In ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,’ Arthur Dent was always trying to get the food simulator on the spaceship ‘Heart of Gold’ to produce a cup of english tea, which the machine could do almost, but not quite.
Now there’s fluff this morning, they’re calling it art news, that someone has made something that looks like art using ‘algorithms’ no less -- almost but not quite. My news feed thinks I’m interested in Van Gogh, and it’s amazing what they put him through in a week -- glad he’s gone. Could a computer make a Van Gogh? More than unlikely.
Making art turns out to be the one thing computers can’t do better than humans. Oh, they can make stuff that looks like art, as humans sometimes do, but it won’t say nothing. Computers experience neither joy or pain, have no aspirations, and don’t really care about you, or anyone. They have no DNA. Along with eye color, hair distribution, and various susceptibilities, there are vast uncharted tracts in our DNA tracing cold mountain passes, wars and deprivations -- ecstasies and triumphs, the encoded experience of thousands of generations, and if you don’t buy that then there’s the life each of us face everyday. Computers experience none of that, and they don’t make art. It would never occur to them.
3 comments:
I had a similar conversation with a friend regarding music. Could a computer "play the blues"? His argument was that a computer could be programmed to feel pain, loss, frustration, etc., and "learn" (for example) all the nuances of bending notes to achieve partial tones, or letting a note anticipate or hang over the beat, or contain the fragility or imperfection of human playing, etc., etc., etc. I must admit I didn't have the expertise to counter his argument, but couldn't accept the basic premise that computers, at least now, come close to rivaling the human brain. Most importantly, as it applies to visual art - don't most appreciators (as opposed to speculators) want a shared experience, a "piece" of the artist, some basic human communication?
I truly feel the more repetition and replication that machines enable people to do, the further away it will take us from the true act of creating. Watching the robot paint, while interesting, is also quite akin to something we would see in Dafen Village, an overlord presiding over a serf.
It's odd that not even artists copying themselves can produce an authentic product. 'The Wire,' and 'Treme', or 'Breaking Bad' and 'Saul' are examples in which the quality, freshness, humor seemed lost in the followup.
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