- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- comics@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- comics@lemmy.ml
From their mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@oatmeal/115333929613343166
From their mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@oatmeal/115333929613343166
Very similar things were said when photography was invented. There was great outcry that it debased art as a whole. It took decades before visual symbolic language adapted to the new media and methods. Man Ray was just one artist that found some of the new ground in photography. I’m sure you can find others.
The problem (IMO) is impatience. The pace of innovation is so fast that we’ve forgotten how slowly art history usually happens. We see fads, fashion, and styles change quickly and take it as a permanent seismic shift. Art contains symbolic language that needs to grow and evolve in order to become expressive. Were the first movies masterpieces? Well, they were for the time. But they seem primitive and amateurish to a modern eye. Because the art grew.
I agree the current generation of slop is… Slop. But we haven’t had enough time to judge it this harshly. Yet.
Just to continue your thought on photography - there is masses of photo slop filling up our spaces too. Take it from someone who has to sift through stock photos for my work sometimes.
Agreed.
My parents also said the same thing about electronic music
“it’s not real music, the computer makes it!”
every new technology that lowers the barrier of entry gets derided every time. Tale as old as time.
Every new technology that enables more of the masses to participate will obviously mean more low quality stuff gets made. That doesnt mean the tool is worthless.
Is there a lot of AI slop art? Of course there is… but i hate these anti-AI extremists (especially concentrated in the fediverse) that reject ANYTHING that has even touched AI to be worthless.
“oh what a nice picture… wait what? The artist filled in one corner with AI? it’s total trash!”
Counterpoint: previous technologies also enabled people to do what wasn’t possible before. Photography allowed for perfect captures of a place and time. Electronic music can create sounds that no physical instrument can. So far, AI hasn’t made anything “impossible” possible, it only makes what a skilled artist or writer could make but super fast.
that’s already making an “impossible” into a “possible”… and in my books, that’s a useful tool if you take all the value judgements out of it.
If one brush stroke in a painting were made using the blood of a murdered child as paint, would you treat the entire painting and the artist with suspicion? I would. Maybe a masterpiece could be so good that it would overpower that one act in my subjective evaluation, but it would have to be the masterpiece of a true visionary. I would not be easily persuaded.
Oil is the blood of the very earth on which we depend to live, so to spill it in the name of art is perhaps a greater crime than to spill human blood. Again, I could be persuaded by a masterpiece to set aside the flaws in its creation, but it would require a certain bar of quality.