Pikazo

[alexandrerond]

There seems to be a bit of confusion here between art and beautiful compositions.

Art is not art because it looks nice or because it looks like something else that is widely accepted as "art".

I see art as something produced by an artist combining genius + technique.

Genius usually implies being original, but also stating what the piece of art represents in contrast to the existing ones (what boundaries it breaks, what pre-conceptions it revolts against, what is its purpose (even if it's purpose is to have no purpose) etc.).

Technique means work and expertise. Sometimes genius is so overwhelming that there is little technique needed. Sometimes technique is so skilled that it overwhelms genius.

The makers of this app are probably artists (there's certainly a lot of genius involved in devising a way to produce such compositions, and work). What you create with your app probably not art though, regardless of how amazingly beautiful it turns out to be.

That's not to say artists may not make use of such tool to make art, but they'll have to find ways to be original. The fact that a button can be clicked to produce a result automatically destroys much of the artistic value of the outcomes. But hey, it's beautiful :)

[ramblerman]

If a computer makes up a joke and it's funny does it count? I think it does.

Art is a lot like humor, it works for people because it just 'works'. That is what matters. Not the hard work, and 'genius' of the creator behind it, that's just vanity.

Would bohemian rhapsody not count as art if it was made up by a machine?

[karlb]

In his book, “Playing to the Gallery,” the artist Grayson Perry attempts to answer this question. I'll summarize his definition because I found it interesting and challenging:

He begins by stating that it's now widely accepted that anything can be viewed as art. Seeing as that's an infinitely broad definition, he goes on to describe the following “scorecard” for what counts as art. A “yes” means it's more likely to be art:

* Is it in a gallery or an art context? * Is it a boring version of something else? Does it lack entertainment value? * Is it made by an artist? * Is it limited edition? * Is it admired by hipsters? * If you put it in a dumpster, would a passer-by wonder why an artwork had been thrown away? * Does it detain and suspend us in a state of frustration and ambivalence, making us pause and think rather than simply react? * If it's a photograph that's smaller than 2m and costs less than five-figures, then it scores negatively.

He says that the above tests aren't watertight, but if you put them together in a Venn diagram, the bit in the middle (the bit to which all the answers are yes) is pretty well guaranteed to be contemporary art.

I dislike the definition, but I wonder if it might be accurate. When I try to come up with a better definition, I wonder if the concept I'm trying to describe is something else—what art _should be_—not what art is.

[imaginenore]

All this blah blah blah to try to redefine art, and all you end up with is some weird elitist hipsterish definition that excludes tons of artists.

Most art has nothing to do with being a genius, it's lots of work, repetition, variation, trying new things, combining.

[cdubzzz]

Always Sunny's latest episode actually looks at this, haha.

The decision of what constitutes art is up to the individual. What you have described is commonly accepted great art/ists, not art itself.

[such_a_casual]

I've always found the "what is art?" question to be pretty hilarious. It doesn't matter if the medium is a picture, a book, a movie, or a game. Great media has a thesis and does a great job of convincing the recipient that their thesis is true using Show-Not-Tell.

[fiatjaf]

"Being original"? That's what art is for you?

[ronreiter]

Is this done with the deep learning research that was published here a couple of months ago?

[ins0]

for all who don't know about the submission months ago.

http://www.deepart.io/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10511572

[nness]

I was just thinking that. Seems it might be based on the description. Kinda interested how they'd do it in a speedy way on mobile devices. Hope they didn't just knock-off the open-source code though.

[franze]

Two examples:

https://goo.gl/photos/9Ujw2Ssb5EtQyvH59

https://goo.gl/photos/oHN4PqV6CRMgvssVA

[pokoleo]

Two more examples:

https://imgur.com/a/fwrfe

I've been slowly coming back to this app for weeks. It works well combining a photo with a clear focus, and a patterned one.

A few weeks ago, they dropped the resolution of the photos. After seeing a preview of what a smaller resolution one looks like, I'd be happy paying extra for a large-sized one.

[antirez]

That's great! What is your "template" image here? I tried with a few similar without good results.

[meric]

Is it using this algorithm?

https://github.com/jcjohnson/neural-style

[antoniuschan99]

Maybe not? His other app(ituens) has a link to a youtube interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRL9J6DoCgs&feature=youtu.be

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/joy-of-programming-painter/i...

[dharma1]

most likely. Thought about how long it'll take for someone to release it as an app - not sure how they will cover the server costs for rendering the images if it's not done on device.

$2.99/user will probably cover AWS bill for a while, if users don't keep hammering it

[thristian]

Created by the image scientist behind landmark visuals seen in Myst, The Matrix, 300, and Second Life...

I wonder who it is. The press-kit linked on the website just says "Developer: qarl".

[tobr]

Karl Stiefvater is a graphics programmer who's been involved in, among other things, Riven (Myst's sequel) and The Matrix. He's been playing with the neural algorithm of artistic style on his blog recently (e.g. [0]). In 2015 he also started a YouTube series, "The Joy of Programming"[1], although as far as I can tell only two episodes have been released.

[0]: http://www.qarl.com/qLab/?p=144

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRL9J6DoCgs

[viraptor]

Seems easily googlable: http://www.qarl.com/menu/info/

[Kiro]

So I guess I'm not alone wanting to do an app like this after seeing deepart.io. Kudos to Pikazo for getting it out there. I'm sure it will be a huge hit.

[krasin]

There's also https://dreamscopeapp.com/ which is on App Store for at least 3 months (may be more, I am not sure)

[GraffitiTim]

I wonder if this could be the beginning of many artists being replaced by AI.

[tluyben2]

I don't think it is possible to replace an artist. The definition of artist, that I could find, is recursive so that's the first problem with that.

Then the appreciation is subjective; to replace an artist you would need something like; 'I like Rembrandt but now I like this guy instead'. I used to like Jean Michel Jarre then Beethoven then Iron Maiden then Slayer then ... etc. I still like all of these and can get excited when hearing any of them. No one of them replaced the other.

So we might have MORE artists. Once we accept that computers can make art 'without' humans. I am fine with that, but this example is definitely not a very good example. To me it looks like fancy filters.

[justinsingh]

From my understanding it seems that the technology exists to replicate human art, not to create new styles on top of it. So I think in order to train the technology to do more styles of art it will require humans to make those new styles.

[binarymax]

Depends on your definition of 'artist'. This doesn't create any original work, it just remixes a photo into a style. When the subject matter is more than a source image and the output more than a digital visualisation through an algorithm, then the answer is 'no'.

[pmontra]

Strictly speaking: no, by definition. However AI could drive some of them out of market. Example: people are buying this kind of human made art https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=dreaming+painting&tbm=... Why shouldn't they be buying these neural network made pictures? https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=deep+dreaming+neural+n...

[p4bl0]

I would say in that case that the art is the AI itself (or its code), because it is what efforts and research have been put into. And thus the artist would still be human: (s)/he is the one who created the AI.

[viraptor]

I don't think so, but I think it's definitely getting us closer to the first artist who really isn't - creates art deep AI way and paints a copy of it.

[romaniv]

If art for you can be replaced by this kind of mimicry, it begs the question of whether you really need or care about art in the first place.

[ZenoArrow]

Art is more than just creating visually appealing images, it's also about capturing intent. Until the point AI has its own intent, the images that are shared reflect the intent of the humans that interact with it. Can think of it as an advanced type of paintbrush.

[narrator]

The artists who can stay in business are the ones who can picture completely new images in their minds eye and draw them. The ones that just transform reality a little are probably not going to do so well.

[amuresan]

For people downwoting this comment, please explain why. This is a very pertinent question.

[huuu]

This is scarier than I thought. For me this passed the Turing test for art.

[tanakian]

well, photos do not become "incredible artwork" or "art" just because means of expression change.

there are photos that are considered to be art, without applying such effects. and there are photos that are not considered to be an artwork.

latter will more likely become more tasteless and ugly with those filters applied, while former don't need such filters in order to be considered the art.

[a_ecker]

Of course a bad photo doesn't become art by applying a filter. But artists have always used tools to create art. Now they have another powerful tool that lets them do amazing things that wouldn't have been possible a year ago.

[romaniv]

Question for someone who has this app. Can this convert a photo to anime-like or cartoon-like rendering a-la A Scanner Darkly?

[alpatters]

I don't know Scanner Darkly and I don't have the app. But I have done a lot of my own images using the same algorithm as that used in the app. And, yes, it can definitely render photos is anime or cartoon like styles.

[xinyhn]

Anyone know the name of the song used in the video?

[Schwolop]

From the bottom of the page: "Music performed and written by Adult Fur."

[Kiro]

Not at all. Did you even look at the examples?