[two-sandwich]

If you consider that Entertainment gives the viewer what they want, and art intends to challenge, none of what's created here is "art". It doesn't push boundaries, create new genres, or satisfy an uncomfortable curiosity.

The tech here is fantastic. I love that such things are possible now and they're an exciting frontier in creation.

It's very dystopian to feel that the robots are making generic human-music with indescribably lifeless properties. I'm not an artist, so I don't feel personally attacked. Much like image gen, this seems to be aimed at replacing the bare-minimum artist (visual or auditory) with a "fill in the blanks" entertainment piece.

[moritzwarhier]

> Entertainment gives the viewer what they want, and art intends to challenge

This is a fruitless and snobby dichotomy that was attempted so many times in human history, and it makes no sense.

There will always be art made for success and/or money, but drawing a line is futile.

Händel used to be a bit like a pop musician.

And intellectual snobbishness or noble ideas do not make art more valuable.

A kid singing Wonderwall can be art, too. As can be a depressed person recording experimental field sounds.

Feel free to call art bad, but assuming an obvious and clear separation between art and entertainment is the exact opposite of the spirit that enables people to make or appreciate art, in whatever form, culture or shape.

[viccis]

>Händel used to be a bit like a pop musician.

Handel was never a "bit like a pop musician." This fundamentally misunderstands how music during his time, mostly funded and enjoyed under religion and wealthy patronage contexts, was listened to. Mostly only the wealthy listened to his works, and those elite audiences were prone to viciously enforcing stylistic norms. The only real way the working class heard his works were in the occasional public concert and occasionally in church. At no point in any of these settings was there a lack of stylistic gatekeeping or snobbery.

I know this kind of nihilistic "everything is good, I guess, good doesn't even mean anything" attitude is popular in some spaces, but this lack of standards or gatekeeping in favor of a tasteless desire for increasing slop production regardless of quality is how we got poptimism and the current state of music. No longer is there any taste making, just taste production via algorithms.

Sometimes we need a bit of snobbery to separate the wheat from the chaff, and being a gatekeeping snob against AI music is what our current day and age needs more of!

[kelseyfrog]

Art is a framing device largely independent of the content. It's how we get Fountain[1], Piss Christ[2], Comedian[3], Mother![4], 4’33”[5], and Seedbed[6] to name a few among countless others. To claim that AI content is incapable of being framed as art is nonsense when we have example after example of the diversity of what art can be. Let's remember, bad art is still art.

1. Marcel Duchamp. 1917

2. Andres Serrano. 1987

3. Maurizio Cattelan. 2019

4. Darren Aronofsky. 2017

5. John Cage. 1952

6. Vito Acconci. 1972

[fruitworks]

If that was true, then the development of a new urinal factory would have the same impact on art as the development of a new AI art models.

The framing is dependent on the content

[janalsncm]

My favorite was David Datuna eating the $120k banana duct taped to the wall in 2019. A banana doesn’t transubstantiate into capital A “Art” just because someone paid a lot of money for it. In fact eating the banana was more Art than the original duct taping imo.

It is reminiscent of Fountain. Not sure if there was an intentional connection.

[blargey]

Art is communication.

That "generic" and "indescribably lifeless" feeling you get is because the only thing communicated by a model-and-prompt generation is the model identity and the prompt.

[sekai]

> and art intends to challenge, none of what's created here is "art". It doesn't push boundaries, create new genres, or satisfy an uncomfortable curiosity.

Art is, above all, subjective.

> It's very dystopian to feel that the robots are making generic human-music with indescribably lifeless properties.

Painters said the same thing about the camera. Photographers said the same thing about Photoshop.

[fruitworks]

This art is subjectively bad

[ronsor]

The fact that these models have so many people irritated like there's sand in their pants is enough proof that they're pushing boundaries and making some uncomfortable.

[thefaux]

Yes, because the people pushing the boundaries do not understand the value of the thing they are trying to commoditize. If they did, they wouldn't be trying to commoditize it. There is a pervasive attitude among technologists that they can improve things they don't understand through technological efficiency. They are wrong in this case and getting appropriate pushback.

Personally, music is sacred for me so making money is not a part of my process. I am not worried about job loss. But I am worried about the cultural malaise that emerges from the natural passivity of industrial scale consumerism.

[Levitz]

Not every boundary is worth pushing.

I'm hoping it will eventually become better, or maybe I haven't quite seen stuff prompted properly yet, but all I've heard coming from an AI feels aggressively mediocre and average, not in a "bad" way but in the "optimizing towards being palatable to the average person" way. Like the perfect McDonalds meal that the algorithm has found out can be 30% sawdust and still feel appetizing. I don't want that boundary being pushed. I feel we will live in a worse world if we do.

[fruitworks]

the boundaries of unemployment perhaps

[sorushn]

Epstein, the ultimate pusher of boundaries.

[orbital-decay]

Then most music is not art, because I struggle to find non-generic music, at least for the genres I like. In 2020s, 4/5 artists are bent on trying to create a blend of aesthetics of the past, instead of even attempting doing something that sounds fresh and authentic. And very few of these who do succeed. This has been going on for a while.

[qgin]

If your art can be replaced by a model that recycles what’s already been done, maybe you were just recycling what’s already been done too.

[anigbrowl]

How do you expect people to get good when AI is pushing them out of the entry-level stages where they were previously able to earn a modest living while developing their craft?

> oh now they won't have to do that boring mindless stuff like playing cover versions any more

That's how most musicians make their first $, doing covers or making something generic enough to be saleable as background music

[paxys]

Tech is tech. What you create with the tech can be art.

[bix6]

These feels different than experimenting with a new synth or something though. It’s just feeding a sentence to the model.