Creativity is the last refuge of the artist. The technical skill and style of artists can now be replicated by artificial networks to reproduce new work. So, what impact does the human have on the creation of art when a new technology can replace skill? This problem isn’t a new one, instead we should look at the long history of new technology to see how new tools always extend the definition of what art is, writes Henry Shevlin.
In August this year, the Colorado State Fair found itself at the centre of an international news story when it announced the winner of its digital art competition. The piece, the cleverly titled Théâtre D’opéra Spatial, depicts an imaginary operatic performance before a small crowd in front of a vast circular window, through which is dimly visible a seemingly alien or otherworldly background redolent of the space operas of science fiction. What caused the controversy was not the piece’s content, however, but the mode of its creation. The artist, Jason Allen, had used a computer program called Midjourney to generate the image from a text prompt. While he claimed to have been open about this fact when entering the competition, many commentators were unimpressed; as one of them put it, “typing keywords in a good enough sequence isn’t art.”
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