Photography’s rapid commercialisation [21] meant that many painters – or prospective painters – were tempted to take up photography instead of, or in addition to, their painting careers. Most of these new photographers produced portraits. As these were far cheaper and easier to produce than painted portraits, portraits ceased to be the privilege of the well-off and, in a sense, became democratised [22].
Some commentators dismissed this trend towards photography as simply a beneficial weeding out of second-raters. For example, the writer Louis Figuier commented that photography did art a service by putting mediocre artists out of business, for their only goal was exact imitation. Similarly, Baudelaire described photography as the “refuge of failed painters with too little talent”. In his view, art was derived from imagination, judgment and feeling but photography was mere reproduction which cheapened the products of the beautiful [23].
I'm going disagree with you. My assets don't wake me up at 3am when they stop working....the best software is no software.
My line of reasoning with an example:
I own a car, and the car itself isn't the value I get from the vehicle. The value is being able to go distant places easily. If I could snap my fingers and travel instantly I wouldn't own a car.
So, software is the value delivery vehicle, but generally not the actual valuable thing (remember that the vast majority of software are CRUD apps that are a step above excel that mainly handle bookkeeping).
I have a co-worker who has spoken excitedly about creating AI-generated music. I listened to him talk (and some brief music clips) and didn't tell them I have no interest in it, because he seems passionate about it. But it does not interest me.
My point is, though, it occurred to me why he's excited about it. He has no ability whatsoever to write music in notes, or song lyrics. But with his tool, he's able to make music that he finds decent enough to feel excited about helping to shape it.
No criticism to those who can't do a thing on their own, but are excited to be able to do it with a tool. And yes, you can certainly elaborate on and debate craftsmanship, and the benchmarks and measures of quality of an end result when made through expert skill and care, or by amateurs with a powerful (and perhaps imperfect or imprecise) tool.
So personal anecdote, using generative code has not interested me personally, because I love writing code, and I'm very good at it, and I'm very fast. Of course machines can do things faster than me (once I learn the different skill of prompting), but speed hasn't really been a massively limiting factor for me when trying to build things. (There are lots of other things that can get in my way!)
I'm reminded of the oft used quote, "He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches" - George Bernard Shaw. (Just, now the teaching is that of a machine, who then does.)
There's one interesting phenomenon that I noticed in myself and others with generating music with AI. You develop this kind of outsized emotional connection with it, even though your contribution to the 'work' was minimal, the fact that you saw this (arguably not) new 'thing' come into being creates an atypical bond. Not that it's 'mine' but that it's this beautiful thing.
So you (or in this case I) get all excited about how fantastic it is, but others that hear it are just kind of 'meh'. The only way I know this is listing to songs shared in that same exuberance by others, and to me they are 'meh'.
I shared this sentiment with some folks and one person said 'yeah, you should try writing your own music sometime...same thing happens' xD
Yeah, seriously. I've seen musicians nearly come to blows over tube vs solid state amps. Music has even more anger associated with brands and technique than gaming or tech. It's just not flooding the algos like AI currently is
I’d been thinking more just typing the commands into a terminal window on the big screen, but something like this could be really helpful for seeing the intermediate steps.
Some commentators dismissed this trend towards photography as simply a beneficial weeding out of second-raters. For example, the writer Louis Figuier commented that photography did art a service by putting mediocre artists out of business, for their only goal was exact imitation. Similarly, Baudelaire described photography as the “refuge of failed painters with too little talent”. In his view, art was derived from imagination, judgment and feeling but photography was mere reproduction which cheapened the products of the beautiful [23].
https://www.artinsociety.com/pt-1-initial-impacts.html#:~:te...
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