Realism and Artistic Media

Realism vs Abstraction

Generally speaking, critics don't judge art based on how faithfully it depicts reality. A painting with 100% fidelity would be like a mirror held up to the subject. It would require years of skill and painstaking effort to produce such a work, and yet it would involve zero interpretation, and would express nothing at all.

Novel Media

The 1968 album Switched-On Bach is a collection of baroque music performed on a Moog synthesizer. As an imitation of traditional baroque music, meant to be performed on instruments like the violin and harpsichord, it falls short: you can tell that it's electronic. But the album is an experiment in what synthesizers are capable of, rather than an attempt to perfectly emulate string instruments in silico, which is practically impossible.

If we only cared about the synthesizer's ability to imitate traditional instruments, it would be pretty much worthless. In reality, people use synthesizers do to things that traditional instruments can't: even if a synthesizer can't match the exact timbre of a violin, it can generate a range of pitches, rhythms, volumes, and waveforms that even a full orchestra would be hard pressed to reproduce. The medium of electronic music gives artists access to a new space of expression. If you think I'm exaggerating, listen to a live performance of Heliosphan by Aphex Twin; but if you're reading my blog, you can probably think of a far snobbier example already.

This is a similar point to what I argued in the previous section: expressive ability matters more than the ability to replicate an existing thing.

The A-word

I've grown tired of all the AI discourse and feel somewhat guilty for writing this blog post, since it only contributes to the surge of verbal effluence. Regardless...

Despite being a programmer, I haven't used "AI" much at all, aside from some early experiments with ChatGPT. Running my own rig costs more money than I care to spend, and I don't want to continue using obnoxious SaaS products like ChatGPT for similar reasons, and because companies like "Open"AI are slimier than a hagfish with pollen allergies. Hackernews commenters might argue that I'm degenerate and should be reclassified as a specimen of genus Paramecium. Meanwhile, the lobste.rs crowd probably think I qualify for an Order of Lenin medal. But I'm not one to go after fancy titles like that.

Criticism of "AI art" tends to get at its lack of realism, e.g.: - Why is everything yellow? - Ew, she has six fingers! - All the text in this image is nonsensical. - Why is everything so shiny?

But if you accept the earlier arguments about visual art and electronic music, you should see that realism isn't a worthwhile criterion, at least if you're judging AI art's quality as artwork rather than something else.

The potential value of generative AI as an artistic medium lies in its ability to create and express things that we couldn't before. It could be like a synthesizer but for images. Disconcerting artifacts in AI art are like the unmistakably electronic timbre of Switched-On Bach. There may always be something "off" about generative AI, but if we only care about its ability to produce facsimiles, we're ignoring a vast expanse of unexplored expressive territory. And it is that territory that enterprising artists should explore.