I'm also gonna go ahead and say that the idea that art has 'value' or has required 'effort' (mostly talking about visual art) to the extent that the work has taken time and physical manipulation of tools to achieve (whatever medium in 'traditional' art, a stylus or screen in digital art), or that it has 'value' to the extent that it has required 'effort,' or that an audience ought to 'appreciate' art primarily based on an understanding of the 'time' or 'effort' (of physical manipulation) that a piece has required is..... wait for it...... ableist. as well as ignorant of various theories of art and large swathes of art history
like I did lately see a disabled artist harassed for using a neural network or something (I don't recall exactly what) to create a gif that they posted, a bunch of predictable "if you want to be an artist than learn how to create art with your hands like everyone else" in response to which the artist in question had to say "my hands don't work". so
#and before anyone gets cute this certainly does not apply to AI bullshit #cause lots of AI techbros have been using this exactly thing #that ''AI makes art accessible to disabled people'' #as if disabled people havent been creating through the most varied ways #from painting using their mouth or feet #or painting while laying down like Frida Kahlo used to #and including the stuff listed above
hey, uh, this post is very explicitly about "AI" art. "AI" is a vague and commonly misused term that could mean a lot of things, but using a "neural network" to create an art piece very much falls under the concept of "AI art" according to how most people use the term afaik. you can't say that my post "doesn't apply" to the thing that it is explicitly about, lmfao.
to the point, though--it's disrespectful to hold up the example of disabled artists who create in "alternative" ways (with their mouths, with their feet, while lying down, &c.) in order to chastise other disabled artists who are unable to do those things. there is no one way to be disabled. one person who is disabled may be unable or largely unable to use their hands, but able to use their feet for a wide variety of tasks. another may be able to use their hands for a wide variety of tasks, but unable to sit upright. another still may be entirely or almost entirely unable to move, unable to use their hands for almost any task, unable to use their feet, unable to use their mouth--do these people not exist to you?
there are as many different ways of being disabled as there are disabled people. it is incredibly callous, ignorant, and, yes, ableist, to say "well, a completely different disabled person with a completely different life and a different set of abilities and limitations did this, so you should be able to do something similar!" that's not how disability works. "try harder," "work harder," "push yourself," "find another way to do it" (as though disabled people are not the experts on their own abilities and have not exhausted all methods trying to find a way to do something important to them) are common ableist refrains. holding up one disabled person as an example to others because you believe that they have excelled, while ignoring that other disabled people have different or more severe limitations (some might call it "inspiration p*rn") is a common ableist trope.
you can't claim to be on the side of disabled people, and then chastise disabled people for creating art using whatever means are available to them, solely on the basis that you believe they are not putting enough "effort" into their work--which "effort" you interpret to mean physical effort (as my OP said, "physical manipulation of tools").
again: my argument is that claiming that something has 'value' to the extent that it has required 'effort', and that it has required 'effort' to the extent that it has required physical manipulation of objects, is ableist. to be clear there are serious reasons to push against the use of "AI" in our current timeline, but this reactionary, ableist, Protestantism-flavoured idea of "effort" is not one of them.
Love to see disability porn being rehabilitated by technophobia. Love it.
I am quite irritated by the notion that a notion of value is invalid solely on the basis that it's discriminatory. Some things are better than other things, and thus some people are inherently more or less able to create valuable things than others. This is in fact fine, because your capacity to create valuable things is not a comment on your inherent moral worth.
lmfao
You write like a person who tries to cover up their shoddy argument by making it more unclear. It’s ridiculous to claim that that person was using a ‘eugenicist argument’ - the creation of art has nothing to do with eugenics, first of all, and it’s also very childish to dismiss a challenge to your argument as evil rather than respond to it in good faith. It was a challenge which deserves consideration because as far as art is generally judged, it is only a narrow portion of art history which views the expression of the creator as the primary value. In terms of art which serves a practical function, as has been the role of most of the art created by civilisations through history, the expression of an individual is irrelevant. In that context, some people are more capable of creating art for a specific purpose, which is not to exist as an expression of its creator.
Even today, plenty of artists, including some disabled artists, put a great deal of effort into honing their particular skills, and I don’t think it’s fair to say that there is no value to those skills, simply because they don’t apply to some types of art. You’re taking one interpretation of the value of art and point blank insisting it should apply to all art. I don’t think that needs to be done. You’re not saying anything new, by the way, and at this point I suspect you don’t know very much about art, because art requiring all types of conventional ‘skill’ or ‘effort’ has been created and is seen as having a DIFFERENT value to other types. Most artists and art historians believe we can value one type of art without insisting other types have no value for not conforming to them.
