Back in 2017 I asked "what is art" in response to the launch of Brian Eno's ambient album Reflection.
The post explored the intersections of interpretation by the creator and consumer, and how we consume the same work differently at different times. Jay echoes this in his discussion of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes:
As I've grown older, the book has only got better. Not because the story has changed, but because I have.
My thoughts back then we're against the backdrop of Eno's explanation that the type of music he was making was generative – it writes itself within the initial parameters set out for it:
My job as a composer is to set in place a group of sounds and phrases, and then some rules which decide what happens to them.
I likened those 'rules' to the algorithms employed by social networks to determine what users will see in their timelines and whether, like Eno, those using the algorithms should be deemed the "composer" having created then and set them in motion.
The crux of the matter was whether something could still be called art if we removed both the human element and requiring a degree of skill to create it.
Ton Zijlstra recently wrote about Roland Barthes declaring 'the death of the author' in 1967 (which also featured in my post) but extends the argument for current times.
It may be reasonable to call Eno the composer of a piece of generative music but we now have generative AI where you only need supply a text prompt to get something in return. There is no need to set up the initial 'sounds and phrases' or even establish some rules – the AI can do everything for you.
Barthes argued that the author was irrelevant, that a work should stand alone and be solely interpreted by the consumer. Zijlstra counters:
bringing the author and their intentions in scope of creating meaning is necessary however. It is a necessity as proof of human creation
A reverse Turing test.
It's hard to decide if Barthes would have been pleased with this turn of events or whether he would have realised the flaw in his argument, that our connection to art lies in its humanity and that the intention of the creator is a key part of that.
I see an increasing number of blogs whose authors include some variant of a "written by a human" badge. Ton writes his blog attests to his being a person but, as the capability of generative AI grows, being able to determine 'humanity' becomes more difficult. 20 years of blogging indicates that someone is/was a real person but there is now no guarantee that any given creation is actually theirs.
I closed my 2017 post by saying "art is that which makes us feel" but is that enough? Should it also have made the creator feel? And if its creator is incapable of feeling or ascribing meaning should we discount the work?
