"Ain't Got Time" artwork poll - WARNING: AI Generated Content

[Moondog Wily]

IF YOU HAVE ISSUES WITH AI GENERATED CONTENT, YOU SHOULD LEAVE THIS THREAD AND GO CREATE SOME MUSIC!​

Going to be releasing my new album ("Notes") in the next week or two (well that is the plan anyway), and am having trouble picking the artwork for a three of the songs (album will be released with it's own artwork, but each song also released as a single so it can have it's own artwork). If anybody wants to chime in on which they like better, I would love to hear the feedback ;~)) This is one of 3 posts just like this. Of the 16 songs on the album, the artwork for these 3 has me flummoxed so any nudges appreciated!!

First here is the song "Ain't Got Time". Two choices that I am trying to decide between! For context, this song is about not wanting to spend time on many details of music production, but instead spend the time on getting the songs out the door. All feedback appreciated ;~))

 

[Bogner]

I Like #2 The Best Here. Would Love To See More Choices If You Have Them. I Love The Clock. The First Image Reminds Me of Something Ed Hardy.

 

[Moondog Wily]

I Like #2 The Best Here. Would Love To See More Choices If You Have Them. I Love The Clock. The First Image Reminds Me of Something Ed Hardy.

Oh, I have more choices! But none developed ;~)) If you want, I can send you a link to a zip file, but I am not going to post dozens of images here on the forum as this is not an image friendly environment as your tea kettle is well aware of!! Thanks for the feedback on all of these! Very much appreciated. If you want a zip file, let me know and I will send to you via a private message ;~))

 

[Bogner]

Oh, I have more choices! But none developed ;~)) If you want, I can send you a link to a zip file, but I am not going to post dozens of images here on the forum as this is not an image friendly environment as your tea kettle is well aware of!! Thanks for the feedback on all of these! Very much appreciated. If you want a zip file, let me know and I will send to you via a private message ;~))

Do It!

 

[László]

Being in the arts myself, and in an arts family, I believe firmly that if it isn't made by humans, it isn't art. It's artifice.

So the two pictures aren't 'artwork' by my standards.

I saw your instruction to ignore the thread. I didn't obey. Sue me.

 

[Moondog Wily]

Being in the arts myself, and in an arts family, I believe firmly that if it isn't made by humans, it isn't art. It's artifice.

So the two pictures aren't 'artwork' by my standards.

I saw your instruction to ignore the thread. I didn't obey. Sue me.

I therefore highly recommend that you vote for choice 3 in the poll! I saw you coming, that is there for you!! Thanks for the feedback ;~))

 

[László]

I therefore highly recommend that you vote for choice 3 in the poll! I saw you coming, that is there for you!! Thanks for the feedback ;~))

Well, I don't think they suck, necessarily. I just wouldn't use the term, 'art' to describe pictures created by machines.

The Oxford Dictionary defines 'art' as:

"The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power" [Emphasis added].

The modern world offers lots of stuff that seems like something it isn't.

Kraft can't call their American Slices or their Velveeta 'cheese'. The stuff stretched the 'close, butnot necessarily cheese' envelope so far that they have to call it 'pasteurized processed cheese food'.

But I might put that pasteurized processed cheese food on top of a hamburger, nonetheless.

"So what would you call machine-created pictures, Laz?"

"I'd call them 'machine-created pictures', since that's a decent enough description of what they are, as opposed to 'art'.

This also reminds me of 'vegan leather', which is, of course, not leather but vinyl. Beats me why people won't buy vinyl but they'll buy 'vegan leather'.

 

[Moondog Wily]

Well, I don't think they suck, necessarily. I just wouldn't use the term, 'art' to describe pictures created by machines.

The Oxford Dictionary defines 'art' as:

"The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power" [Emphasis added].

The modern world offers lots of stuff that seems like something it isn't.

Kraft can't call their American Slices or their Velveeta 'cheese'. The stuff stretched the 'close, butnot necessarily cheese' envelope so far that they have to call it 'pasteurized processed cheese food'.

But I might put that pasteurized processed cheese food on top of a hamburger, nonetheless.

"So what would you call machine-created pictures, Laz?"

"I'd call them 'machine-created pictures', since that's a decent enough description of what they are, as opposed to 'art'.

This also reminds me of 'vegan leather', which is, of course, not leather but vinyl. Beats me why people won't buy vinyl but they'll buy 'vegan leather'.

I appreciate your feedback and I will be stating my case on your points and other related matters in fine detail when i release this album. In the extended liner notes I am writing for said release, I talk quite a bit about AI and why this album is actually the direct opposite of AI on a musical level, even though the "artwork" is "AI" generated for the most part (two of a perfect pair? for me anyway) ;~)) And keep in mind, I am not selling the "artwork", I am using it as a communication tool which conveys some details of the songs nature and message, the music is the product here ;~)) I have released about 70 songs and up until March of '23 I did all the "artwork" except in two pieces where I had artists assist me with creating my vision, my imagination. They just had a better skill set to make what i was seeing in my head. In these cases here, I hired a machine to assist me in creating my visions, my imagination, but it was still my vision. In those other artworks I have done in the past, I often would use photographs and then modify them or trace them to turn them into what I wanted. Are photographs art? In some instances, when I could not find a photo I liked, I would create an object myself in Lightwave (my preferred 3D modeling platform) and voila, I have my object. I would set the lighting, the shadows, the cameras and their angles, staging, the colors, the textures, backgrounds, etc. But was that art or AI generated? I could not say "give me a bucket" but I could say "give me a cylinder, now delete the top, now slice the sides into 15 pieces on the Y axis, now thicken each slice to .64 inches, now put this picture of some old weathered wood on those surfaces, etc.! Sounds like AI to me, I just had to give it a longer more detailed instruction set and it created it. So what I created (or thought I created anyway) before others were calling it AI, was it art? Anyway, not here, not now (I know, after all that - this is the short version? - Oyyyyy), but soon I will state my case in full! I am sure it will get ripped apart for reasons x, y and z but I value all opinions, even ones I may not agree with in part or in whole! The great thing about opinions is, it can often give you a perspective that you may have not thought of ;~)) I will do my very own "shaking of the fist at the clouds" real soon (so batten down the hatches, there's a storm a brewin') ;~))

 

[Greywolf]

As an Artist and Musician , I will always prefer direct human created art /music /etc . ad nausem
However , I find the AI art to be inspiring in the Daliesque interpretation in some vids. Tetouze does some amazing stuff .
I use it as a launching pad to do "real " art . I'm always looking for inspiration in all it's forms .

My concern is it can up the lazy factor , and instead of a launching pad it becomes a crutch or worse a replacement .

As they say in Motor Racing ... With great power, comes great responsbility ...

 

[László]

I appreciate your feedback and I will be stating my case on your points and other related matters in fine detail when i release this album.

Please don't conflate my objection to including AI pictures in the term 'art' as an objection to using AI. I don't object at all. I don't care what people like or dislike. I simply think words ought to have meaning, and that especially applies to the word 'art' which is so often misunderstood.

I have no problem whatsoever with using the stuff AI generates, whether it qualifies as art or not. That's up to the person using it. It's all fine with me, whatever makes you happy.

But I've been thinking a lot about language and how it communicates ideas. All of the relativism in language use today ('X' means whatever I think it means') contributes to the inability of people to understand one another.

When people don't understand each other, misunderstandings arise that lead to significant problems. That's a cause of friction.

My suggestion is that using the term 'art' to describe AI generated pictures makes the generally accepted definition of the term - something that's the product of human skill and creativity - absolutely meaningless.

If you direct an AI machine to do certain things, isn't that similar to asking an artist to, for example, paint certain things, or sing certain things? The person doing the actual work is still the artist.

"Paint me a red flower" isn't the same thing as "I painted a red flower."

Asking for something doesn't make the person asking for those things an artist.

I will grant that language changes over time. But at some point words have to have commonly shared meanings or we lose the ability to clearly communicate.

 

[László]

I use it as a launching pad to do "real " art .

This is a good example of the problem with calling AI pictures 'art'. Now you have to qualify a picture as "real art" if it's made by human beings.

Wouldn't it be simpler, clearer, and more accurate to call something an 'AI picture', and leave the word 'art' to be understood within the meaning it was always used in?

All of these loosely used terms make communication more difficult, and divisions arising as the result of misunderstandings more likely to occur.

It reminds me of the old USSR days, when the communists called the democracies 'fascists'. Well, no, we were not fascists. Fascists were something different. But you see how words can be misused, whether intentionally or because the people using them don't have a clue what they really mean.

That's just wrong; each of these words has a real meaning, and their misuse and abuse is leading to misunderstandings our country and world simply do not need.

Words matter. Words affect our thinking. Once we learn to talk, we think in words.

People need to understand one another. It's really as simple as that. To communicate, words have to have an accepted meaning.

Certainly, use AI for whatever inspiration you need. No worries. But let's use language accurately.

One final thing: Is there any good reason NOT to use language accurately? Does NOT using language accurately accomplish anything that benefits humankind?

 

[Greywolf]

I'm sure language will evolve along with the tech.

When I first became an IT engineer ...nobody knew what a terrabyte was (32 bit systems are limited to 4GB of adress space)

New tech frequently ruffles feathers . When I was in College Electronics ( early 70's) , they forbid calculators .. you were required to use a slide rule .. even though many had calculators ..

Then .. the bean counters get involved and say ...look how much time we can save if we let the machines help us ..... and that my friends is what some called progress.

 

[László]

I'm sure language will evolve along with the tech.

Language always evolves. Meanwhile, let's use the right terms to describe things.

When I first became an IT engineer ...nobody knew what a terrabyte was (32 bit systems are limited to 4GB of adress space)

And instead of using an existing word, they created a new word. That's fine.

and that my friends is what some called progress.

'Progress' isn't the same thing as 'art', and we both know it and can appreciate many examples of the difference.

A calculator is quicker and easier to use than a slide rule. As such, it could be argued that it's a technological improvement, and progress.

AI/machine thinking might be the opposite of progress when it comes to the arts, since the resulting product, i.e. the actual thing that's produced by the machine, isn't an expression of human creativity, which is the definition of 'art'.

Lots of people think 'new' means the same thing as 'progress'. It doesn't. Sometimes it means regression.



Side note, slightly off-topic:

A week ago today, my daughter and her husband were in town and we made dinner. After dinner, I sat in the living room with them, and was the only one, including my wife, not completely absorbed in looking at their individual phones.

I'd been hoping for conversation, and suggested we talk. After all, it had been a month or more since we'd seen each other.

They all looked up, shrugged their shoulders, and went back to their individual phones. That's 'progress' I guess, but it isn't communication between people in the same room.

I wanted to get out of my chair, go into my studio, and do something interesting other than watching three people look at their freaking iPhones. But I didn't. I thought they might care whether or not I walked out of the room. Nonetheless, I should have.

Excuse me while I shout at clouds. I think human communication is super-important.

Or you could just let a machine do your thinking, writing, and creation. I'm not doing that. I'm against it. I choose to think for myself, speak my own words, write for myself, and create for myself.

Aw hell, I even like to hand wash my own car. Maybe I should video myself washing my car and put it on TikTok so other people can get off on seeing a random dude wash a car.

But that's an aside and hasn't got much to do with the definition of a word.

 

[d4rkst4r]

#2 for my two cents, draws me right into the title...both are great tho....

 

[Moondog Wily]

Thanks for all the feedback peeps! The Clock face was ultimately the one! Here is the final version, very minor changes (image is linked to the song on bandcamp if you want to listen to it - full album available here and should be available on streaming/online services starting in the next 1-7 days). Artwork for all songs on this record can be seen here!

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