AI for Arts

Niklas Hageback, Daniel Hedblom

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000433050
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art général

AI for Arts is a book for anyone fascinated by the man–machine connection, an unstoppable evolution that is intertwining us with technology in an ever-greater degree, and where there is an increasing concern that it will be technology that comes out on top. Thus, presented here through perhaps its most esoteric form, namely art, this unfolding conundrum is brought to its apex. What is left of us humans if artificial intelligence also surpasses us when it comes to art? The articulation of an artificial intelligence art manifestois long overdue, so hopefully this book can fill a gap that will have repercussions not only for aesthetic and philosophical considerations but possibly more so for the development of artificial intelligence.

1 What Is Art and Why Art Manifestos?

Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.

Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist (1881–1973)

What is art really and why does it appear to be so tightly linked with what it means to be a human? We are the only mammal species that produces art, and while it is important to us, it is in no way necessary for our physical survival. Still, the examples are numerous on how humans have risked, even sacrificed, their lives for the right to express themselves artistically. Art comes in many forms, from literature with its prose and poetry to sculptures and paintings, movie making, the composition of music, but also bodily expressions such as dance. But what is it that we seem so eager to express through art? By studying the various artworks over the millennia, a few themes keep appearing, namely that of expressing the human condition and our sometimes anxious deliberations over life and death, including the existence of a soul and similar ethereal phenomena. These are typically depicted in a contemporary setting, sometimes through metaphors that in particular will resonate with its intended audience, which will come in variations, and the many manifests of art do take different shapes and forms over time, culture, and geography, and in the past at least, they also came with requirements of aesthetic minimum standards.

Beyond its typical timeless motifs, what is art then? A distinction and clear delineation need to be made between understanding why art is so important to us, or a “theory of art”, and how to define works of art. On the question of the latter, something which the provocative artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) more than a century ago brought to a culmination by proclaiming his porcelain urinal to be art and it is a topic that still divides the general public. Mired in the attempt of defining art lies the challenge of how to qualitatively rank it. The concept beauty is in the eye of the beholder can in its free-spirited mode qualify pretty much anything as art, but that is a far too complacent approach and brings little of actual insight in understanding art. Art was for long equated with beauty; certain standards in terms of colour compositions and the golden ratio for paintings, absolute pitch and perfect harmony in music, and the hexameter for writing poetry are examples artists were expected to comply with. By applying such meticulous standards, art could be assessed from a qualitative perspective; some poets mastered the hexameter better than others and this could be quite precisely gauged. It typically required a highly deliberate effort for something to qualify as art and it took years of intense training to become an acknowledged artist and accepted by a guild. Art was produced, amongst others, to decorate our surroundings, this as beauty was seen to elevate man to aspire for higher ideals, through improvement and empowerment, possibly with the ambition of seeking to equate oneself with the gods. Indeed, skilful artists were seen as being bestowed with divine gifts and inspiration to be able to produce admirable art. In that sense art was a medium to communicate celestial matters, extending to understanding what the divine forces had in mind for us humans, possibly providing a privileged peak into a highly uncertain future where death was always lurking around the corner. Interestingly enough, and something that will be elaborated on later, to achieve this divine status seen as a pre-requisite to be able to produce noteworthy art, the artist had to enter a state of mind that transcended beyond merely rational qualities.

Aside from the delicate notion of what constitutes good versus bad taste and if that is something that transcends different time epochs and cultures, to at least be able to orient oneself around what art is, there are various criteria that provide an understanding of the characteristics and production techniques it should include. Presented below is one of such standards, albeit these are far from commonly agreed upon, to which it is thought that by, in the broadest sense, achieving these, a work of art can be considered to have been created:

• possessing positive aesthetic qualities
• being expressive of emotion
• being intellectually challenging
• being formally complex and coherent
• having a capacity to convey complex meanings
• exhibiting an individual point of view
• being an exercise of creative imagination
• being an artifact or performance that is the product of a high degree of skill
• belonging to an established artistic form, and
• being the product of an intention to make a work of art¹

Thus, through standards like this, and whilst coming with considerably blurred boundaries, at least a superficial understanding of what might constitute an artwork and against what yardsticks it should be judged do provide some distinct guidelines.

Of greater importance and for the purpose of this book, however, is the question of why art is so crucial to us humans, as that reflection can act as an apt catalyst to give a glimpse of our cognitive and psychological make-up vis-à-vis the construction of an emerging generation of artificial intelligence. A formal understanding might not be required but rather an acknowledgement of the rationale of what function art serves.

A possibly fruitful conduit to explore this conundrum is by conducting a study of art manifestosas new directions in art have often been heralded and articulated through these. Art manifestos are public broadcasts of the motifs and techniques that are applied and practiced with a view to incite and prompt a paradigm shift that seeks to re-focus on what it is that is (aesthetically) important in the contemporary setting. Basically, it serves as a declaration that proclaims a new way to view the world, not unusually with an embedded political twist aspiring to change a culture or society that appears stagnated, detrimental, or outright obsolete. At times, art manifestos have only been implicitly stated and not arranged into a single document; yet their broader ambitions and gist were still well understood, and both endorsed and adhered to by influential circles of artists, eventually reverberating across broader segments of society. The typical art manifesto consists of a series of statements, not always listed in a sequential and inferential order, highlighting the key tenets of the artistic movement, including how it should be technically represented, as well as announcing what this particular movement is against, usually something in the current state of affairs, and finally the new avant-garde perspective it desires artists to rally around. Thus, art manifestos serve two main purposes: a criticism of what its originators consider is wrong with contemporary art or other societal ails and a provision of artistic remedies. From the 20th century onwards, many of the art manifestos were dominated by political and social doctrines, often trying to promote their point of views through provocations and dramatic effect, not seldom going against what was for the time considered good taste. Rather than subtly influencing cultural and political trends, a more confrontational revolutionary approach was often the preferred modus operandi, and these art manifestos have been distinctly anti-capitalist, left leaning with broadly defined anarchist tendencies.^2,3,4

Coinciding with the emergence of industrialism that embraced most Western societies from the late 19th century onwards, art movements, such as Cubists and Dadaists, started to challenge the requirement that art per definition had to be beautiful. These art styles emphasised political ambitions by in particular taking aim at the negative sides of industrialism and capitalism, seeking to alter the existing cultural and political societal arrangements. Protesting against bourgeois convention became one of their favourite targets, attacking them through what they knew was perhaps what was they considered most annoying, namely producing and presenting art that fell outside the accepted conventions of beauty, and at times, greatly so.⁵

Over time, and especially from the Second World War onwards, hardly any contemporary art piece can be said to be considered beautiful, at least not according to the traditional standards. Important to note, this deviation has largely been deliberate rather than a drop in quality, albeit the view that anything can be considered art has attracted a considerable number of second-rate talents to the profession. However, the original impetus was prompted through new artistic ways to consider the world with the perhaps most important trigger being our species’ first encounter with machines, and how we humans started to be gauged against them. These avant-garde art movements began to challenge, and probably rightfully so, the mere decorative aspect: should arts only purpose be beauty? Is it not more important to raise awareness and inspire humans to seek to change what was wrong with their contemporary world? And if provocations and bad taste was what it took, so be it.

Therefore, art was starting to serve a different purpose, and it was likely due to the dramatic economic, cultural, psychological, and social standards that industrialism brought with it. With the advent of industrialism, man was for the first time really confronted by and compared with machines, in the factories, workers were metaphorically likened to being just another cog in the wheel, one easily replaced by another. The view of the consumers was much the same, standardised goods for standardised people, today best remembered through Henry Ford’s marketing slogan “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black”.

Artists with a social pathos took to this challenge, realising an existential foreboding on how the human race should respond in this unsettling environment where the positions and value, and in extension the very existence, had to be drastically re-configured. The confusion and stress this paradigm shift caused created a public disquiet that span across the fabrics of society; this psychological sentiment was not lost on the contemporary artist communities which rendered the publication of numerous art manifestos seeking to guide humanity through art to handle and overcome this new reality with its unique challenges.

The era of industrialism brought with it a plethora of transformational changes spanning across the many aspects of life, not only affecting work. Industrialism triggered an urbanisation of an enormous scale, where workers in the factories had to live in cramped conditions in tenement estates in the quickly growing cities; however, it was not all gloomy as it brought with it features of modernity such as electricity, water accessible from taps, and so on. Urbanisation came with a drastic change in social life; gone were the tightly knit villages with their gossip and social ties, and the big cities provided anonymity and gave an element of freedom, away from traditional norms and morals. This anonymity came to be a prominent feature in much of the literary work that highlighted the challenges of loneliness and finding one’s place in a world as well as one’s value. Compensation for work now came in the form of money, instead of produce, which gave increased opportunities to spend the money on the goods and services one preferred, and simultaneously the supply increased enormously. Labour was also being more comprehensively regulated, where fixed working hours became a standardised feature, which allowed for free time where one could engage in hobbies and extracurricular activities. In effect, it meant individualisation for a larger segment of the population for the first time had become a reality but it also brought with it conformity in working patterns. An ambiguity many had a difficulty handling. There were also significant intellectual improvements. Secularisation, which had commenced already prior to industrialism, accelerated considerably and the churches’ influence as a moral (and others) authority receded, and in some countries, through communist revolutions, entirely collapsed. Scientific rationalism, not only as part of the educational system and being the governing principle in industry, also formed the worldview and cultural perspective for many where previously dominating art genres such as romanticism in literature and paintings, and Art Nouveau in architecture, which focused on mysticism and irrational aspects of life lost its allure. In...