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One of the big points of art is expressing something to other people. Tired of this sort of shallow dismissal where wanting recognition, or for your art to reac

One of the big points of art is expressing something to other people. Tired of this sort of shallow dismissal where wanting recognition, or for your art to reach people is cast as a kind of vanity that real artists ought to get over.

FeteCommuniste 5d ago
Exactly. Motivation is rarely a question of either/or (art for art's sake / art for recognition). And for many practitioners, being part of a community of fellow artists who "know the struggle" is also part of the fun.
- mcluck 5d ago
  "Knowing the struggle" is/was a massive part of my enjoyment of programming. I used to love browsing Github just to see what people were building and really appreciating clever ideas or the amount of work required to make something, especially when it's something of limited commercial value. Now I feel like I've lost that. So it's not just that I don't get appreciation for my work but I find it's harder to appreciate other people's work.
- CuriouslyC 5d ago
  There will always be communities of people who want to handcraft everything, who will be available to commiserate about the struggle of their craft. We still have people doing crazy shit like collecting/smelting iron by hand and smithing it into swords (which will literally never be used).
  - FeteCommuniste 5d ago
    Probably, just like now where there are still small groups of hobbyist programmers who write in little-used languages for obscure old platforms hardly anyone else cares about. But I think it's perfectly fair to mourn the prospect of something that used to be both your passion and livelihood get pushed to some dusty niche corner of the tech landscape.
nrjames 5d ago
I don't think that an artist or game developer wanting recognition is the problem here. I think it's the reflection of their intentions on the consumer in an environment where it's increasingly difficult to separate the cash grabs from the craft.
card_zero 5d ago
Yeah, I wanted to say that too. You can't (always) separate enjoying the craft from enjoying the praise. People too often talk about the value of an art object divorced from its provenance, as if you could measure its goodness with a meter, instead of the value of the audience relating to the personality expressed in it, which means it's a communication, and the communication isn't all one-way. When you're crafting something you're initiating that communication. Of course you want praise, or distressed complaints or anyway some reaction.
- eszed 5d ago
  I agree with all of that, but I think there's a bit of "ball-hiding" going on in most of these conversations. It isn't only that programmers crave(d) praise or social recognition (though maybe that's it for some), but they're also having to come to terms with the fact that their "art-form" suddenly has much, much less economic value. They were able, for a long time, to (and I say this absolutely non-pejoratively - in fact, just the opposite) have their cake and eat it too, by being virtually guaranteed to make a living (in practice, in the demographic most represented on this board, a very good one) doing a thing they love to do. It's gauche, in Anglo-Saxon countries, to talk openly about one's own financial circumstances, so that mostly doesn't get raised in these threads, but I can hear it in the background of most of them, like "whaddya mean no one's gonna pay me to solve interesting problems with code any more? Now I've gotta do that, if I'm ever going to do that at all, in my spare time, for free?" And I so, so, so sympathize with that. I devoted 25 years of my life to the performing arts, from which - as a very unattached young man - I was able scrape an exceedingly frugal living. That, in the arts, is a success story - the vast majority make no living from doing it at all, in fact probably the reverse. Coders arguably have it worse: it's hard to see anyone making any money from "writing code", ever again. It's not surprising to me that they're confused and hurt right now: they have, quickly, sadly, and unexpectedly been pushed into the economic corner other artists always have occupied.
  - Chris2048 4d ago
    > their "art-form" suddenly has much, much less economic value Can you define art/artist? If software is art, then what profession isn't? Software still has value, specifically utility, it's just cheaper to produce, its market value is lower. How is that comparable to the arts?
CuriouslyC 5d ago
The nuance here is that people aren't good at evaluating their own work/progress, and use recognition as a proxy milestone of their own improvement. No matter how good they get, they don't "feel" good until someone else (or many someones) comes and tells them "you're good"
59percentmore 5d ago
And why can't that apply to people who use generative AI? Expression isn't about seeking recognition, in the sense of clout or popularity, it's simply a matter of "I want other people to be able to see what I see." If I compare what I'm able to produce by hand, and what I'm able to get the computer to spit out, it's pretty clear to me which is closest to what's in my head. So why do I have to be ashamed of that?
- acedTrex 5d ago
  > And why can't that apply to people who use generative AI? Because they did not do anything? Theres nothing to celebrate, no skill to honor, no sweat and tears to salute. It just exists
  - properbrew 5d ago
    Is that because they didn't type code on the keyboard? They still had to think of an idea, conceptualise it, work and prompt AI, test the results, alter things, work through problems, stick to a direction and bring about something from nothing. Sure your one shot generic websites don't really have any "skill" or "honour", I may as well just read a text file of what you wanted to say (and I'd prefer that), but to say there is no sweat, tears or skill to using _any_ generative AI is a little bit narrow minded.
  - 59percentmore 5d ago
    >Theres nothing to celebrate, no skill to honor, no sweat and tears to salute. I don't care about any of that. I just want people to be able to see what's in my mind's eye at the highest fidelity possible.
    - rafabulsing 4d ago
      The thing, which anyone who's ever done any type of art realizes, is that 99% of the time, there isn't really such a thing as a high fidelity image in your mind's eye. You feel like there is... But the minute you try to bring it into creation, you find out just how absurdly fuzzy it really is. A non-artist might believe that the failure of bringing your mind image to life is a failure of _skill_. That you are just physically incapable of accurately reproducing the thing you're picturing in your head. While that might well be a factor, it's never the whole story. That's most clear with writing. Anyone who's ever written anything of substance has had the experience of having what feels like a pretty solid story/thesis/whatever. But the minute you try actually writing, you realize just how fuzzy that idea really was. You have to work and labor at it to make it become something coherent. It's not a limitation in mechanical skill: typing absolute non-sense is exactly the same difficulty as typing the a NYT best seller. The difficulty is in the deciding what to type. A huge portion of art is in that part of the process. Exploring ways to bring into existence not _the image you had in your mind_, because there's no such thing. But to bring into existence something that makes you _feel_ the same way the fuzzy idea in your head made you feel. And that's the thing that AI does not, and fundamentally cannot, give you. All the innumerable micro choices your mind does as you try to gradient descend that raw log of wood into the carving of a bear. Looking at an AI output and deciding whether it happens to match the fuzzy idea you had enough or not, simply isn't the same thing. I'm not even saying that it's not valuable or useful, it certainly can be. But it's fundamentally not _art_. That's the reason Rick Rubin, for all the praise he (deservedly!) gets for all his work, does not describe himself an _artist_. It's just not the thing he is doing. He doesn't create, he evaluates. And if you take that for what it is, that's absolutely fine, great even, when you're as good as he is. But if you believe the evaluating is, as you put, "seeing what's in your mind's eye at the highest fidelity possible", that's simply untrue. And it _cannot_ be true, because there isn't actually a thing that's in your mind's eye in a way that would allow for that, regardless of whether you're using AI or creating it by hand. Using AI just gives you the illusion that there ever was such a thing.

FeteCommuniste 5d ago

Exactly. Motivation is rarely a question of either/or (art for art's sake / art for recognition). And for many practitioners, being part of a community of fellow artists who "know the struggle" is also part of the fun.

mcluck 5d ago
"Knowing the struggle" is/was a massive part of my enjoyment of programming. I used to love browsing Github just to see what people were building and really appreciating clever ideas or the amount of work required to make something, especially when it's something of limited commercial value. Now I feel like I've lost that. So it's not just that I don't get appreciation for my work but I find it's harder to appreciate other people's work.
CuriouslyC 5d ago
There will always be communities of people who want to handcraft everything, who will be available to commiserate about the struggle of their craft. We still have people doing crazy shit like collecting/smelting iron by hand and smithing it into swords (which will literally never be used).
- FeteCommuniste 5d ago
  Probably, just like now where there are still small groups of hobbyist programmers who write in little-used languages for obscure old platforms hardly anyone else cares about. But I think it's perfectly fair to mourn the prospect of something that used to be both your passion and livelihood get pushed to some dusty niche corner of the tech landscape.

nrjames 5d ago

I don't think that an artist or game developer wanting recognition is the problem here. I think it's the reflection of their intentions on the consumer in an environment where it's increasingly difficult to separate the cash grabs from the craft.

card_zero 5d ago

Yeah, I wanted to say that too. You can't (always) separate enjoying the craft from enjoying the praise. People too often talk about the value of an art object divorced from its provenance, as if you could measure its goodness with a meter, instead of the value of the audience relating to the personality expressed in it, which means it's a communication, and the communication isn't all one-way. When you're crafting something you're initiating that communication. Of course you want praise, or distressed complaints or anyway some reaction.

eszed 5d ago
I agree with all of that, but I think there's a bit of "ball-hiding" going on in most of these conversations. It isn't only that programmers crave(d) praise or social recognition (though maybe that's it for some), but they're also having to come to terms with the fact that their "art-form" suddenly has much, much less economic value. They were able, for a long time, to (and I say this absolutely non-pejoratively - in fact, just the opposite) have their cake and eat it too, by being virtually guaranteed to make a living (in practice, in the demographic most represented on this board, a very good one) doing a thing they love to do. It's gauche, in Anglo-Saxon countries, to talk openly about one's own financial circumstances, so that mostly doesn't get raised in these threads, but I can hear it in the background of most of them, like "whaddya mean no one's gonna pay me to solve interesting problems with code any more? Now I've gotta do that, if I'm ever going to do that at all, in my spare time, for free?" And I so, so, so sympathize with that. I devoted 25 years of my life to the performing arts, from which - as a very unattached young man - I was able scrape an exceedingly frugal living. That, in the arts, is a success story - the vast majority make no living from doing it at all, in fact probably the reverse. Coders arguably have it worse: it's hard to see anyone making any money from "writing code", ever again. It's not surprising to me that they're confused and hurt right now: they have, quickly, sadly, and unexpectedly been pushed into the economic corner other artists always have occupied.
- Chris2048 4d ago
  > their "art-form" suddenly has much, much less economic value Can you define art/artist? If software is art, then what profession isn't? Software still has value, specifically utility, it's just cheaper to produce, its market value is lower. How is that comparable to the arts?

CuriouslyC 5d ago

The nuance here is that people aren't good at evaluating their own work/progress, and use recognition as a proxy milestone of their own improvement. No matter how good they get, they don't "feel" good until someone else (or many someones) comes and tells them "you're good"

59percentmore 5d ago

And why can't that apply to people who use generative AI? Expression isn't about seeking recognition, in the sense of clout or popularity, it's simply a matter of "I want other people to be able to see what I see." If I compare what I'm able to produce by hand, and what I'm able to get the computer to spit out, it's pretty clear to me which is closest to what's in my head. So why do I have to be ashamed of that?

acedTrex 5d ago
> And why can't that apply to people who use generative AI? Because they did not do anything? Theres nothing to celebrate, no skill to honor, no sweat and tears to salute. It just exists
- properbrew 5d ago
  Is that because they didn't type code on the keyboard? They still had to think of an idea, conceptualise it, work and prompt AI, test the results, alter things, work through problems, stick to a direction and bring about something from nothing. Sure your one shot generic websites don't really have any "skill" or "honour", I may as well just read a text file of what you wanted to say (and I'd prefer that), but to say there is no sweat, tears or skill to using _any_ generative AI is a little bit narrow minded.
- 59percentmore 5d ago
  >Theres nothing to celebrate, no skill to honor, no sweat and tears to salute. I don't care about any of that. I just want people to be able to see what's in my mind's eye at the highest fidelity possible.
  - rafabulsing 4d ago
    The thing, which anyone who's ever done any type of art realizes, is that 99% of the time, there isn't really such a thing as a high fidelity image in your mind's eye. You feel like there is... But the minute you try to bring it into creation, you find out just how absurdly fuzzy it really is. A non-artist might believe that the failure of bringing your mind image to life is a failure of _skill_. That you are just physically incapable of accurately reproducing the thing you're picturing in your head. While that might well be a factor, it's never the whole story. That's most clear with writing. Anyone who's ever written anything of substance has had the experience of having what feels like a pretty solid story/thesis/whatever. But the minute you try actually writing, you realize just how fuzzy that idea really was. You have to work and labor at it to make it become something coherent. It's not a limitation in mechanical skill: typing absolute non-sense is exactly the same difficulty as typing the a NYT best seller. The difficulty is in the deciding what to type. A huge portion of art is in that part of the process. Exploring ways to bring into existence not _the image you had in your mind_, because there's no such thing. But to bring into existence something that makes you _feel_ the same way the fuzzy idea in your head made you feel. And that's the thing that AI does not, and fundamentally cannot, give you. All the innumerable micro choices your mind does as you try to gradient descend that raw log of wood into the carving of a bear. Looking at an AI output and deciding whether it happens to match the fuzzy idea you had enough or not, simply isn't the same thing. I'm not even saying that it's not valuable or useful, it certainly can be. But it's fundamentally not _art_. That's the reason Rick Rubin, for all the praise he (deservedly!) gets for all his work, does not describe himself an _artist_. It's just not the thing he is doing. He doesn't create, he evaluates. And if you take that for what it is, that's absolutely fine, great even, when you're as good as he is. But if you believe the evaluating is, as you put, "seeing what's in your mind's eye at the highest fidelity possible", that's simply untrue. And it _cannot_ be true, because there isn't actually a thing that's in your mind's eye in a way that would allow for that, regardless of whether you're using AI or creating it by hand. Using AI just gives you the illusion that there ever was such a thing.