To me these pictures are very nice looking from afar, but once you try to look in the details it makes you feel stupid that you don't get it, until you realize that it is senseless, there is no coherence, no point, no soul and it's normal that there is nothing to get from the picture as it's not in the algorithm.
The technique is perfect. But the art side reflection and emotion must still come from the eye of the beholder. It is deeply moving art in the sense it inspire strong negative emotions, the feeling that there are some stronger forces coming to crush you.
One such reflection that these collection should inspire is : "Is this the direction we want to take ?". Infinitely many garbage art stealing attention away from human artists.
Don't get me wrong, I like generated art but it's necessary to situate it in its context. That what makes it interesting. I even believe you can have machine explore thing and discover interesting thing on their own without it being formulaic, but we are not there yet.
I don't fully agree with you on the purpose of art. Art can create different meanings for every watcher and they could be quite far away from what was the intended purpose ( the message ) of the artist. I would say that main function of art is to ask questions, and also to give you a way to experience life in a way you would otherwise not be able to. In this context I think AI generated art can bring something new, a new layer of reality, a new set of questions, that might not been surfaced because we use brains to create art and brains to interpret it. It could be a new type of input that would push humanity further.
These pictures are interesting though. To me the thing that popped out, without having read background on the project, was how this robot artist is copying modernists like Picasso and possibly Pollock and DeKooning. And doing it along a few themes, with high degree of repetition; or tweaking some small things in each variation. The limitations are glaring and I’m wondering will it evolve and how.
My train of thought exactly. Even second-rate/beginner/hobbyist paintings, like those on Binned Art for example, are absolutely crushing these in every dimension.
What if you didn't know that the painting was the work of a bot?
What if it was just some abstract painting that someone took enough fancy to to pay to have put on a canvas?
Personally, I couldn't really tell them from the human-generated wikiart pictures that seeded the algorithm. Those human-generated pieces didn't speak to me either.
I'd love to see the algorithm work on some other art style seeds.
Perhaps the Vogels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_and_Dorothy_Vogel knew the artist? The way they amassed their collection is truly inspiring.
Picaso's wife infamously knew he was having an affair with his muse from glancing at a painting. But did every other Picaso fan who saw that same painting? Did truly know anything about the artist behind the picture?
So the chances of everyone else who appreciates an artist actually truly knowing anything about the actual artist? Complete rubbish, say I!
Take Turner, for example: turns out, the location of a lot of his pictures have been wrongly attributed! How everyone can claim to 'know' the artist and yet not realise that the picture is of Portsmouth or a lake in Scotland instead of Venice or somewhere else seems like they didn't really know the artist after all?
So there's a picture on the wall by Satoshi Nakamoto. You feel that genuine, because it's signed? Then when you get told that its painted by a bot, you feel cheated? Because you felt you knew something about the artist by looking at the art?
