[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?

[alexandrerond]

No, it wouldn't count. Because then we would have some thousands of bohemian rhapsodies. An art expression would perhaps be the whole bunch of works together (if you managed to give them a sense of being), and the artist would be whoever devised the program that created them. But individually, it would be have the same art value as those pictures sold in IKEA. Beautiful yes, but not art by themselves.

Edit: art is not art because "just works" or because it's likeable. Art goes way beyond what just works or the search for beauty. See the Viennese actionism for example: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-viennese-actionism.htm

[riquito]

> No, it wouldn't count. Because then we would have some thousands of bohemian rhapsodies.

The computer broke after completing the work: now does it count? I don't understand your idea of art, isn't there beauty in the result? You give different value if the same result has been reached by a computer, chaos or a human?

Do you have to know how the piece has been produced to decide if it's art or not?

[pegasus]

Yes. A rock that's been pleasingly shaped by desert winds is not considered art. But if we'd later find out that it was actually a man-made artifact, it would become a candidate for this label.

[tbirdz]

So then the computer software that generated the joke would be considered the work of art instead of the jokes that were generated? After all, the software was man-made, even though the generated output was computer-made.

[ramblerman]

Hmm, I always find it weird that specifically the visual arts suffer from this. It's a lot easier to agree on music and dance (not liking it per se, but what constitutes an artist).

Yet, go to a modern art gallery and someone will try to convince you the potato he stuck on a coathanger is 'art'. usually with the same fluffy explanations you are offering here.

[donpark]

Answer depends on whether we're looking only at the end product, ignoring the process, but common convention is to qualify the end product name using words like artificial or drawn by an elephant to reduce confusion and to differentiate.

[romaniv]

If a computer generates 100000000 unfunny jokes and one that seems funny, does that count?

[jkaunisv1]

It's not very different from how I learned to tell jokes. My brothers heard a lot of terrible jokes before I figured out timing and other aspects of humour.

If it makes you laugh, it's a good joke. What does the origin matter?

[romaniv]

You're not making an argument that Pikazo generates real art. You're making an argument that humans don't make real art. This notion has absolutely no interesting implications for AI. It's like saying "language is relative, so any output of Google Translate is just as valid as what you think is valid".

[alexandrerond]

:D only if its really really funny

[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.

[delluminatus]

I don't think there can really be a distinction between what art "should be" versus what art "is". You could maybe argue that a particular piece or style of art should be different, but does it really make sense to say that art should be something else?

More to the point, I think that definition is a little dissatisfying. By that metric, I have probably never created any art in my life -- because I'm not an artist with limited-edition work in a gallery. To me, that is unacceptable for a definition of art. Artistry is something more intrinsic to human nature than just being a thing made by an "artist" and put in an artistic context to be admired by hipsters and to confuse people.

[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.

[alexandrerond]

> lots of work, repetition, variation, trying new things, combining.

That's exactly genius and technique. It's not about being a genius in the sense of intelligent, it's about having the genius to move forward from the current state.

[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.

[alexandrerond]

Well, yes you can see it that way. But then absolutely everything is art, which is not a very useful definition for it.

[cdubzzz]

Per my comment, this would only be true if you feel that absolutely everything is art. That sounds kind of nice, actually (:

And how would you decide if a definition (of anything) qualifies as "useful"?

[pegasus]

Concepts are useful because they help us discriminate - between that which falls under the umbrella of the concept and which doesn't. An attribute that applies to every possible thing equally is redundant, and can be ignored without loss of information.

[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?

[alexandrerond]

Name an art current which hasn't revolted against what was previously done. Every generation of artists tried to grasp things which were left out by the previous ones. As I said, genious, but also technique.

What's art for you?

[fiatjaf]

It's not because in the past (I mean 500 years ago) art was produced by doing something different from what existed that you should conclude that "art is about being original", even less that "art is revolt against what was previously done". These facts, if always true, are just consequences of another, much higher, goal of the artist.

It's because modern artists started thinking that _the goal_ of art was to be original that we came to this situation.

[theseatoms]

Avant-garde is likely a better term for what GP is describing.

[meric]

It's consciousness cast onto a medium, like casting a double to a byte.

[emerongi]

Producing art with a computer does not go against what has been previously done?

You can't even recognize "genius", which this is. It directly challenges the definition of "art", which is pretty wonderful.