please read the thread OP linked on how exactly AI art models work before arguing with me.
okay. now that we’re back, i would like to walk you through a thought experiment.
is this pile of candy, called Untitled or Portrait of Ross in L.A., a work of art?
many of you know of this installation already, but for those who don’t, its creator was a queer artist named felix gonzalez-torres.
Félix González-Torres (1957-1996) started a series of works in 1990 that all consist of small, hard candies in variously coloured wrappers. They are either spread out in rectangles on floors or put into piles. Some other works in this series are called Untitled (Lover Boys) and Untitled (Welcome Back Heroes). In each instance viewers are invited to take a piece of candy—to suck on, to keep, to share. This, of course, risks the loss of the installation entirely, but the instructions are that they are to be constantly replenished with an endless supply. Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A) comes with instructions from the artist to keep it at an ideal weight of 175 lb.
Although it avoids literal representation, this is a work about queer desire, queer bodies, and queer history. It is named after his love and life partner, Ross Laycock, and is about his personal experience of AIDS as well as the AIDS Crisis as a whole. The ‘ideal weight of 175 lb’ is a reference to Ross’ healthy weight, which diminished because of the virus. Ross died from complications due to AIDS on January 24th, 1991, and Félix would go on to make this work later that same year. (source)
gonzales-torres did not make or wrap the candy. he did not create the installation. he does not participate in the consumption actively, although i imagine he would have if he visited a museum with the piece displayed before his passing. he does not have any control on the specific brand of candy that curators do except iirc a suggestion. by no standard did he "create" this in the sense that people who care about AI art discourse would agree on.
yet somehow, it is abundantly clear that this is a work of art that was created by gonzales-torres.
art is so much more than the mechanical process taken to render its visage. in my opinion, the most important part of art is a vision, a specific goal or experience or interaction that the medium of the art form is intended to evoke. whether that vision is mundane & simple or so unique & evocative that it brings you to tears, it’s still art.
anything can be art, even a list of instructions, so long as it has a vision or desire or expression behind it. even art created via AI generation.
a human is still inputting prompts, you know. a human is still fiddling with the what words to use to get this tool to create a particular visual message. even if message is generic slop, even if it’s ugly or strange or boring, it’s still fucking art if it has an intention behind it.
AI generators do NOT make collages (see above thread), but since people like to use it as a talking point, collages are art too! taking the exact physical words and images someone else created and arranging them into a new position according to your own design is art! using pieces that others created to build something different is the literal basis of all human creativity and ingenuity.
additionally, there is no such thing as original art. everything you have ever made was inspired or informed by thousands or millions of similar things that came before it made by other people, whether you know it or not. there is literally nothing new, only different. this is not a bad thing.
the sooner everyone can get off their high horse about the sanctity of art and what’s “real”, the better off we’ll be. the fact that corporations are using AI models to exploit their employees and put people out of jobs is the real issue here, and that has NOTHING to do with how good or authentic or original AI models can be. building strong unions and labor protections is what matters, and that is what will help creative professions the most.
