Tag: aesthetic

Using AI in art making, from David Salle to Kevin Kelly (and how Walter Benjamin can help)


Using technology to make art is not new. Gerhard Richter used special software to make the work you see above (4900 colours). Before computers, artists would use lens and photographs and even craftsmen and women to help them create their final artwork.

What is new now is artists (and non-artists) are using AI to make art. Kevin Kelly talks about how he is using AI in his creative process. David Salle has dived deep into making new work using AI. NYT columnist Farhad Manjoo is using visual tools like Procreate to make AI art.

I have seen Kelly’s work, and Manjoo and Salle’s work are on display in their articles. Kelly experiments with AI to produce images in various styles. Perhaps he has changed, but there is no artist in his work that I can see. With Manjoo, you can see more of him in his drawings. And with Salle the artist’s presence comes in as an editor of the works the AI produces out of his original pieces.

In trying to assess these AI generated works, I think Walter Benjamin and his idea of an artwork having an aura can be useful here. Benjamin was thinking about how original art works have an aura that reproduced images of it do not have. I agree with that: no matter how good a reproduction of a work is, it rarely compares to the original work. There’s that something extra in the original.

I think we can extend out the idea of a work having an aura and also having a humanity. What does a work say about the person who created it? What do I recognize in it that is human and unique to that person? What ideas are there that could only come from that person in that time?

You can argue back that this is irrelevant and that AI generated images are interesting and beautiful and furthermore I cannot distinguish them from human generated images. That might be true. Maybe galleries will be filled with images and sculpture with no human involvement whatsoever, not unlike deep learning software that comes up with ways to be best at playing games like Chess and Go. Such AI artwork may be interesting and even beautiful and may seem to have that aura Benjamin talks about. They just won’t be associated with a human.

Even minimal and conceptual art has a humanity associated with it. Duchamp’s Fountain embodies Duchamp’s intelligence and wit and contrariness.  Arp’s “According to the Laws of Chance” likewise shows his interest in pushing the bounds of what is acceptable in a composition of an abstract work. A person is responsible for the work and the work is tied to them. A person is what makes the work relevant to us in a way that a wall covered with children’s collages or a shelf of toilets in a hardware store are not.

We need a new aesthetic philosophy to deal with the firehose of AI art that is coming our way. I propose we tie the art back to our humanity.

P.S. For more on Richter’s 4900 colours, you can see it here on his web site. There’s also a great view of  4900 colors, here,

 

On twitter and art and the aesthetics of a Canadian painting by Chris Flodberg

In mid November the Twitter account Canadian Paintings posted the above work by artist Chris Flodberg. At the time I said: “I see some people don’t like this painting but I think it’s fantastic. Just like the Gare St Lazare paintings of Monet are fantastic. They reflect our lives. I even like the palette of this one – it’s a muted palette that goes well with the subject matter. Good composition too.”  That tweet led to a good discussion on the work and to aesthetics in general.

I really do think it is a great painting. For one thing, I love the idea of it. The viewer is on the precipice of entering the painting in their car. If you have ever driven on such a road, you can easily imagine going down the hill and merging with the traffic and then heading over the horizon. Flodberg has positioned the viewer so that the go down and to the left, then up and under (a bridge) and then to the right, giving the painting a dynamic feeling.

There’s almost a danger too, with the concrete walls everywhere. Plus the fact you are about to enter a high speed highway. The dynamic and the danger make the painting exciting to me.

It’s interesting to me what he has put in the painting: the office buildings to the right and a jumble of stores to the left. The objects that make up the painting could be anywhere in a big suburb in Canada (or the US). It has a universality in that regard. I thought it was of a part of the 401 near me: turns out it’s near Calgary. (Fun exercise: compare the painting with the images in that link…how does it make you think differently about the painting.)

Flodberg is not the only Canadian to paint a highway. If you do a search like this on Christopher Pratt or this on Jack Bishop, you can easily see that. Canadian landscapes contain many things, including highways: it makes sense good painters want to paint them.

Speaking of Pratt and Bishop, I get why some people don’t like Flodberg’s painting: his colors are dull and dark in comparison. But I think they perfectly capture many a day I’ve driven along stretches of the 401. Some of those days were mundane, and some were magical. They all get stirred up in my imagination when I take time to look at the work above. A great work, I believe.

I don’t think I would have come across this work if it wasn’t for twitter. Nor would have thought about it deeply if it weren’t for the comments people tweeted. Twitter has many flaws, but there are times when it does things no other site does. I am grateful for that

For more on the work of Flodberg, you can check out his site, here: Chris Flodberg – artist