Sketched Out: An Illustrator Confronts His Fears About A.I. Art

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Sketched Out: An Illustrator Confronts His Fears About A.I. Art

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“The essence of art (according to me!) is that there was somebody at the other end with the intent to express something.”

Yeah! I definitely agree. This was a fun read.

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“The essence of art (according to me!) is that there was somebody at the other end with the intent to express something.”

It seems like people often have an implicit school of thought about art that gradually shifts over time. In this case, it’s a shift from realism (‘art should accurately represent reality’) to a sort of romanticism (‘art should express emotions, thoughts, or internal states of being, etc.’).

This seems like a common pipeline. Maybe that’s because it’s how people are taught. First learn technical skills, and then learn to express yourself.

Anyway, in the context of AI art, romanticism is a safe retreat philosophically because there’s no definite way to prove whether a computer has intention, just like there’s no way to prove whether animals who paint have any intention.

However, nobody has to adhere to realism or romanticism (either deliberately or by accident), because there are dozens of other schools of thought that you can use as a lens.

None of this matters commercial and in terms of career viability, commerce, and copyright law. The stances that any of us have on art may have little connection to the tangible value of art.

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I’d say the fundamental spectrum for artists is realism to abstraction rather than realism to romanticism. Romanticism is - broadly speaking because it means different things to different people all the time - one of what you describe as the schools of thought.

-Wade

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I have pretty surface-level understandings of the terms, so maybe romanticism is too broad for what I’m getting at.

But I do think that general audiences usually try and evaluate art and media based on what it evokes in them, and when they go to create something similar, they try to express what they feel above all else.

If abstract art is meant to be entirely non-representational, it’s definitely a spectrum and one way to move away from realism, romanticism, etc. — but it’s more of a “serious” pursuit rather than a comfortable place for audiences to be.

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On this subject, I’ve always liked the following passage on “AI generated fiction” by Kenneth Patchen from his 1945 novel “Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer”:

“This is a machine that writes books,” the Inventor said. “See these buttons—Description, Characters, Setting, Plot, Type— Well, first you press the Type key—that’s type of book— All right, you want a Light Novel. Set where? New England. O.K. ‘Light Novel’ under Type. ‘New England’ under Setting. You like nice characters or meanies? Meanies, eh? We push down Characters. . . ‘Sophisticated.’ Description— let’s make it, ‘Not Too Well Done.’ O.K. Plot—‘Mama Don’t Love Papa No More.’ We’re all set now. Every key goes back to a number of choices. . . . Take Setting as an example. We got New England on the second tier of buttons. What’s in New England? Cities, towns, hamlets. But since you want your book sophisticated, the interlocking control will probably give you a city or hamlet. The meanies don’t like Arlington. The machine, of course, has keys for them all—and it doesn’t matter in the least which gets tapped. It’s really a simple matter of ascending progressions; until we get back to one set of people out of the millions of possibles, one house, one chair, one particular incest, adultery, rape, or talk around a cocktail table about them. . . .”

“And what do you do with it?” I asked him.

“Why, write books, of course,” Mr. Wan answered. “Would you be surprised to know that about ninety percent of the stuff you see reviewed was written by this machine?”

“Even in The Times!”

“Over there I’ve got a machine that writes the reviews for The Times—”

“For The Times ‘Book Section’!”

“Sure. Why, before long I’ll invent something that will even read them.”

As a long-time literary outsider, Patchen’s main gripe at the time was that literature was becoming formulaic, safe and soulless. The present situation with “AI” across all forms of art would no doubt have him doing cartwheels in his grave.

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