Photography AI as art

[Pieter12]

Art does not necessarily include images, it can be only words.

 

[koraks]

it can be only words.

Heck, it can be the description of a concept where even the words are just a sideshow...

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I can imagine that in the course of time, AI may produce great art, as it would reflect a consensus of human artistic values and appreciation. Imagine a picture that could combine the skill and imagination of several artists in one image. The same goes for music and literature.

Photographers might just get bored with it after you do it a couple of times. The image below is my Adobe Elements prorgam with artistic applications to make painting another type art. It was fun in the beginning twenty years ago but then got boring even though the results can be very artistic. Been there, done that.

 

[koraks]

Photographers might just get bored with it after you do it a couple of times.

There must have been painters in the 1850s who said the same of those dorks messing about with nasty chemicals and buckets of water. And yet, here we are, most decidedly not on Painttrio.com.

 

[cliveh]

I could imagine publishers using AI for POD (print on demand) for a customer who may want a murder mystery book, but written in the style of say Emile Zola and Dan Brown, or something like that.

 

[Pieter12]

Photographers might just get bored with it after you do it a couple of times. The image below is my Adobe Elements prorgam with artistic applications to make painting another type art. It was fun in the beginning twenty years ago but then got boring even though the results can be very artistic. Been there, done that.

An ancient, primitive program compared to today's offerings. But the discussion of AI here as I understand it is the question of whether AI generated images can be considered "art" since the human contribution is just prompts. I would argue that the same could be said of traditional photography (either analog or digital), since the human contribution is just pointing a piece of machinery and pushing a button.

 

[Vaughn]

Art does not necessarily include images, it can be only words.

View attachment 390591View attachment 390592

But those are images of words! "Only" words would need to be spoken.

Every discussion here trying to define what art is eventually goes in circles...as is discussing if AI is art. My stance as of now is that AI can create art. Kids in kindergarten can create art, elephants can create art, 90 year old senile people can create art. And they all can be artists. It is no big deal.

In the World of Art it is a different matter. There, the word "Art" is given divine importance.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

An ancient, primitive program compared to today's offerings. But the discussion of AI here as I understand it is the question of whether AI generated images can be considered "art" since the human contribution is just prompts. I would argue that the same could be said of traditional photography (either analog or digital), since the human contribution is just pointing a piece of machinery and pushing a button.

Well, for that matter, the Mona Lisa is just some guy using a horsehair brush to smear a bunch of paint around.

 

[Pieter12]

Well, for that matter, the Mona Lisa is just some guy using a horsehair brush to smear a bunch of paint around.

OK. Go for it.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

Won't lie - I think it's good/super interesting to have the option to not limit your imagination by skillset and budget. A strange, completely new paradigm. The art of prompts?
This is SO MUCH BETTER than rushed/poor CGI ruining countless high-budget movies in existence!

 

[Ivo Stunga]

since the human contribution is just pointing a piece of machinery and pushing a button.

Yup, that's how I've been feeling about photography for quite a while (life) and don't call myself an artist in any shape or form. Only a rare human being (and now probably AI for better or worse) has the capability to turn ordinary into extraordinary

 

[chuckroast]

Yup, that's how I've been feeling about photography for quite a while (life) and don't call myself an artist in any shape or form. Only a rare human being (and now probably AI for better or worse) has the capability to turn ordinary into extraordinary

There is a difference between "art" and "good art". Just because something isn't extraordinary doesn't mean it's not art. There are some pretty good guidelines we can use to determine what is- and isn't art, or at least what it takes to produce it, irrespective of whether it is good or not:

1. "Art", as the term has conventionally been used, describes the output of human creativity. It may not necessarily be good output (see above), but its creation is the work product of a human or group of humans. A parrot singing Mozart's "Queen Of The Night" aria isn't art, though it's mighty entertaining (I just actually saw that very thing). THIS is art - the parrot didn't compare:



2. "Art", as the term has conventionally been used, describes the output human activity and only when the intention is to produce art. Your mother-in-law's vacation pictures of the night sky in Grand Cayman may be beautiful, but they're not art.

3. "Art", as the term has conventionally been used, has the strong suggestion, dare I say requirement, that it is an interpretation of the subject not just a literal recording of it. Photojournalism can be powerful, instructive, documentary, and inspirational but it is not, on its face, "art" (though there are examples of photojournalistic efforts to produce art as output, not just documentation).

4. Beauty, in and of itself isn't art. See the aforementioned photos made by your mother-in-law. However beautiful they may be, she wasn't trying to make art and she wasn't trying to interpret anything. She was just trying to make a pretty picture. On the other hand, Avendon's "Dovima with Elephants" may be been photography serving Dior's commercial interests and thus quite beautiful in its own right. But it's also clearly interpretive well beyond just peddling expensive perfume and clothing. I'd suggest that it is exactly art.

So the question about "AI Art" comes down to this, in my opinion: Was the creative process under the control of a human and the AI just a tool (art), or was the creation itself AI driven (not art). That line may not be simple to figure out, but it seems to me to be the essence of the question.

So, yes, photography can be far more than just pushing a button.

P.S. This does intersect with other questions like what happens when the human artist uses random processes to produce the artifact. Jackson Pollock's shower curtain paintings, er, I mean, fine art, leap to mind here. He was certainly intentional about the work, but it does ask the question of how "artistic" is something when the process is out of the full control of the artist. This gives art school students something interesting to argue about.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Art to me exists only from the standpoint of the viewer, not the person creating it. If the work creates an emotional, spiritual, or mental response in the viewer, then it is art. The viewer doesn't know or care if the artist is your grandmother or HCB. The creator is a photographer or painter or sculptor until the viewer calls them an artist. The "artist" has nothing to say about it. It's just ego to call oneself an artist.

 

[Vaughn]

... It's just ego to call oneself an artist.

And it takes just as much ego to call oneself not an artist...especially if one claims to know how artists think or how they work.

 

[warden]

The creator is a photographer or painter or sculptor until the viewer calls them an artist.

Artists don’t need a viewer to validate their work in order to identify as an artist, just as they don’t need a viewer to call them a photographer or sculptor before identifying as one. Screw the viewer.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

A sculptor or photographer isn't an artist if their work doesn't stir anyone's soul. They may think they're an artist but how could they be before hearing from the viewer? We talked about the grandmother with a snapshot. Why isn't she an artist?

 

[warden]

They may think they're an artist but how could they be before hearing from the viewer?

The viewer doesn’t matter. No artist needs to “hear from them”.

Some people here do not identify as artists, preferring to call themselves photographers instead. If I wield my awesome power as a viewer and call them artists are they now cursed to identify as one?

 

[MattKing]

A sculptor or photographer isn't an artist if their work doesn't stir anyone's soul. They may think they're an artist but how could they be before hearing from the viewer? We talked about the grandmother within a snapshot. Why isn't she an artist?

I have a friend who is an extraordinary photographer, whose work always impresses.
She is an accomplished and confident individual with many talents.
I and others who know her can't quite understand why she is quite uncomfortable when people describe her photography as Art.
But it is, and she is a photographic Artist, despite her protestations.
It truly doesn't matter though.
Whether someone is acknowledged as an Artist by many, or essentially unrecognized as an Artist, it doesn't matter.
The same applies to what people create.
If someone thinks they are an Artist and what they create is Art, then they are, and it is.
And the converse applies as well - whether you admit it or not, if you create, it is Art, and you are an Artist.

 

[Vaughn]

Well written, Matt. A human is an animal that makes art.

A sculptor or photographer isn't an artist if their work doesn't stir anyone's soul.

How about their own soul? Sometimes that is good enough...the world needs a lot of that, too.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

The world needs less individualism too.

Many definitions of Art and I guess I haven't really thought about what nakes thing and Art.

Subjectively and intuitively I guess it has to be of high quality and somewhat extraordinary, and must include subjective interpretation that makes things interesting and creates an emotional response, puts things into wild/new perspective. Otherwise point is lost and everyone is an artist.
Or a thing must at least be of rather extraordinary beauty that sets it apart from other laymen effort.

I can't call "modern art" (shoe at an exhibition, things being smashed and put into a pile, or a schizophrenic, raw performance from a human that can't dance, naked youngsters shot uncomplimentary with a hard flash in 90's point-and-shoot style, and so on) an art. It's just playing around with chaos and about being dumb :F

And can "AI Photography" be art if it's not a Photography in the first place?

 

[TJones]

Artists don’t need a viewer to validate their work in order to identify as an artist, just as they don’t need a viewer to call them a photographer or sculptor before identifying as one. Screw the viewer.

Schrödinger’s artist. I’m both an artist and not an artist, depending on who’s looking at my photos.

Sorry, no.

 

[chuckroast]

Art to me exists only from the standpoint of the viewer, not the person creating it. If the work creates an emotional, spiritual, or mental response in the viewer, then it is art. The viewer doesn't know or care if the artist is your grandmother or HCB. The creator is a photographer or painter or sculptor until the viewer calls them an artist. The "artist" has nothing to say about it. It's just ego to call oneself an artist.

Art is a triangle: The artist, the consumer of the art, and the artifact.

The artist's intent is what creates the artifact and has little or nothing to do with the viewer/consumer. Artists primarily make art for themselves and let others "look over their shoulder."

The viewer's response is just that their response and thus certainly important to them. That response may have a lot to do whether the art/artist get noticed, is commercially successful, and so forth but it does not in any meaningful way speak to the intent or quality of the work.

So I would gently disagree that art "exists only from the standpoint of the viewer." I'd suggest it exists independently of the viewer and dependently upon the artist.

Whether it is good art or not is a whole other can of worms ...

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I have a friend who is an extraordinary photographer, whose work always impresses.
She is an accomplished and confident individual with many talents.
I and others who know her can't quite understand why she is quite uncomfortable when people describe her photography as Art.
But it is, and she is a photographic Artist, despite her protestations.
It truly doesn't matter though.
Whether someone is acknowledged as an Artist by many, or essentially unrecognized as an Artist, it doesn't matter.
The same applies to what people create.
If someone thinks they are an Artist and what they create is Art, then they are, and it is.
And the converse applies as well - whether you admit it or not, if you create, it is Art, and you are an Artist.

So anything created is art?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Well written, Matt. A human is an animal that makes art.



How about their own soul? Sometimes that is good enough...the world needs a lot of that, too.

That's a good point, Vaughn. But shouldn't the rest of us hear from other viewers or ourselves whose souls were stirred before we call him an artist? Self-proclamations seem rather weak if not corroborated by outsiders. I think I'm a great husband. But wouldn't you want to check with my wife to confirm that?

 

[MattKing]

So anything created is art?

It is probably better to phrase it as everything created has some Art in it. Which means some creations are almost completely Art, while others have just a smidgen of Art in them.