is which.
Question: Where is suffering, or humanity, a necessary ingredient for these works to have meaning? Shouldn't one of the works have more meaning than the other by virtue of having being created by a human?
In this case they can only judge the relative aesthetics of the two works, not their artistic value. Aesthetics is only loosely correlated to somethings "value" as "art" and art can only be truly judged in context of its creation. Lots of great art is ugly and lots of beautiful things aren't art.
>nd art can only be truly judged in context of its creation
tl;dr if you want to scam dagw then make up a compelling story behind the art.
For the vast majority of the things you see in this world context will be lost and history will be manipulated or incorrect. If you're judging what you're looking at based on it's story, then the art isn't the object, but the creator of the story.
tl;dr if you want to scam dagw then make up a compelling story behind the art.
I mean, sure I guess. Tell me something is a lost Michelangelo and I will judge it very differently than if you told me it was a half way decent forgery from the 1970s. I find this rather uncontroversial.
For the vast majority of the things you see in this world context will be lost
And when that context is lost something of great potential value is lost with it and the physical artefact is much less interesting because of it. Even a mundane thing owned by a famous person or that has been part of famous event is always more interesting and valuable than the same thing without any context.
the art isn't the object, but the creator of the story.
Do you think the thousands of people that travel from all over the world and line up for hours to see the Mona Lisa are there to see a pretty good portrait that some merchants commissioned of his wife, or to partake in the story of that painting and its creator? If they actually only cared about the object as an artefact and an example of early 16th century painting, they'd be much better off studying high resolution digital images of it online.
So what you're saying is 'most art is a convincing narrative'.
The fact that a bajillion people went to see a picture doesn't make it art. It makes it interesting art. It was art the moment it was created and if had never been seen by another person even if they decided to destroy it on the spot.
I completely agree that anything created by an artist with the intention of being "Art" becomes "Art" the moment it is created. However I do not believe that that is the end of the story. Art is changed by both the context it was created in, its history and even the context it is viewed in and you cannot fully understand and appreciate the art without understanding that context. And as our knowledge and understanding of that context changes (for example by finding out that we have been lied to about the origins or history or piece of art or its artist) then the art changes with it (without ever stopping being art).
"Technically impressive and beautiful" is a very narrow and poor definition of art, because a lot of art is neither.
Example: Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division. Certainly not a beautiful nature scene, and recorded when the band were more or less musically illiterate and almost technically illiterate too. But still considered a breakthrough post-punk album and hugely significant to their fans.
It would be more accurate to compare AI generated landscapes with - say - Van Gogh.
The AI image is pretty, but it's also pretty by the numbers. It's not doing anything surprising or original.
The Van Gogh is weird. There's a tilted horizon, everything is moving in a slightly unsettling way, and the colours accurately mimic the bleached-out feel of a bright summer day. The result is poetically distorted but also unstable and slightly ominous.
The instability became more and more obvious in the later paintings, until eventually you get The Starry Night, which looks almost nothing like a photo of a real night scene and everything like an almost hysterically poetic view of the night sky.
Most artists can't do this. There's a nice library of standard distortion techniques these artists use to look "arty" without any deeper metaphorical or subjective expression and AI will probably put them out of work.
But it's clearly wrong to suggest that AI can feel, communicate, and invent an intense and original subjectivity in the way the best artists do.
It's a lot like CGI in movies. It's often spectacular, but compared to going to see a play with good real actors and maybe a few stage effects it doesn't engage the imagination with anything like the same skill and intensity.
There are two fairly similar paintings on a wall in a gallery. Both are technically impressive and of beautiful scenes of nature. One was produced by a human, the other was not. Visitors to the gallery don't know which is which.
Question: Where is suffering, or humanity, a necessary ingredient for these works to have meaning? Shouldn't one of the works have more meaning than the other by virtue of having being created by a human?