I have an account on a site called ArtStation, which I use to post my 3D stuff. 

Around Christmas, the site became flooded with protests against AI art. I was vaguely aware of AI art through my oldest son, who has been looking into programing along those lines. 

I’ve seen some stuff and it look mostly like realistic enough paintings of people. 

Then I heard this discussion on one of the DarkHorse Q and A podcasts. 

Someone asked the hosts’ thoughts on AI as a tool to make art. 

Bret said it’s pretty useful for destroying art, not making it. It can be useful for making something that can be sold for something that passes for art. 

Heather mentioned that, while she didn’t really want to introduce what sounds like a cliché, it comes down to what art is. If art is an inherently a human endeavor, as she thinks it is, then no.  

They both mentioned that there have been elephants and monkeys who have put paint to canvas. Is it art? Something is being created, but what meaning does it have? 

Bret feels the essential quality of art has to do with meaning. Art is a two-way street: there is someone creating something, and someone interpreting something. If an AI process spits out a randomly generated composition from an algorithm that your mind interprets as art, then the interpreter will impose meaning on it, even when there clearly isn’t any.  

I’ve held an idea for some time that I don’t think art has to have some meaning. I’ve got a bunch of stories relating to this too. But my basic idea is that art only has to be aesthetically pleasing. I say this in contradistinction to another theory of art that says art has to communicate something, or even worse, utter nonsense like it has to speak truth to power. I’m not sure art does have to communicate anything. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to think of anything that art has ever communicated to me. I learn things from books, from music, but I can’t recall anything I’ve learned from looking at paintings. 

Sharing this with my boss one day, he mentioned stained glass in churches, which would often tell a story in art form. For parishioners who couldn’t read, there is perhaps an element of conveying information to them that I hadn’t thought of. That would seem to qualify as a genuine communication medium then.  

I also had an office mate for a while that said that she did actually gain perspectives from one particular artist. So that’s maybe another example. 

I know with a lot of art I’ve done, I created it specifically for the color scheme. I can’t really say that’s devoid of meaning, but there’s certainly no real attempt to communicate any deep truths in the composition. 

I’ve also heard what I’m sure is utter nonsense from art gallery directors. I had one explaining some abstract art by a peruvian artist, where the art director was assigning messages through the brush strokes in the art. I’m 99.9% sure that everything the art director said was pure invention. A sales pitch. Is that then an example of humans assigning meaning where there isn’t? To my mind, if you like the abstract art because you think it looks cool, then by all means, splash the cash on it. But the pretension that happens in the art world from so much trash art than then has glorified meaning written in to it is, well…. I don’t buy it. 

I can’t even tell you how many artists I have seen paint a face, then drag a brush across it, and then expound how they are trying to get you to see faces in a different way. Ok, I think that’s just pure BS. If you want to get me to see faces in a different way, then paint them in a different way, don’t just mess it up and act like you’re deep. There’s also the god-awful, poorly executed crap that has an explanation with all the latest political buzzwords. I’m sorry, that’s just hoping to sell schlock by telling the viewer there is meaning that isn’t communicated in the painting itself. It’s lazy and incompetent. 

I’ve seen art made by a woman with rather large breasts. She takes her top off, smears paint on her breasts and then “paints” the canvas using her breasts. I think Mick Jagger bought a piece for some 5000 bucks. The art looked like paint smeared on a canvas. That’s a gimmick, not meaning. 

I watched one the other day where an artist had a woman swinging in circles from her ankles, her hair dipped in paint like a paint brush, and she was swinging over the large canvas with her hair making patterns over it. That’s nearly as random as an AI generated painting. It has probably as much meaning. Is it art? Does it really mean anything?  

But then today I was thinking about a beautiful sunrise sky. There is a randomly generated pattern of clouds and the sun coming up bounces colors off them. It’s beautiful, but was it created with meaning? I don’t think so. We can find meaning in it- the beginning of a new day, new beginnings etc, but that’s meaning imposed by the viewer, not meaning created by the sunrise. Nevertheless, it IS exceptionally beautiful. Maybe that’s distinct from art.  

I also have memories and photos of things that are both beautiful and loaded with meaning, at least for me personally; places I’ve been, smiles and eyes I remember. Those things are beautiful because of the meaning.

And of course if I take a picture of a sunset, I can do so for a purpose, which would create meaning, but again that’s different from the visual splendor of the sunset, which is beautiful on its own. 

Asking a questions like “what is art?” Can render different answers to different people. 

I’ve tended towards what is aesthetically pleasing. Period. 

But I’m starting to admit that perhaps there is more to the question that I had initially thought. 

Perhaps my stance was more reaction to pretense than well-thought out philosophy.