Project Ai: On The Surface
A discussion over whether Ai outputs are "real art" was a recent topic in my studio. Based on reason and logic, I believe the answer is clearly YES. Ai outputs created from natural language prompts are undoubtedly original art. I can say this confidently based on the well-established concept of provenance and an understanding of generative art.
What is generative art?
Generative art refers to art that in whole or in part has been created with the use of an autonomous system. An autonomous system in this context is generally one that is non-human and can independently determine features of an artwork that would otherwise require decisions made directly by the artist. [1] With enough randomness in the network, no two images will ever be the same. Infinite outputs.
What is provenance?
The word provenance is rooted in the French word provenir, meaning “to come from.” Provenance documents the origin of something.
In the case of Generative Adversarial Network Artificial Intelligence, image outputs cannot exist without humans providing the natural language prompts. Competing neural networks receive your prompt and utilize vast databases of known imagery to create a derivative work, based on your text. This is similar to an art director instructing a room full of staff artists to produce new concepts for a client. Or a film director instructing the staff to create and film a specific movie scene.
Do we not consider art created by directors as "real"?
Ai GANs are here to stay. They are rapidly evolving and improving. Tools so powerful that we cannot predict the impact on arts and culture. The only way to understand is by using them, pushing the boundaries and finding new use cases. The rest will take care of itself.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_art
Source image for the digital projection can be found here: https://objkt.com/asset/KT1VvDNQeWE4QAaAmTDjui8ezT7htoxVBHLY/22
Learn more about my work at www.RobertMatheson.com and @Robert_Matheson
