Shriram | Week 14 | Split Tone, the Purpose of Creating, and Talking to You
I think it was a film.
It is possible to engage with art in so many different ways. With videography, an increasingly popular form of art is one that is watched because there is a creator. With generative AI on the rise, infecting our images, emails, books, dreams…it’s more important than ever to embrace as much humanity as we can, even through a digital medium such as video. Shaky handheld camera shots, earnestly—although not professionally—edited stills with bright red skies, out of focus sprints of our main characters through a dry field, or over the mountains, or through busy city streets are important reminders that our creative output should never converge to the mathematical average of everything before it. And yet, some will try.
We had this conversation before AI media was as prevalent as it is now, and this additional factor has only strengthened my belief in my original opinion. I’m glad you raised the point you did, however.
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| it looks nostalgic even if you were never part of this experience. thank the film grain. |
The art loses all of its value when you realize that the piece was created with a massive budget and professional help, I claimed. It no longer means anything. I can accept a scrappy, shaky ‘aesthetic’ piece only if it’s organic: those videos are stories told beyond the camera, implied through the medium itself. Taken out of context they have no purpose. They’re no longer real, and you agreed.
But people found value in it.
Whether it be two characters pondering their fabricated worries lying next to each other, or dragging out conversations in the car, or some kind of pseudo-philosophy that never leaves any sort of conclusion, people consumed that art and found meaning where there wasn’t. It helped them. It gave them comfort in the face of uncertainty. Should it then be valued?
I mean, an AI agent can predict a set of words that is statistically likely to be motivational, but who would be inspired by a dead mesh of wires? I’m sure you’d agree.
I think you were right, at the time. But I wasn’t comfortable with that conclusion. Maybe I was pretentious, insisting upon the purity of an art that must not be contaminated by others entering the same field. At the end of the day, however, I realized that I simply wasn’t able to word out what is a fundamental truth, applicable to art, study, and even our social lives: it is as much about doing as it is having done.
I don’t think I’ve actually agreed with you on anything before, which I appreciate. It’s a great experience to disagree with someone so thoughtful and articulate. Every discussion was a reflection of our differing (and importantly human!!) experiences.
All of that has passed now. I don’t really remember the film. I don’t think I have a defined stance on it anymore. The details aren’t important; everything else I still remember.
Shriram, great blog as always. I think I’ll start by saying that I was intrigued to read what you wrote this week when you said you started early (honestly impressive given the way this year has been), and can def say that you did not disappoint.
ReplyDeleteYour paragraph’s opening line, “It is possible to engage with art in so many different ways,” really got me thinking. I’m thinking about the various kinds of art, and also how art is different for everyone, based on the perspective they’re perceiving it from.
I agree with your caption of the photo; it definitely makes me nostalgic, and I’m struggling to understand why. I think it reminds me of summer. The clothes, the bike, and the whole vibe just radiates summer, or maybe I’m just looking for a reason to think about summer.
Dude, I HECKA think about how the prevalence of digital cameras has risen so much in recent times. Digital camera photos carry themselves differently; their gradient is intentionally obscure, or rather there is a faintness that iPhones simply cannot portray. It kind of feels performative, though. It feels like we are chasing some kind of nostalgia, one that we’ve never experienced.
Bro, I agree so much with the part about disagreeing with others. I LOVE to disagree. As I’ve grown, I’ve come to appreciate disagreeing and hearing new perspectives, rather than trying to prove my own. I think I grow a lot when I disagree with people. Sometimes, it makes me question the intellect of who I’m disagreeing with, but also sometimes, I find myself questioning why I didn’t consider their point of view first.
Reading your blog, and then rereading it, I’m left a bit confused, but maybe that’s the point? Idk. Either way, I will ask you about it tomorrow. Great blog as always. Looking forward to next week’s.
Hi Shriram! I found this blog pretty thought-provoking. It introduces an idea that I haven’t really considered. I’ve heard the argument that AI generated art or writing loses its value often. However, I haven’t witnessed the other side of the argument as frequently. I think to a large extent I agree with your original idea; AI generated works just cannot achieve the same value as art created by humans. The human touch allows for a necessary depth that gives way for the piece to have meaning. The sentence you wrote about how AI can simply predict what’s pleasing for us to hear through compiled statistics really solidified that idea for me. Sometimes I forget that artificial intelligence at the end of the day is artificial. It can’t create anything novel and instead it just regurgitates information at mind-boggling speeds. Therefore, I do agree with the idea that with AI art becomes “contaminated.”
ReplyDeleteWhile I am sure someone or the other finds that kind of “art” enjoyable or thought-provoking—I am not sure how, but I can presume someone does—I just cannot fathom it entirely. The reason art resonates with so many people is due to the emotions and feelings the artist employs to create it, but AI doesn’t have any. So for me it nullifies the other side of the argument.
I like how you closed off your blog by saying you don’t think you or your friend have ever agreed upon anything, yet you appreciate that. Discourse is fundamental for progress and realizations so while I find the argument a bit objective I like how it can bring up new perspectives.
I’ve been a longtime opponent of generative AI and the things it creates. I personally see the products of generative AI models like ChatGPT and whatnot as incredibly precise and in-depth outputs of a function, because that truly is what an LLM is. You put an input (a prompt, usually), into terabytes upon terabytes of linear algebra, and it gives you an output, with some injected randomness to make it seem human. In an extremely primitive sense, that is also what the human brain is—after all, “neural networks” were modelled off the brain—but the sheer complexity of the human nervous system will remain at a level that no AI model could ever achieve for the foreseeable future.
ReplyDeleteI love your final concluding point, that “it is as much about doing as it is having done.” I explored this concept in my Blog #12 about dioramas and miniatures, where I drew immense respect and enjoyment from realizing that each detail in this human generated artwork was actually performed. It’s not the pretty thumbnail picture covering a mess of calculus and matrices, but an actual, tangible product developed by someone nearly identical to you and me.