I’ve used generative fill functions before, like Resynthesize in GIMP. If I don’t like the result, I try again. I’ll try again and again until the result is one I like, varying the parameters. I’m selecting the result even if I didn’t create it.
Honestly, that kind of what photographers do. There’s very little creation involved in taking a photo.[1] The photographer is selecting a camera, lens, focus distance, subject, and point of view. Then pushing a button. Maybe 10 times from 10 different angles. And then they select the one that came out the best.
Sure, there’s post processing, cropping, adjusting. But the pixel values came from the camera. (Or the crystals of silver halide.) They weren’t moved into place by the photographer. Some of the world’s best photographs are from the photographer simply being in the right place and pushing the button at the right time.
But we certainly call it art!
Yet there’s something different about that process than picking up bits of a medium and putting them into place to create a composition, whether it be paint, or graphite, or bits of material in collage, or clay. Or cutting away just enough stone to produce a sculpture.
If someone sits in their room and types prompts into a program for 10 hours, selecting the best ones, recombining them, redoing parts of them with new prompts and new ideas until they decide that the piece has meaning. Who were we to say it’s not art?
Excluding arranged still lifes or photos where the photographer directed a person to pose in specific ways. ↩︎
I’ve used generative fill functions before, like Resynthesize in GIMP. If I don’t like the result, I try again. I’ll try again and again until the result is one I like, varying the parameters. I’m selecting the result even if I didn’t create it.
Honestly, that kind of what photographers do. There’s very little creation involved in taking a photo.[1] The photographer is selecting a camera, lens, focus distance, subject, and point of view. Then pushing a button. Maybe 10 times from 10 different angles. And then they select the one that came out the best.
Sure, there’s post processing, cropping, adjusting. But the pixel values came from the camera. (Or the crystals of silver halide.) They weren’t moved into place by the photographer. Some of the world’s best photographs are from the photographer simply being in the right place and pushing the button at the right time.
But we certainly call it art!
Yet there’s something different about that process than picking up bits of a medium and putting them into place to create a composition, whether it be paint, or graphite, or bits of material in collage, or clay. Or cutting away just enough stone to produce a sculpture.
If someone sits in their room and types prompts into a program for 10 hours, selecting the best ones, recombining them, redoing parts of them with new prompts and new ideas until they decide that the piece has meaning. Who were we to say it’s not art?
Excluding arranged still lifes or photos where the photographer directed a person to pose in specific ways. ↩︎