I used to get angry at my Norwegian teacher when we were forced to analyze poems, because I like writing poems but never once felt compelled to insert the kind of forced symbolism he kept insisting we rip apart and shred and murder poetry to identify.
Because it wasn't what I wrote or read poems for.
Sometimes I'd even seek out a certain translation of a work because I enjoyed the beauty of the choice of word of the translator more than the authors underlying ideas.
(I've never gotten through the original of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, because I find it trite, but there's a particular Norwegian translation I loved - the authors intent was identical, but one presentation of it was beautiful to me in ways the other has never been because of the patterns of words rather than meaning)
Whether or not that intent or symbolism was there in a given poem, I found the process inherently destructive for my enjoyment of those poems, and I utterly detested the process because it felt like violence.
The one time I wrote a poem with a message was as a task in his class, and it was a sharp denunciation of the analysis of poetry. No analysis was necessary - the intent was brutally apparent and quite rudely expressed.
It is also the only poem of mine I've performed in 'public', which was a mistake of him, because it's perhaps the one thing that I have written that has met with the most universal approval among those who heard it, and it hardly improved the attitude towards the analysis of poetry.
I still find pulling art apart to often be brutally destructive and occasionally insulting in it's often shallow insistence of knowing intent that usually is without actual evidence and mired in dogma.
I don't mind people finding meaning in knowing more about how it was created when the creator of a piece of art wants that context to be known or part of the work, but I feel very strongly about assuming intent even for human art, because to me at least, for what I wrote, my intent usually was to write without any deeper meaning or symbolism, to evoke emotion.
For me, for what I wrote, picking it apart ruins that on every level in ways people rarely are able to undo for themselves.
It's like trying to reassemble a cadaver.
People can find their own meaning in anything, and make their own choices, but so much art snobbery revolves around that assignation of a dogmatic interpretation of intent as "correct" and objective that often feels outright disrespectful to assume to me.
Please mind that I wasn't addressing symbolism at all, nor deconstruction. It was more about, "for what I wrote, my intent usually was (…) to evoke emotion."
If I know as a reader that there is no genuine expression behind this, no intent of evoking anything, that it's rather patched together, based on stochastic heuristics in order to mend seamlessly, this just doesn't work. Much the same, I mentioned earlier in another comment that I believe AI generated images to occupy pretty much the negative space of abstract expressionism and informal painting. (Both styles withstand quite robustly any attempts of simple analysis.) It's really about this particular stretch, transposing inner and outer impressions into expressions, what I'm concerned with. This sort of establishes kind of a net, in which we, as humans, may suspend in. (E.g., if you are enjoying yourself in nature, does it matter, whether this is organic, has eroded and grown in certain ways, in a polylog of beings and forces, or if this is just a generated prop made of plastic? I bet, it does.)
For a more concrete example, take light in figurative art. All images are modelled from and by light, and it's quite natural that we should explore an image along its lines. Light and the way it spreads emphasises the image, even if there was no intention of doing so, just by "how it works". These are choices, equally if made intentionally and consciously or not. It's the trace and trait of a human being. But, if there was no intent, if it's just patches mended to meet up, based on weighted averages, a transferred texture? Even if there are sculpted objects and dark and light patches to look at, is there light, at all? Is it even worth noting? How should this work for me? Is there any meaning in looking closely at this?
I very much don't care if there was any intent when consuming art of any kind, though.
If I see an image that evokes a feeling, it won't diminish anything if I find out it is an AI image. Why would it? The image is the same.
The same is my attitude to my writing: I may have an intent, but whether the reader interprets it the same way is irrelevant - I've written it either way, and got my enjoyment out of writing it. It'd be a shame if they don't enjoy it, but that's all.
Why does it matter? It doesn't change my experience of writing it in any way. It has no bearing on my life at all.
Nor does an artists intent change what I see, or hear, or read in any way.
Your example at the end is just deeply depressing to me. Why does it matter? It looks the same. To lose our on enjoying something nice because of factors other than the art itself feels sad to me.
Furthermore, why do you think the human art is any less the result of computation? To me, that seems like a superstition, and meaningless. I don't feel like it's a distinction with any value.
Regarding that last example: the important part is, it does not look the same, nor does it feel the same, since the image is not developed under that regime of light and emphasis and attention. (In a way, there is neither a sense to light, nor detail, nor attention, and, thus, to "how?". I may add, if I'm engaging with an image, beyond a first impression, "how" is to me more important than "what".) Similar aspects may be observed with text.
And, for you, as a writer: As you can't compete with generators on economic grounds, the productions of the former will probably become prevalent (if they are not already, in some niches). If input rejection becomes the default mode of reception, this may affect you, as well.
PS: In other word, a representation is not the real thing, it's a thing of its own in its own realm, raising the question of "what realm?".
As an illustration, here are two illustrations of my own, both representing real objects, drawn in (pre-AI) Photoshop from scratch, for interface purpose. The first is an actual application – mind the focus and guidance of attention and varying detail, the second one is just a draft, still lacking any such focus. This second one is quite similar to an AI generated image, as it lacks any purpose, thus, any reason to be there at all. (Besides that bit of light that is already in that image, it is offending in its neutrality. And there is really no point in publishing it, outside of this context.)
> I very much don't care if there was any intent when consuming art of any kind, though.
I agree with you.
I basically stopped looking at things on /r/earthporn because nature itself is pretty and the bastardization that often happens on that subreddit isn't. They often play with the Hugh's to get deeper greens, more contrast, etc.
But then it stops looking natural and my reaction isn't one of awe or interest. It's not pretty to me. It's interesting the first time you see it, but not the 100th time you see it.
