On The Art Apocalypse

"I could never learn to paint, but now I can generate."

Said a lad, who made some basic portraits with cheap excuse for AI.

And then unevenly chicken scratched his name, with big, ugly, stupid, unreadable pink letters, in the corner.

World away, a Museum representative got tricked, and hung up some pieces, that he later called revolting.

Pronouncing that art must have a meaning, history, reason, value.

Then for an unrelated reason, some expensive-wine aficionados got duped again.

This time, the cheap wine brand they proclaimed as supreme, was government owned, and didn't even really have a name.

Worst yet, we can see how awesome it would be, to generate 12 portraits of Sphinx cats...

Use an image upscaler, create our own online store, just because we can, and then order 12 pieces to hang by the stairs.

Twelve cats, that never existed, dressed in exquisite uniforms.

Decorating the stair case, on a level that most famous artists wouldn't be able to match.

It is hard to make sense of it all, it is hard to know what good art is.

Even when knowing that the definition of good art, is the kind of art that changes lives.

Generating comic books and graphic novels, is already trivial, and with some generated wisdom.

It would be possible to put a book together, that does transform philosophy into something more modern.

That in fact, changes lives.

The solution to it all is found somewhere, with those wine snobs.

That get so easily tricked, by a cheap brand.

Fundamentally, we misinterpreted art, we asked the wrong questions.

The Generative Art AI came about, made us look almost as foolish as the wine aficionados.

Aside from good art, being the kind of art that changes lives.

The artist has to be meaningful, it has to be someone we care about.

Not everyone will care about a machine with a personality, or even a distant stranger, that got a neat art idea going.

Here we find another piece, of the answer, to what makes art, art.

The artist must be personally meaningful to the viewer, because of who they are, or what they do beyond art.

What they believe in, what they want from the world, what they want to change for the better.

Behind every good piece of art, is a person that is up to something, that they hope is meaningful.

So it is not about the taste of the wine, but the person who made it, and why, and what else they do.

It is hard for a computer program, to be as meaningful as a living, thinking, believing being.

Moreover, generative art revels it self as a brush or a tool, and it is only meaningless when the creator, is a fool.

You see, when we judged art by what it merely look like, we were like those who judged wine, by what it merely tasted like.

That was the wrong thing to do, because the mind of the artist always mattered too.