Well, the average person doesn't go look at art at all. They'd rather watch blockbuster movies or TV shows and barbecue. That's nothing new. The audience is small for art. That does not mean it isn't important to those that do love it. If everyone only cared about things because they were new and popular, the world would suck. Thankfully we have people who still like things simply because they like them.
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Ko.Fe.
Lenses 35/21 Gears 46/20
In Ontario you could post a listing without any pictures and listing will be sold within a week. Even at four hours north from Toronto.
And for listings in Germany, they don't even bother with pro real estate photogs. All is taken with mobile phone by agent.
Rayt
Nonplayer Character
That’s a good point. I wonder out of the 200 million-ish adults in America how many read books? With concentration on STEM how much value we as a society will we place on the humanities in the future? We exist to support tech while tech creates art?
Well, we do seem to have some STEAM which stands for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. So, I guess proponents of that have decided you cannot leave the Arts behind at least.
Retro-Grouch
Mentor
Really big of them. I feel so validated. I always knew my BFA was a golden meal ticket.Well, we do seem to have some STEAM which stands for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. So, I guess proponents of that have decided you cannot leave the Arts behind at least.
I never stressed my BFA. I had a good time and finished college. That was a first in my family. haha. I still got work in whatever field (outside of art) that I needed to in order to make $.Really big of them. I feel so validated. I always knew my BFA was a golden meal ticket.
Retro-Grouch
Mentor
Exactly the same here. I got a good taste of the Art World during and after school, and decided "No thanks!" I found alternate fields of employment, and could make my art what I chose it to be, rather than what might sell. No regrets whatsoever!
ranger9
Well-known
Fair enough, and yet blockbuster movies incorporate a lot of artistry in the form of cinematography and CGI and costume design and set design and sound design and all those other things that there are Oscar categories for. And aficionados of, say, Marvel superhero movies are ruthlessly dismissive whenever films don't measure up in one of those categories. And don't get me started on barbecue -- I used to work with chefs, who consider themselves as creative and artistic as anyone, and the rise of "foodie culture" suggests that they're finally finding an appreciative audience. Heck, all you have to do is try to sign up for the new Instagram competitor Lemon8 (not as bad as you'd think, BTW) and you'll find that there are highly engaged communities interested in creative expression through the media of fingernail decor and lip gloss.
So it might be more useful to say that people really do have an ongoing interest in creativity -- or at least novelty -- but with continually changing tastes in how they like to see it packaged.
What's weird for photographers about generative AI is that it's our medium that's being mulched up and re-packaged, usually without our knowledge and mostly without the possibility of doing anything about it. Who realized a few years ago that every time we encountered one of those captchas where you have to "click all the boxes containing traffic lights", we were performing unpaid labor for Google by attaching text tags to a vast database of billions of images that eventually would become grist for its generative AI mill?
bcostin
Well-known
Photography is safe. The AI generated photo-realistic art is not photography, just a species of illustration. For a very long time, commercial illustrators and commercial photographers were dismissed as mere technicians and hacks rather than "real" artists doing real art. They were just churning out soulless product on demand, exploiting talented people's work for source material, or so that argument goes.
Directed-AI illustration will face that same skepticism. Then it will inevitably be accepted as what it is, because most people don't know or care about other people's pretensions or motivations for creating a work they enjoy. They just like what they like, as they always have and always will.
Directed-AI illustration will face that same skepticism. Then it will inevitably be accepted as what it is, because most people don't know or care about other people's pretensions or motivations for creating a work they enjoy. They just like what they like, as they always have and always will.
bcostin
Well-known
There were schools of painting centuries ago which included a downright obsessive attention to minute details. Even details that were impossible to see when viewing the painting when displayed as intended. It's a very short distance from trompe-l'œil to what we'd consider a "photorealistic" scene today.
Realism in art is inevitable. Photography made realism fall out of fashion for a time, actually, since there was little reason for painters to compete with what customers felt photography could already give them.
RichC
Well-known
Is it? What happens when no one can tell whether the photo-realistic picture they're looking at is a genuine photograph or an imaginary image created by a computer?
That's already the case, and these AI images are going to get better and will number in the millions - possibly becoming more common than photographs, perhaps being auto-generated from text such as social media posts, magazine articles, ad titles...
Well, it is safe as a separate art form, but you are also correct regarding how AI will probably be used.
Bob Michaels
nobody special
I just see all these changes being no more that individual points in time along a continuous flowing spectrum of technical changes. PHOTOGRAPHY = light and drawing. That spectrum began somewhere with someone tracing the dark / light shadows on the wall inside a room made into a camera obscura. It transitioned through wagons carrying chemicals to coat wet plates in the mid 1800's. Then there was the change when you could buy factory film that could be removed from the camera and processed later. Capturing digitally was thought to be a big deal until we could manipulate the image with computers. Wow!
Each of those steps plus others were thought at those times to be the most significant that ever happened or would ever happen to photography. Then we moved on to the next new thing.
I can't see where all this AI discussion and change is anything other than a step, even the most current one, along this long continuous flow of change.
Each of those steps plus others were thought at those times to be the most significant that ever happened or would ever happen to photography. Then we moved on to the next new thing.
I can't see where all this AI discussion and change is anything other than a step, even the most current one, along this long continuous flow of change.
RichC
Well-known
Umm ... What about AI photo-realistic images having zero to do with capturing light and aren't on this spectrum at all? If they're on a spectrum, it's that of cave drawings to paintings to computer art.
AI images replace imprints of reality (light reflected by real objects) - i.e. photographs - with fictional pictures that have no connection with reality and are created from a bunch of words someone writes!
AI photo-realistic images look like photographs, will replace actual photographs, and the two cannot be distinguished.
Are you saying these AI images are photographs, despite being completely fictional pictures with no connection to real subjects (unlike photographs up till now)?
boojum
Mentor
Don't sell cave drawings short. Picasso said he'd give anything to paint like what was on the walls at Lascaux. But I do understand what you are saying. AI images are a grey area, a blurred area of discussion and I think that the blur will only get greater. AI is here, has been here for years, but is in a new and spectacular form in ChatGPT. Human generated photographs will always be cherished, if only as calligraphy is cherished. The next few months will be exciting and I doubt it will wind down for a long time.
pvdhaar
Peter
There's also another less known device used to create realistic drawings that basically does the same but is ever so much more convenient; the camera-lucida (Camera lucida - Wikipedia).
Pál_K
Cameras. I has it.
In the AI-era how will anyone be able to prove or disprove whether a photograph was created by a human using a camera?
Unless you see me actually make the photo, you won‘t be able to determine its origin merely by looking at it.
If I show you a spectacular or controversial photograph, or submit one to a gallery, or send one to a news bureau, and I claim I made that photo, how can you, the gallery, or the news bureau detect that I maliciously made a fake image using AI?
I’m not excited about this technology. Coming from a career as an embedded firmware engineer and someone who’s been working in computer science for over 45 years, my view is that the technology of the last 30 years has done far more social harm than good. I think everything was better in 1993 than today. Everything. However, the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. I’m not alone in being glad I‘m not a young person today.
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boojum
Mentor
There will be a way.
boojum
Mentor
Vermeer has been suspected of using this Camera Lucida and there has been an interesting film om the subject. AI?
Erik van Straten
Mentor
No, the camera lucida was invented much later, end of the 18th century. Vermeer used a camera obscura. Why "suspected"?
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