Probably not, but the difference is that we can generate art at the "pixel" level instead of the "hand" level. Not really a way to do that for most other stuff.
I mean a literal PAINTing is made with paint, obviously.
If you were to try and create a robot hand that painted as well as humans that would probably comparably difficult to any other task involving a human hand. I was saying that we solve the AI art problem by skipping straight to an end state (pixels) instead of the same mechanism a human might.
Why? Plotters do this all the time. It's not hard to imagine something like LLaVA hooked up to a plotter generating whatever the LLM imagines on a paper medium at a stroke level.
Paintings have texture and are three-dimensional, which I'd imagine you'd have realized having seen them in real life.
>You’re being kind of an ass, which is fine but I just felt it should be acknowledged.
Very generous coming from the poster that's saying "we can make a thing like the other thing, assuming it's not actually like the other thing in any way that isn't superficial." It's like you're shooting for a gold medal in the obtuse olympics.
The obtuse thing is you were talking about washing dishes and boston dynamics robots and then when I asked about painting, your response was that doesn't matter because of pixel art.
>Sorry, just a bit confused, isn’t focusing on an artifact of the painting, namely the three dimensionality of it, a superficial detail?
Artifact of the painting? Do you appreciate painting at all? It's fine if you don't, but that's kinda the whole issue in this thread. People who don't appreciating things making value judgments about the things they don't fundamentally care about.
I'm not sure how the texture or three-dimensionality of a painting is 'superficial.' Besides the fact that it literally isn't, it's an actual facet of the painting that is objectively there, it just seems to reflect a lack of understanding on your part. If painting is all superficial anyway, what does it matter that a certain element of it is as well?
I said we have a workaround with art because we can skip to an end state and then you acted like a douchebag and said it’s not the same and that if I had seen true paintings I would understand.
>I said we have a workaround with art because we can skip to an end state
I guess you still don't see the irony of this?
> douchebag and said it’s not the same and that if I had seen true paintings I would understand
I didn't say anything about "true" paintings, and your own insecurity is your own issue you need not project as accusations coming from others.
It's readily apparent if you view paintings that they are not "flat."
If you want to be happy with your pixel art approximation, don't let me stop you. It was you who suggested it was an end run around an actual problem and all I did was point out how that's apparently not true.
> Do you appreciate painting at all? It's fine if you don't, but that's kinda the whole issue in this thread. People who don't appreciating things making value judgments about the things they don't fundamentally care about.
I don't really think you're "asking" a question here, just kind of asserting that you don't think I appreciate paintings. That's fine, albeit a pretty dishonest way to speak, and perhaps my feeble brain isn't smart enough to appreciate paintings in the same way that your brain does. I have been to the Met a bunch of times and looked at the classic paintings and enjoy them, I guess not to your satisfaction though.
I don't think I know what the word "appreciate" means, and I suspect what it really means in this conversation is going to be the details that you think are important.
> I'm not sure how the texture or three-dimensionality of a painting is 'superficial.' Besides the fact that it literally isn't, it's an actual facet of the painting that is objectively there
I think we're using slightly different definitions here.
If someone told me that he only liked his girlfriend because she has DDD breasts, I might say he's really focusing on a superficial detail. The woman having DDD breasts might still be objectively true, but I would still call that focusing on the superficial.
Modern art generation programs can actually generate things like brush strokes and whatnot, but obviously it will be flat when represented on a monitor, so sure if you feel like you can see the depth associated with that then more power to you.
> I didn't say anything about "true" paintings, and your own insecurity is your own issue you need not project as accusations coming from others.
Again, you're speaking dishonestly. You didn't say the word "true", but you did suggest that if I had seen a painting in a museum then I'd appreciate them better. Specifically, you said "I'm curious, have you been to a museum that has good old paintings?"
Now obviously I don't have the same giant brain that you do, so maybe I can't "appreciate" your writing style correctly because I "have a gold medal in being obtuse", but that sure seems like passive aggressive dismissal to a dumbass like me.
>I don't think I know what the word "appreciate" means, and I suspect what it really means in this conversation is going to be the details that you think are important.
Like I said before, your own insecurities are your own issues and not something you need to repeatedly insist I'm poking at. When I say appreciate, my point is that it's a basic element of art and art theory. It's like in wine tasting, there are basic elements to it and one would expect that anyone experienced with wine tasting would have some understanding of those basic elements. Here in painting, the texture of a painting is a basic element of what a painting is.
>If someone told me that he only liked his girlfriend because she has DDD breasts, I might say he's really focusing on a superficial detail. The woman having DDD breasts might still be objectively true, but I would still call that focusing on the superficial.
This isn't an issue of the definition of "superficiality" but what it means to focus. You saying it'd be superficial to emphasize body parts a certain ways. Not that body parts are inherently superficial.
>Modern art generation programs can actually generate things like brush strokes and whatnot, but obviously it will be flat when represented on a monitor, so sure if you feel like you can see the depth associated with that then more power to you.
Yeah, and they'll be flat when printed too. But if you go to a museum and look at some old or new paintings, which is why I asked if you did that, you will immediately see that paintings aren't even remotely flat.
>Again, you're speaking dishonestly. You didn't say the word "true", but you did suggest that if I had seen a painting in a museum then I'd appreciate them better. Specifically, you said "I'm curious, have you been to a museum that has good old paintings?"
No, I suggested that if you had been to a museum you'd have observed basic facets of paintings. You keep putting this value judgment into it (ironic considering your accusations against me) that I'm not. Sure, I might be acting like a bit of a jerk but that's because I found your "Oh yeah, sure I was talking about robots but that doesn't matter with painting because of pixel art" which is fundamentally disingenuous as we were discussing the capabilities of robots' "hands".
> "I'm curious, have you been to a museum that has good old paintings?"
Good old paintings are dense with layers of texture and paint that come off the canvas, and it'd be readily observable to anyone seeing them in person, regardless of whether they had taste or a "giant brain."
> Now obviously I don't have the same giant brain that you do,
> Like I said before, your own insecurities are your own issues and not something you need to repeatedly insist I'm poking at. When I say appreciate, my point is that it's a basic element of art and art theory. It's like in wine tasting, there are basic elements to it and one would expect that anyone experienced with wine tasting would have some understanding of those basic elements. Here in painting, the texture of a painting is a basic element of what a painting is.
This doesn't actually dispute what I said. You're making an assertion that I'm not appreciating a "basic" element of art. You keep saying I'm exposing some insecurity, but this is exactly what some holier-than-thou sanctimonious asswipe who thinks that they truly "get it" would say.
> You saying it'd be superficial to emphasize body parts a certain ways. Not that body parts are inherently superficial.
I'm arguing that emphasizing the 3-dimensionality of this is a superficial decision. I'd argue less-superficial stuff would be something like "what is the intended meaning of this painting".
> "Oh yeah, sure I was talking about robots but that doesn't matter with painting because of pixel art"
I didn't really say that. I said, and this is I believe the third or fourth time I've repeated myself, with AI art I was suggesting we have a workaround to avoid a lot of robotics by fast-forwarding to an end state. You call it "pixel art" to dismiss it and that's fine but it's also pretty stupid.
As I said in my first response (which you very dismissively responded to because fundamentally you don't have much to go on outside of being self-righteous about your superior "appreciation" of art apparently) if you want to be literal of course a PAINTing would require paint. And if the texture of it is really important to you then fan-fucking-tastic, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E isn't going to replace that any time soon. You win I guess? I never disputed this fact.
I used the term "painting" in a less literal sense, and it's actually not in any way weird for me to do so. There are digital art programs like "Corel Painter" and "Paint Shop Pro" and "PaintStorm", which as far as I am aware do not actually involve any real paint. They use the computer display as a metaphor for the canvas, and these things give some facsimile of something like "painting".
You're then of course free to say "well real artist appreciators like me don't consider that painting", and that's fine, but I'd like to point out that you are on Hacker News, so a person using the term "Painting" to mean something like CorelPainter isn't really weird at all, and getting annoyed by that really comes off as pedantic.
> Good old paintings are dense with layers of texture and paint that come off the canvas, and it'd be readily observable to anyone seeing them in person,
I've seen plenty of paintings in person. Clearly it's not as important to me as it is to you. That's fine.
ETA:
Wait, how exactly is it "fundamentally disingenuous" to say we have a workaround for AI art that doesn't involve hands? It's not "disingenuous", I didn't really know what specific aspect of painting you were fucking talking about, so I mentioned we can work at a pixel level. I didn't know that you were going to be a fucking pedantic douche and just say LOL THAT'S NOT PAINTING AND YOU'RE INSECURE AHAHAHHA FUCK OFF!
