Getting robots to do art for you...

People are really divided on this, but my take on it is from the viewpoint of an independant cassette artist, someone who is a collage artist, someone who loves collaborations, someone who listens to pirate radio, who participated in a large community of DIY underground musicians and artist in Austin in the 80's and 90's.

Yes, I'd rather have a real drummer, but I'm not in a band, nobody has the time because people working more than one job is a NORM in society right now: SO I USE LOOPS AND A DRUM MACHINE.

This is no different. Plus I believe beauty is the language of the universe, and consciousness persists after ego and self have been annihilated. I think that the thoughts, the music, the impressions of yourself that exist after you are dead are shared by many living entities, and every time someone thinks of you, you get to experience that thought through their eyes-- the dead can become us, feel what we feel, respond to beauty, if we keep them present in our minds.

So I happen to believe that when you use the remnants of a deceased person's mental traces in this world, they are participating. So to me it is a deeply spiritual thing.

The spirits of the living, when no longer confined to the restrictions of the material world, can experience everything we do when we call them to be present with us.

I prefer to labor on my music, because I can do that with the tools I already have and control everything by hand, but for experiments with beauty, consciousness and imagery. I prefer to experiment with other media digitally.

in 1998 I began writing a Fantasy trilogy that I nearly completed (it was already in final draft and half proofread when my work was interupted by police confiscation of my work)

The thing was first destoyed by a virus that wiped my hard drive in 1999 or 2000, but I had a printed manuscript that I sent to my uncle, so he sent me that and I painstakingly scanned and restored it.

Then in 2017 Local, state, federal, and some agencies surrounded my house and served me a warrant for something they falsely believed I had. I had only backed up my work on hard drives (3 different ones, in case one failed). I was not arrested because they found no evidence, but they took every scrap of digital media in the house and kept it in the evidence room to investigate me-- and I was told they could choose to keep that stuff forever by lawyers.

This Fantasy trilogy, when I self published using a really lame scam called "publish america" an artist who had read my first book began an illustration that I use on the front cover today.

Unfortunately, he passed away before he could complete the illustration.

When I first started dabbling with the AI art, the idea of letting a robot complete his work amazed me. It felt like he was aware of this, and every time I saw a creation being generated from his work, his voice was in my head, thanking me for letting him get back to work on this.

A lot of stuff the robot comes up with is random, and nothing is truly random, so I think consciousness, which exists outside of time and space, fills in the gaps.

He was overjoyed to work on his art again and I was happy for his input.

 

I always thought AI robots would take over the menial jobs, freeing us to devote ourselves to the pursuit of arts, literature, and music.
Instead we're stuck doing the shitty menial jobs whilst AI is creating art & music.
Funny old world, eh?

 

Robots could do the menial jobs... if labor wasn't a comodity to be bought and sold at the lowest price....

 

as someone who's been nearly completely and utterly pissed about AI art since it's gained prominence, this post helped be hate it a little less. as tired a saying as it is, really nothing is black and white. it could maybe end up being a new medium, not replacing the old but bouncing off of and expanding it. i still feel deeply bothered by it on many levels, and weirdly hurt, and feeling as though in my own work i find myself actively thinking about it and feeling... well sad in general but not really on a personal level since my own creations are kind of stupid and aren't likely to be commodified or mass recreated, but it's still really detrimental to me on some level because personhood is one of the most important parts of art to me. but then again, that's why what you're saying here kind of speaks to me. this is a deeply human use of ai, similar to some experimental uses of traditional mediums even. i hope AI doesn't end up in the wrong hands, but hell I even personally rely on it in little subtle ways that I don't always even think about it. AI can be as simple as a corrective digital tool, or something like that. Sorry, high, feeling rambly. (part 1)

 

my bad no part 2 it wont let me insert an image so anything i would say would be out of context

 

“Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter "repented," changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again. That is all I mean about the people in this book. The paint has aged and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now.”

 

I had a great acid trip one time where a painting my Uncle had painted kept changing, the face kept shifting. and then I realized that I was seeing the psychic impressions he left on the canvas while he was visualizing the face he was painting! So the soul goes into art. Honestly I'm becoming such a panpsychist that I think what we mistake for imagination is actually sensitivity. Anyone who's ever drawn anything knows you have to see the art in your mind and see it on your paper as you're drawing it. You're seeing something that's there. Like the time I extracted 2 grams of harmala into golden crystal needles put them in a capsule and lay seasick on a couch for 11 hours tripping balls. That shit comes from outside of your brain. you only have 80 billion neurons, I saw at least twice that many things-- far too many to ever remember them all. How many musicians say they just heard the whole song pop into their head? It's actually very therputic to share beautiful images with people. Deeply contemplative, introspective experience. It's really hard to say anything nasty to people when all they're doing is sharing beauty. Beauty is the language of the universe.

 

I'm sure that there are, or will be, robots creating art. Robots are already being used in factories to mass-produce reproductions of famous works of art.

I have commissioned several artists who are up-front that they use AI tools in their art. I accept what they deliver, but I haven't liked the look of any of it, and I probably won't commission any more such works. They all look deeply, unappealingly weird. Digital is fine, but I still want the artist's hand guiding the tools. It always turns out better.

 

I'm curious, Unsettling in what way?
After viewing the image, I see it as genuine proof that AI Image Generators can produce original works and that the people who focus on others who use the AI to reproduce images of Celebrities and Famous people are simply a splinter group of what is possible with the Aid of AI Generation. Colors deeper and more vivid than any person can create by hand. A person adept enough to describe in great detail what they wish to produce can create wonderful images.
AI Image generators are tools. I believe this hostility toward them is unfounded and amounts to the same prejudice that people had in the early 20th century toward the Horseless Carriage.

 

Imo It is more a matter of who controls(learning) the AI and for what purpose.

I like my art(paintings/music/buildings/gardens/ect) to have some meaning(human/story/history).......but it is more about what the masses want and think they need(commerce/control) atm.

AI is a big hype atm..............but it is not that good or scary yet...............

Mzzls

 

No single individual "Controls" the AI Learning. It learns through repetitive use. Everyone that uses it, teaches it.
Once again I go back to Cars ... Apparently a rather short-sighted Michigan Banker once told Henry Ford that "The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad.”
People have said the same about almost all innovations throughout history. TV was dismissed as a passing Fad. In the infancy of Computers when a single megabyte of information needs several large buildings to house, no one considered that you might one day carry a device in your pocket that held millions of megabytes. They also said the Internet would never catch on as well.

And on the question of purpose. Well, that's the question that holds everyone back, isn't it?
"What will this be used for?" No one thinks their brain child is going to be put to evil or malicious purpose.
How many times has someone died because they were beaten to death with a simple hammer? or stabbed with a kitchen knife.
Better still, how many times have people, weaponized their vehicles against someone.
Not only intentionally run someone down in the street, but also affixed guns, and rocket launcher to them and driven down city streets and destroyed things.
Shall we then consider doing away with all of these things the same way people seem to want to do away with AI? are we all THAT scared of this innovation because of people like James Cameron who made money by playing on your fears?


[AFTERTHOUGHT:]
That new iPhone is in a Titanium case, right? I bet you could crack open someone's skull with it if you threw it hard enough. Maybe we shouldn't encase cellphones in Titanium.