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this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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Artists understand that art is primarily about self-expression. Non-artists often instead think art is about producing nice pictures. When all nice pictures come with self-expression baked in, the two groups seem to be on the same page, but when a computer makes nice pictures that are completely devoid of self-expression, we find out they're not on the same page at all.
Right, people never make art just for money. The animation outsourcing industry loves when you can tell who drew each frame.
That's the thing about human-made art: even when it's just cranked out for a job, there's still an element of self-expression to it just from it having been made using skills honed through self-expression.
Yet absolutely none of that when someone spends five hours editing text to match the image in their head.
Correct
How.
The self-expression of art is in its creation, not in its final product. Yes, the self-expression usually results in differences in the final product - if you hired 2 people to make a painting off of the same detailed description, they would be different paintings, largely because of differences in self-expression. However, if you were to, for example, hire 2 different artists to make perfect copies of the same painting, to the point where they're indistinguishable from each other, the self-expression would still come in when one artist uses a different tool than the other, or starts with a different base color. The methods both still result in an identical final product, and so the product doesn't showcase their unique self-expression, but the creation is separate, and unique to the artist.
Notably, you, the person who asked them to make the art, contributed nothing but a prompt. Yes, that prompt resulted in nice pictures that you wanted, but the self-expression - the thing that makes it art - was entirely someone else's. It's their art, they just made it for you. AI "art" is the same thing, except it's made by a lifeless computer devoid of self expression. So, it's still your nice picture, but there's no self-expression at all, and so it's not art.
When some weirdo perfects a combination of fetishes shared by seven living persons, insisting self-expression is nowhere to be found is fucking nonsense. His self could not be more expressed. His soul lays bare. There cannot be less personal character in that, than in every identical rote inking of Homer Simpson's head.
How that freak created his eldritch pornography is an entire iterative process, like any other person using tools. You dismiss that as "nothing but the prompt," when there's nothing but the prompt. That's all there is. That's the part where a human being expended effort to convey an idea. There is no one else to blame for the horrifying image on your screen, telling you very little about the tools, but more than you ever wanted to know about the person.
And you're throwing hands with the "process art" movement, or really half of modern art. Marcel Duchamp gave a shovel a silly name and it's hung in the goddamn Louvre. If intent alone is enough to make something art, how is this the only tool in history that is immune to intent?
Hmm... That's a good point. I've been focused on whether or not the final product is art, and it's definitely not, because again, it's created by a machine that can't express itself, but it's true that the prompt itself may be considered art. The thing that can make a shovel into art isn't the shovel itself, but the self-expression coming out in the artist's idea to look at it in a way that elevates it to become art. But there's a difference between elevating something mundane into art, and randomly declaring things to be "art." Marcel Duchamp's work is art, but I think most would agree that people who ridicule it by saying things like "Okay, then this pencil's called 'Mr. Writey' now - it's art!" are not creating art. Maybe the only real difference is intent? I'll have to think on this one, but I appreciate your insight!
Surely Mr. Writey is art to the same degree that every outsourced frame of a cartoon is art. Some no-kidding capital-a Art™ was made as a piss-take. Ask Duchamp.
Better yet, ask Damien Hirst. His piece For The Love Of God is the diamond-encrusted skull of an 18th-century monk. Two pieces quickly appeared in response. One, For The Laugh Of God, is missing a front tooth. The other was a close replica of the skull and its display case, briefly installed in the dumpster behind the auction house.
Neither response is claiming the pattern of the diamonds as the purpose of the work. That's not what they contributed. Each work, as a whole, is still art.
A more clarifying question might be: who made Koyaanisqatsi? It's mostly stock footage and b-roll. Y'know, long shots of daily life, sped up or slowed down. It has no actors, no characters, no verbal narrative. It is a film where principal photography is just raw material.
And we say George Lucas made A New Hope. He wrote it, certainly... with apologies to Kurasawa. But to what degree is he responsible for what you see onscreen? He doesn't act. His direction was famously terrible. Gilbert Taylor did cinematography. The character designs were by Ralph McQuarrie. ILM did the sets and props. Marcia Lucas had final edit. Even if we granted him sole authorship, he didn't draw those frames; he pointed a camera at some guys. The footage is not the work.
The idea that a text cannot be art requires strange definitions. 'That's definitely not art, because they did it with a machine' is what people said about Tron.