Generated art is becoming too easy. It’s become so easy that all that’s required is an imagination and a decent vocabulary. There is no artistic skill required. But is this the beginning of democratized art?
Art can be produced in a few different ways: with pens, with pencils, with markers, with paints and with rubber stamps. In the West, these are seen as “art supplies” or “art materials.”
In the East, they are called “genius tools.”
If you have a local art studio in your home or you make one yourself using only these tools, then you can produce art at home using your own imagination and any vocabulary you desire. This is what we call “Generated Art.”
You might think this is just a passing fad that will disappear as soon as digital technology takes over our lives and becomes our only creative tool. It won’t! The best way to behold this new form of art is in person. Here’s the best way to see it: stop by your local gallery and buy some paintings from the artists who use only these materials to create their works of art! These artists actually do have life skills and they know how to speak nice words about their work so that it’s not just words on paper like other forms of art…they create real beautiful new works of art every day!
Defining the word “Art”
Just because something is “easy” doesn’t mean it isn’t art.
That’s the problem with simplifying and generalizing things, especially when you do it intentionally. It’s fine to create something that can be explained so simply that almost anyone can understand it — but it’s not fine to say that everyone should have the same amount of understanding.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t attempt to make art accessible, but I am saying that trying to make art too easy means we lose some of its special properties — and this is not always a bad thing.
The Rise of Generated Art
What is art?
A simple question to ask, but one worth asking for a few reasons. First and foremost, it’s an important consideration for the future of the creative industries. The last few years have seen a steadily and rapidly increasing number of creative professionals and businesses jump on the bandwagon of ‘generating art’ as a new way to pay the bills without sacrificing creativity. And while it is true that generating art can open up more opportunities for artists, in some cases this can be detrimental to their ability to be paid fairly (which leads me to my second reason).
Second, we need to distinguish between “artistic skill” and “artist skill.” Artists who are good at making money are not necessarily good at making art. For example the artist who sells six paintings of kittens somehow feels compelled to write in his biography that he is an artist, even though he has no artistic talent whatsoever, even if he can make money from selling his art (and obviously he shouldn’t—selling your work is stealing!).
Third, many writers have found themselves falsely accused of being geniuses because they are capable of writing about things other than their interests (for instance, political theory or popular music). This means that many people get sucked into thinking that they must be geniuses simply because they generate income from writing about things other than their interests. If everyone generated income solely from writing about what they care about then this would simply be an inherent bias towards people writing about popular culture/politics/philosophy/etc., but by far most artists care more than anything else about their work inspiring others’ creative endeavors and providing them with monetary income. So if everyone was forced into generating income exclusively from writing about what they care about (as opposed to generating income solely from creating art) then there would all too quickly be a huge imbalance in artistic output: one person would generate a ton of revenue from writing only about popular culture/philosophy/politics/etc., and another person would generate none because she couldn’t write anything interesting!
There’s also the problem of financialization: if you’re an artist who generates income solely from selling your work then you will want to limit yourself only to things you find interesting — which means that unless you’re working on some highly unusual or challenging subject matter you won’t have much luck generating revenue outside of what you find exciting. The problem here is not just that many people think they should be considered geniuses simply
The Fallacy of Simulated Art
On the surface, this post is meant to be a tongue in cheek joke. However, I think it has some merit. The first step to improving your art is to have a better vocabulary.
If you are going to start generating art that people will pay attention to, you need a way of describing them. And the easiest way to describe people is by what they look like.
Your art needs to rely on recognizable silhouettes and faces — or at least be related in some way — so we have a lead in on how we can apply these very useful descriptions to our art as well:
• Older guys with big beards and big round glasses (Portrait Guy)
• Dressed up as cowboys with lipstick (Cowboy Guy)
• An older guy with a beard and a cowboy hat (Old Man)
This post doesn’t mean that all your work looks the same — just that of those it does look like something recognizable. But if you don’t have these two elements then there’s no point in working on your art anymore because it’s not recognisable enough for anything but an audience who already knows what it looks like.
This also relates back to how we can describe things before they are actually there: if you try and describe someone before they’re even drawn then things start looking pretty abstractly generic. You might as well just say “you” or “you-shaped thing” or “you” shaped thing unless you want people clicking on the search results for potential inspirations instead of your work because they already know what they look like!
The Dangers of Comparing Art
For starters, when we compare art forms we generally need to be discussing how they are created: what kind of artist(s) create them? How long do they take? What tools do they use? How much do they cost? But these are not the questions you should be asking yourself when you are evaluating a piece of artwork. You should be asking “does this make me feel something?” or “does it make me think?” or “is it interesting?” The answers to these questions will determine which art form is more valuable, and there’s no clear-cut answer to that question for any one form.
Which brings us to another point: when you compare works of art, you’re asking yourself whether one work was better than another one. If your work was better than someone else’s then you’re suggesting that their work was worth more than yours; and if your work was worse than someone else’s then you have just said that theirs was worth less than yours. When we compare works of art, we are making a judgment about what constitutes value in an artistic sense; at least in any given context. In order for this to actually make sense, there needs to be some sort of metric (like sales) connoting value — and while there may well be one valid metric for every single artist/artform/context (and indeed many authors would argue that there are), most people only consider their own work as being worth something when they can sell it through some means (whether it’s their book or other advertising). But how long does an artwork take? It could take months or weeks or years (depending on how the artist creates it), but with such short gestation periods you can’t really say whether a particular artwork is worth more than another if both were created at the same time and for the same reason; each created independently but with different goals and ambitions.
Conclusion
We’ve been talking a lot about artistic creation and the democratization of it recently and have come up with a few thoughts on what is going on. I think it’s important to recognize that, in many ways, this is new territory for us. We’re not trying to create art from nothing but we do think that anyone can produce artwork through the power of their mind. This is certainly true of all the tools and technology we have from Microsoft, but there are plenty of other tools out there too (think Flickr, etc.) This is the first time in history that all these tools we have come together on one platform and helped people create art.
But what does this mean? Simply put, it means everything you do (or want to do) with these new tools will be done by you. You can upload your own content or use one of ours. You can also publish it online or in print. Without any prior experience or training, you can now create artwork with our software that looks great and gets published online or in print right away.
The democratization of art has never been so simple: all you need is an imagination and a vocabulary. It’s just like music: anyone can make music if they want to (and even if they don’t). And while most people don’t know how to play an instrument or sing a song, anyone who wants to can create music from nothing because they have an understanding of how an instrument works (like piano) or the language (like singing). It comes down to making connections between sounds rather than playing notes directly.
This has implications for how we design our software today because artists start using our software when they need guidance on how to make connections between sounds rather than just visualizing them as precisely as possible for their intended purpose (or use case) . As we move forward into this new era I think it’s important for us to remind ourselves that artists are not designers but users — they need guidance on how something works so they don’t get into trouble trying to figure out how things work themselves like some software designers do today .