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THIS IS THE YASMIN-DISCUSSIONS DIGEST
Today's Topics:
1. Art and AI in the news (YASMIN DISCUSSIONS)
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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2019 11:52:09 -0400
From: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr>
To: yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr
Subject: [Yasmin_discussions] Art and AI in the news
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<mailman.9.1561396048.25463.yasmin_discussions_ntlab.gr@ntlab.gr>
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Hi everyone,
Since Yasmin appears ready to bloom again, I'll take this opportunity to broach the subject of AI as art. To judge from a recent spate of articles, artists may be no more immune to ouster by artificial intelligence than truck drivers or Walmart cashiers. I have yet to read any article that focuses on whether AI-driven art is good. Instead they ask, is it art, or more often, can machines be artists--and if so, will they replace artists?
The spring issue of the Swiss-based open-access journal MPDI, for example, includes a claim that AIs can produce autonomous art by Marian Mazzone and Ahmed Elgammal [1], as well as counterarguments by Arthur Still and Mark d?Inverno [2] and Andreas Broeckmann [3]. Artist Ernest Edmonds [4] argues for an intermediate position, in which AI acts as a sort of communication medium between artists.
Apart from the general hoopla about machine learning making life better (or taking your job), much of this art-related interest seems precipitated by Christies' sale last October of an algorithmically generated print for $400,000, because money. That auctioned AI is the subject of Ian Bogost's piece for the Atlantic magazine [5], though there are concurrent ripples in other creative industries, notably Warner signing a record deal with a startup that makes music algorithms [6].
While the radiologists and taxi drivers may be grappling for the first time with whether robots will take their jobs, we artists have been down this road before. A century ago, theorists like Walter Benjamin wrung their hands over whether photography would make artists obsolete thanks to its automated depiction of the natural world. Artists, however, just kept on painting and in so doing shifted the definition of what it meant to be an artist.
I don?t see how a similar vocational dodge will rescue doctors and cabbies from the encroach of AI in the longer-term. However, it might be instructive to note that most of the academic articles I cite above implicitly or explicitly discount the idea of an artificial intelligence as artist (5 out of 7 articles). So why the undeterred attention on art and AI? Is it because artists are no longer the only people capable of generating believable faces of people who don't exist [7] or a video of the Mona Lisa chatting about the weather [8]? My colleague and AI artist Sofian Audry pointed out that some artworld insiders just smell a new business opportunity. They're already thinking through the insurance risks, for chrissakes:
"If it's on a video screen, you're going to be thinking about the risk management in the same way as you might with a Bill Viola exhibit or another video piece. With Klingemann's AI-brain, there might be additional risks with the algorithm itself. How do you know if the algorithm or the artificial brain is somehow malfunctioning? If that happens, does that constitute a damage to the work of art, or is it simply an extension to the performance and how the artwork is presenting itself?" [9]
At Glenn Smith's suggestion, Audry and I contributed an MDPI article of our own. For us, the important issue is not whether an AI can be an artist, but whether the artist that viewers construct from seeing an AI artwork will be human or machine. Monkie selfies and computer viruses loom large in our argument [10].
Cheers,
jon
______________________________
Jon Ippolito
Professor of New Media, University of Maine
Study Digital Curation online at http://DigitalCuration.UMaine.edu
[1] Marian Mazzone and Ahmed Elgammal, "Art, Creativity, and the Potential of Artificial Intelligence," https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/8/1/26/htm
[2] Arthur Still and Mark d?Inverno, "Can Machines Be Artists? A Deweyan Response in Theory and Practice," https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/8/1/36/htm
[3] Andreas Broeckmann, "The Machine as Artist as Myth," https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/8/1/25/htm
[4] Ernest Edmonds, "Communication Machines as Art," https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/8/1/22/htm
[5] Ian Bogost, "The AI-Art Gold Rush Is Here," https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/ai-created-art-invades-chelsea-gallery-scene/584134/
[6] Dani Deahl, "Warner Music signed an algorithm to a record deal? what happens next?" https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18283084/warner-music-algorithm-signed-ambient-music-endel
[7] Tom Simonite, "Artificial Intelligence Is Coming for Our Faces," https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-fake-fakes/
[8] Devin Coldewey, "This technology can make the Mona Lisa talk (sort of)," https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/mona-lisa-frown-machine-learning-brings-old-paintings-and-photos-to-life
[9] Bethan Moorcraft, "Klingemann?s AI-brain artwork raises intriguing art insurance questions," https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/breaking-news/klingemanns-aibrain-artwork-raises-intriguing-art-insurance-questions-162464.aspx
[10] Sofian Audry and Jon Ippolito, "Can Artificial Intelligence Make Art without Artists? Ask the Viewer," https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/8/1/35/htm
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End of Yasmin_discussions Digest, Vol 9, Issue 3
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