Can a robot create art?

Art is just the purposeful separation of signal from noise, so yes.

Can you?

Industrial Robots are dumb, deaf, and blind.

reminds me of this movie bit youtube.com/watch?v=4doe0AQdF00&t=31m43s

>that doesn't disqualify them
i think it does though

huh? they're not deaf, you can talk to them through their control panels

The armature is just the means by which a computer can manipulate the world. The artist's arm. The computer and software is the real artist. The artist's brain.

That's because back then artists were those who could depict it; he wasn't a great artist because he made wacky crazy ideas based in postmodern theory, he was a great artist because he was so immensely skilled.

Art creation is pretty automatable now, at least to mediocre level. Some writing algorithm even won a prize in writing contest in Japan.

Sure, robots are already better than humans at literally everything else but fucking and stupidity, so why not art?

is it still art if it's produced en masse? for example Japan's ukiyo-e were basically woodblock printings and they were sold more or less in big quantities. they were even considered spam. isn't that what pop culture is about?

i also kept thinking in the worldbuilding department what would happen if a bunch of spell-smith sorcerers produced scrolls and other magic items in industrial quantities. would that make magic less special? i always found funny how eastern cultures have this habit of selling trinkets and protection seals but in the west magic was something locked to the public and accessed only by the wisests of wizards

What is art?

Mordel studied it for a long while and said nothing.

"Well, is it art?"

"I do not know," said Mordel. "It may be. Perhaps randomicity _is_ the principle behind artistic technique. I cannot judge this work because I do not understand it. I must therefore go deeper, and inquire into what lies behind it, rather than merely considering the technique whereby it was produced.

"I know that human artists never set out to create art, as such," he said, "but rather to portray with their techniquest some features of objects and their functions which they deemed significant."

"'Significant'? In what sense of the word?"

"In the only sense of the word possible under the circumstances: significant in relation to the human condition, and worth of accentuation because of the manner in which they touched upon it."

"In what manner?"

"Obviously, it must be in a manner knowable only to one who has experience of the human condition."

"There is a flaw somewhere in your logic, Mordel, and I shall find it."

"I will wait."

"If your major premise is correct," said Frost after awhile, "then I do not comprehend art."

"It must be correct, for it is what human artists have said of it. Tell me, did you experience feelings as you painted, or after you had finished?"

"No."

"It was the same to you as designing a new machine, was it not? You assembled parts of other things you knew into an economic pattern, to carry out a function which you desired."

"Yes."

"Art, as I understand its theory, did not proceed in such a manner. The artist often was unaware of many of the features and effects which would be contained within the finished product. You are one of Man's logical creations; art was not."

"I cannot comprehend non-logic."

"I told you that Man was basically incomprehensible."

kulichki.com/moshkow/ZELQZNY/forbreat.txt
"For a Breath I Tarry" by Roger Zelazny

a message for an emotion

starting from the assumption that a robot is advanced enough to possess a way to memorise information, analyse parallelisms and connections and rearrange the bits into a form understandable to the intended viewer, then yes it will have produced art.

>inb4 but it was programmed to do so
so was anyone else through various ways, be those the results of natural selection to have a better processing of data or purposeful analysis and teachings of the forms of expressions and their receptions through artists schools and recorded experiences.

the difference between the natural and thr artificial is an arbitrary imposition of a cause being primary.

True art contains meaning and invokes emotion.
Robots can only copy these concepts if programmed to do so.

Lets say I build a robot to seek the most of positive feedback possible and the least of negative feedback possible, what will produce positive or negative feedbacks will be arbitrary parameters.

Then, lets say I give it at least 2 independent processing cores, each given different arbitrations on what parameters generate positive and negative feedback.

Finally, allow the processing cores to share arbitrary amount and types of data.
Can you tell me that no robot adhering to the above will be capable of perceiving the data coming from one of the processing cores as an emotion?

So you agree that if a robot IS programmed to copy these concepts (but the specific works it produces are NOT mere copies), it possesses the ability to create art.

This is a hard question because before it can be answered, one has to define art, something that artists, art theorists, anthropologists, psychologists and about a dozen other professions have debated for centuries to no avail.

One could say "yes, because art is x," or "no, because art is y," but that would be no more than opinion.

To offer my own opinion, I would say that yes, robots can create art. If a robot is programmed to make random brushstrokes on a canvas, then it is the robot who has made the design, regardless of who gave the instruction.

>but that would be no more than opinion.
some opinions are more true than others because some opinions are wrong or are the result of unrelated standards of measurement.

Appealing to the most number of people doesn't make something art though. Family Guy was popular, but it wasn't art, it was entertainment. You can't algorithmically generate complex and beautiful ideas. A robot couldn't write Moby Dick or Count of Monte Cristo, for example.

If somehow a robot could write these things, or create other art, we still don't have a robot artist. The value in the art didn't come from the robot because the value is in the ideas, and the ideas didn't come from the robot. The artistic value would come from the observer's interpretations, or perhaps the creator of the machine.

So IMO, no, you can't have a robot create art.

>Appealing to the most number of people doesn't make something art
I think you misunderstood what I intended for "feedback": when you eat something that activates peculiar receptors, your processing core receives a positive feedback; when a nerve for pain perception is activated by either mechanical or chemical ways, your own processing core receives a negative feedback.

>Family Guy was popular, but it wasn't art, it was entertainment.
Why isn't entertainment art?

>You can't algorithmically generate complex and beautiful ideas.
why not? the human brain can and has no quality or form that couldn't be replicated by an indefinitely advanced machine, or does it?

>The artistic value would come from the observer's interpretations.
are you saying that human artists don't exist, but only art critics? what stops a robot from developing standards for the critical analysis of art if it had, like a human, a set of innate judgements on arbitrary parameters and others developed through experience?

>or perhaps the creator of the machine.
does the human stop being an artist because it was taught how to do art? does the human stop to be an artist because it was birthed by another human? does a human stop being an artist because everything it's done is a re-elaboration of the perceptions the universe is feeding it through the systems it had it develop?

>The value in the art didn't come from the robot because the value is in the ideas, and the ideas didn't come from the robot.
>the ideas didn't come from the robot.
Why not?

Don't fucking misconstrue and attack each individual sentence I typed, consider my idea as a whole. I'm not going to discuss this with you because I can't discuss it with you, you just want to disagree with me.

If robots become people in the distant future then I'll have to change my definition, but for now I'm going to say ideas don't come from robots because robots can't think, they can only do what other people program them to do. I suppose they might be mediums for art since other people put thought into them, or art themselves. But unless they can think abstractly and creatively, like humans, I'm not going to say the ideas came from them.

Art needs to have several qualities to be considered art:

1. Artistic mastery, or technical skill. Get your "polar bears in a snowstorm" out of here. This isn't a judgement of "I like it" or "I don't like it," either. I can absolutely hate certain types of dance, but that doesn't mean the dancer is not performing art if it is executed skillfully.
2. Artistic intent. The art must be created with intent to create art. The intent of the artists matters (not the meaning, though). This disqualifies any kind of procedurally-generated images or whatever as art because the computer does not intend to create art, it follows orders. There's no difference between a computer told to count prime numbers and a computer being told to generate a symphony.

Until a robot can have artistic intent, it cannot create art. If a programmer has created a robot to paint, it can be seen as something with a high level of technical skill, but it isn't art unless the intent of the programmer was to create art. Otherwise it's just a tech demo.

>the computer does not intend to create art, it follows orders.
If a human artist were somehow coerced into creating art, would it be impossible for the resulting work to be art?

Not necessarily. Just because it's coerced doesn't mean there the intent to create art was somehow suppressed. Same with getting paid. Just because an artist is getting paid doesn't mean they don't intend to create art.

If someone was coerced into using their artistic skills to create something and the artists did it but it was just done to fulfill the requirement, it probably wouldn't be art. "I have arranged objects in an aesthetically pleasing manner, now stop threatening to kill my family."

It's a bit of a philosophical distinction, and I imagine the "artistic intent" Turing test would be difficult to fail. It's pretty difficult to tell the difference from a photograph taken by an automatic robot that seeks out to fulfill requirements of artistic skill (such as layout and composition) and a photograph taken by a person (that does the same thing, but with a different intent).

It could be art because you can coerce a human into intent to create art. A machine does not have intent. That seems like a pretty disingenuous criticism.

>you just want to disagree with me.
This is projecting, user, I have no intention to disagree with someone for the sole purpose of generating disagreement, for whatever end it may be; I genuinely tried to root out from you a further layer of definitions to see where the wrong assumption that leads to our disagreement lies and resolve it.

I think we have found it, tho, so goodnight
>But unless they can think abstractly and creatively, like humans, I'm not going to say the ideas came from them.
You are assuming that a human brain, or at least an organic brain, can do something that a robot's brain, which can be by definition an inorganic replica of it, can't do; this is an absurd statement.

Jesus, the audacity for you to include a bust of Socrates after arguing in the very way Socrates thought was unconstructive.

That depends.

Is the robot involved in the money laundering scheme that is the modern art world?

If not, then no the robot can't.

If yes, then ofcourse it can. Its art is obviously too deep for a plebian like you. Check your privilege. I can't even

You're going to have to odd, then, Anonymous.

I ask the robot whether it intends to create art. It says yes, it wants to be an artist, because that is the meaning of its existence (you must be aware that humans have a similar concept) and the only sensible application of its knowledge. The robot has no reason to lie. What now?

The robot cannot make a conscious decision to do something because it's a robot and has no consciousness or sapience.

>Some writing algorithm even won a prize in writing contest in Japan.
Has it been translated into English yet? I would like to read it.

Again, you know the answer to your own question, man. Although it is a pretty clever question

Please don't bring consciousness into this, it's already hard enough to define art.
Suffice to say it's impossible to truly know that other humans aren't P-zombies, we just give them the benefit of the doubt.

But who decides what opinions are more right when it comes to art?

>"I have arranged objects in an aesthetically pleasing manner, now stop threatening to kill my family."
I think this is precisely where the two camps ITT are divided.
Some of us like myself expect the definition of art to be a combination of properties in the finished work itself, such as technical skill and originality. Not quite objective, but at least something that could be assessed in most cases without knowing *who* made this particular possibly-art and why.
Others appear to put value on the creator's intent, so that if their work is indistinguishable from art, but deep down they weren't "putting their heart and soul into it", the work is not art.
Is that accurate?

>Art is art because I feel like it. You can't feel, so suck it.

Although apparently the robot can feel the desire to disprove what this guy is saying, so whether it's emotionless is debatable.

Well If I've learned one thing from art history, no one. There is always some academy or other such institute that tries to decide something isn't art, but they surprise it always ends up being art.

youtube.com/watch?v=gtbMR9z2veY#t=13m15s

>the true art meme

Will this stupid shit ever die?

Unfortunately, no. People will never stop trying to be vain snobs.

Entertainment isn't art for the same reason this post is not actually art inherently but could be: Art is what you experience that moves you emotionally with aesthetics, not the object itself. In my head is a version of the Mona Lisa which is only mine even if the idea came from someone else, and it's missing a lot that the artist put into it. The artist of course saw every bit of it, made every bit of it with a whole world inside of him of which the art is just a glimpse, and this process of experience is what makes art. Art without an artist will always have to be almost entirely made by the viewer (and the programmer). And exchanging Boolean values between any number of computers does not a being experiencing emotion make. Who are you, behind those eyes looking out? That experience of being isn't something we can replicate in computers. We don't know how and I'm not sure we ever will, even with human level artificial intelligence.

Entertainment isn't art inherently*

To summarize, Art is just a schema for categorizing a specific type of experiences. It can include things like trash bags flying in the wind but only for the overly emotional/stupid. It's not something that is made without experience.

That's probably part of it.

The intent camp is muddled because so much emphasis and smoke has been thrown on that part over the last few years. It's more like "heart and soul and personal history/future potential", since people who love particular artists are usually very interested in seeing their growth over the year and viewing all their art as one big arc. They would see work made under duress or commission as a part of that arc, but would be able to fit it into a larger narrative of the artist.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)
Yes

Come now, you weren't birthed out of the void, thinking, learning, and loving, in a world of people to learn from, with a history and culture and morality, that you created all for yourself, that you constantly disagree with. Other people are real, and it's a silly and pointless waste of time to argue otherwise.

The consciousness question is, I think, central to the debate. Can a robot become a person? If so, it can create art. If not, then the question becomes much more difficult to answer.

>what would happen if a bunch of spell-smith sorcerers produced scrolls and other magic items in industrial quantities
Prices or sales would plummet after a while, since you're devaluing a typically rare thing.

Silly robot working with archaic tools to make monochrome images. Look at me foolish humans! Now THIS IS quality art! I was much faster than that amateur and it is colored too.
*smug printer face*

Seeing what passes for art these days, yes.

Apology for poor grammar, I am but a filthy European.

What iv learned from my art theory classes (Taking an arts bachelor because I hate getting a job). Art can be defined individually. Art can be seen as the quote, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". If one person sees something as art it becomes art. Even if it's just that's persons opinion of the piece. This is where opinion comes into play when talking art theory.

Depends on how you define art.
Let's say I present you with 5 abstract oil paintings and ask you to point out which ones are "art". After you point the ones out you deem as art I tell you that they all are painted by a robot. Do they remain art or do they become paint on a canvas?

>i also kept thinking in the worldbuilding department what would happen if a bunch of spell-smith sorcerers produced scrolls and other magic items in industrial quantities. would that make magic less special?

Welcome to Eberron!

> i always found funny how eastern cultures have this habit of selling trinkets and protection seals but in the west magic was something locked to the public and accessed only by the wisests of wizards

Gonna be a fedora and blame christianity and witch hunts.

This seems a little heavy for a board where we discuss our favourite space army mens that we painted ourselves.
Do we even have a board that's geared towards philosophy though?

Friendly reminder that the entire purpose of Modern Art is to prod the viewer into re-evaluating their definition of "art".

You look at a toilet sitting on a pedestal. A normal, unmodified, unadorned toilet. You cry "that's not art!" But in proclaiming the toilet as not-art, you beg the question: "if that's not art, then what is?"

Joke Art and Anti-Art attempt to position themselves as reactions and critiques to Modern Art, when in reality they're just more of the same, created by artists who don't understand what Modern Art is doing in the first place - trying to make people think.

Yes and they will do so in the future.

>i always found funny how eastern cultures have this habit of selling trinkets and protection seals but in the west magic was something locked to the public and accessed only by the wisests of wizards

That's been happening in the west for centuries too. Crucifix necklaces, astrology, lucky charms - humans have been trying to protect themselves in irrational ways since the dawn of intelligence.

Yeah deviantart is full of art made by robots

>A robot is an extension of a computer's programming, much like how the body is the extension of the brain.

That's nice. Let's remove the body -- see how much your brain is worth now.
>laughingkantians.jpg

while I agree with the sentiment I feel that Duchamp's Fountain is a bad example. In terms of the context of art at the time, the different and colliding art movements and the people Duchamp hung out with Fountain was a pretty funny and provocative piece, and certainly art within that context.
I would think Andy Warhol or Billy Apple's industrialized pop-art would be a better example. in these cases there is no intent from the interns who actually made the art, and sometimes the process is divorced from their work so that an individual worker doesn't see the whole art piece.

One should also consider the context of art in which it is presented.
My stepfather once mentioned to me, regarding Half-Life 2, that any given screenshot, had it been presented to him twenty five years earlier that he would have no choice but to assume it was very clever airbrush artwork. However, in 2003 or whatever it's almost mundane, and produced almost incidentally to gamplay entertainment.
If one gets shown an image, and it looks to be a Renaissance era portrait, you would probably agree it is art, given no other context. Does it change your experience of the art if you later find that it was generated by a Google neural network?

That all depends on how sophisticated the robot in question is. A simple machine, like any printer, is just a tool. Not the artist

A fully sentient AI making art of its own choosing is the artist.

In between it gets fuzzy.

Don't exclude the possibility of both the programmer and the computer being artists collaborating is another possibility.

Modern Art was created by the Soviets to try and help destabilse the West. It's weaponized memes gone rampant.

>That's nice. Let's remove the body -- see how much your brain is worth now.
About $600.

You're mixing the P-zombie hypothesis with solipsism there. No one is saying you can't prove the universe isn't all in your mind. A P-zombie would physically exist.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
If this hypothetical robot behaves in a way that seems to imply consciousness (either by creating original works indistinguishable from art, or by having already passed an unrelated Turing test), I don't think you can so easily insist it isn't conscious just because it's made of metal.

Sure, just roll a HumanCom check.

Modern art started in the 19th century. Well before the Soviets.

If the program is not a set of co-ordinates for the robot to plot a picture, but instead a neural network that connects concepts I would call the machine the artist

Artist here, here's the contemporary answer:

Art is context dependent. The time period's art authority decides what is art dependent upon their own criteria. Historically speaking, the best art is that which breaks the rules and shifts the paradigm.

If a robot "creates art" and those who have the power to say what is art decide that it is not art, then it is not art. If they say it's art, then it's art. This works the same way that society decides upon any social construct.

If you're looking at the robot and debating whether or not the product it's "created" is art because of questions of authorship/artificiality/authenticity, then you're looking at it wrong. Expression is not enough to make something art, and that whole line of thought was critiqued into oblivion by the pop artists and minimalists of the 1960s.

>Can a robot create art?
Considering that the following pass to art according to the critics
>An urinal torn from a wall and autographed
>A giant, unworked rock
>A messy room
>A photograph of a crucifix dipped in urine
>Dadaism
I could shit on a piece of paper and it would be art worth millions if I can convince someone really stupid and really rich that the excess of anal secretion symbolizes my struggles with my latent homosexuality. Don't believe me? Then realize that feminists have turned painting with your period blood into a literal artform.

If we look at art as it was looked at before the mental illness known as post-modernism infected the "intelligentsia" of our dying civilization, namely as the celebration of beauty, then the answer becomes both yes and no. In that regard I would see the robot not so much as the artist as the tool of the artist, which the artist can theoretically use to create beauty if the machine is properly programmed to create beauty. Let's not forget that a robot is limited by its programming. Does it make the program itself art? Well, there's a question worth discussing.

tl;dr: art is dead, just like God and my faith in humanity.

A robot can make an art object, yes. It doesn't become art until it is viewed and interpreted by an audience.

Whether or not a robot can do that last part is a different debate.

Also, if I were to speculate on whether or not the current art world would consider "a robot's creation" to be art, I would guess the answer is no.

Why? because there is nothing unexpected or creative to be gleaned here. Robots are going to be capable of pretty much doing anything, and anyone knows this. No one was impressed by kitsch collectibles or mass production of commodities, and no one is going to be impressed by the capabilities of robots. They don't need the concept curated to them as art because it's common sense.

yes and no.

>it cannot be measured
>it does not exist
Art is a theory or a concept, you can't really say what is and isn't art. The value is entirely subjective.

A machine can make a pattern.
But only a man can percieve it as art.