The computer drew this the other day
I drew this long ago, age 18.
I’ve recently seen a video of a robot that draws the customer’s
portrait on the foam of their latte. The
video is described as a machine that can “print art on top of a cup of coffee” with
no scare quotes around ‘art’. Does the public not make any distinction
between this and a painting? Anyway, the computer looks at you, decides what’s important
to draw to make your face, and “expresses” this onto the foam with food
coloring. I can at least appreciate the
punning.
Another video demonstrates 3D printers that can print out a
guitar. Bye-bye, luthiers? It also prints records. When recorded music became an easily obtained
commodity the playing of musical instruments became much less common. Can we imagine a time when music is something
you listen to but no one makes music anymore?
When it is composed and created by machines with programs to produce
whatever style and set of sounds you wish. Photography had once seemed to pose
such a threat to art, but there was a difference. Behind the camera was an eye selecting and
then hands developing, manipulating, and printing the image. It was as we say just another tool with which
to create. But computer-made computer
generated images remove the need for the human eye and hand. I am not talking here about digital imaging, with the computer as a tool. I am referring to computer programs that generate the image entirely without human instruction or intervention. You might think that the writing of the
program was the creative part. But that
would be akin to saying the designer of the urinal, not Duchamp, was the
creator of Fountain (1917), another once-seeming threat to the nature of
art. But Duchamp’s ready-mades merely
altered the material act and left the artist’s invention/intervention
intact. Yes, the viewer completes ‘the
creative act’, as Duchamp’s essay by that name contends, but the artist
remained as the ‘medium’ or mediator between the physical object and the
viewer’s experience. In the case of the
computer generated image or object, there is no actual artist, or perhaps there
once was (the designer of the program) and now there is no need of another for
further ‘art’ to be made. The computer
robot can just keep making variations.
In a world already saturated with images and objects, will there no
longer be a need for human activity to create more?
It would be interesting to find out if the widespread use of
creative media that do much of the designing, thinking, and facture for you has
led to a decrease in interest in art as we have known it. That is, will playing with programs on your
computer lead to fewer visits to museums, reduced interest in musical
performances (not just production of music at home but attendance at concerts).
Most concerts and performances I attend
have many empty seats now, and the audiences are mostly grey-haired. Will fewer people feel a need to attend art
school? Or will some 20th
century ideas of life becoming art, removing the need for something set aside
as special called Art, become reality?
Since I wrote the above, the CAA newsletter linked me to an
article in the Guardian that laments the demise of white-collar work and that
of the creative classes. It seems there
are also computer programs that can analyze legal contracts and others that
read medical data and diagnose better than human doctors. It looks like humans may become
obsolete. Here is a quote that shows I am not the only one sensing a problem here:
“It
may still be some time before robots are writing novels or painting pictures,
but it is striking how many of the UK's most high-profile creative industries
have already been automated. In music, for instance, it is disquieting how easy
it now is to produce a record of commercial quality. To learn to play, let
alone compose, a piece on the guitar or piano would take most people years of
dedicated effort. But with readily available software on a standard laptop, and
a few days of instruction, it is possible for bedroom record producers to
generate and aggregate all the components of a perfectly reasonable pop song.” (“The End of the Creative Classes is in
Sight” by Tom Campbell)
There
still are people who can, for example, hand-craft the equivalent of a
Stradivarius violin, but what will become of such trades when there is no one
who bothers to learn to play because a machine can synthesize the sound and
even vary the interpretation so you can listen to an infinite number of ‘performances’
without anyone having to spend tens of thousands of hours practicing with care
and dedication? Apply this to everything
we do and we are not really talking about ceasing to make buggy whips and
building auto ignitions instead. Even decision-making has been automated, e.g.
financial advice. What will there be
left for people to do?
I
do realize that the computer programs for creative design, or performance, or
writing, or the grading of writing in lieu of teachers, do not yet imitate the quality of human work. And this is not about using design programs
with the computer as a tool for the designer.
This is about the computer doing the design without a human. The threat is still in the future, but some
effects are growing now.
Am
I foolish for worrying about this?
Now
I just found out that an MIT prof has done a TED talk on the same worries.
No comments:
Post a Comment