Fall 2018 : Will AI save Digital Art ?
Oct. 21, 2018. World. Revised Nov. 15, 2018.
The 2018 fall is disappointing, if not desparing for Digital Art. No new edition
of the Variation dedicated show. Very litttle in Fiac and Art Elysées
(we did'nt visit Via, where digital art has always been nearly absent.
In Fiac, we saw just one piece by Tatsuo
Miyajima : Life 'Rhizome" no 18 ( 2013). See the
artist's website. Actually Digital
Art Weekly saw much more. Marginally perhaps, but relevant.
In Art Elysée, the diehard digital artists Miguel Chevalier
and Alain
Le Boucher, show new pieces, but break no new ground.
- Le portrait d'Edmond de Belamy, by the Obvious Group. More
info. has been sold in auction by Oct. 23-25 at Christies. $ 432 500. "This
portrait, however, is not the product of a human mind. It was created by an
artificial intelligence, an algorithm defined by that algebraic formula with
its many parentheses. And when it goes under the hammer ... it will signal the
arrival of AI art on the world auction stage", says Christies.
The presentations dives into long and interesting comments. We will reserve
our own conclusions when we can get more info about the real kind of AI involved.
Part of the presentation looks more as marketing than art properly. And, says
Manuela de Barros in Le Monde (Oct. 20), the members of Obvious have no artistic
education.
The use of algorithmics to produce "à la manière de"
paintings dates back at least to the 1990's. Even if this pieces usec neural
networks, to reach this result, on can wonder if $ 432 000 is a sensible price
for a piece that can easily be copied and will be followed by as many siblings
as the market will swallow
Read
a well documentedl paper by Dylan Bourgeois, EPFL.
Le Monde has published two papers about this piece:
- L'art passe à la machine, by Manuela de Barros (0ct. 20, 2018)
- Demain, l'art sans artiste, by Laurent Carpentier (Nov. 25-26, 2018).
Let's conclude that, once more, the Art market works only on communication gadgets. Idem for the self-destroyed painting by Bansky... and the whims of a small world of ultra-rich collectors. We would like to be wrong !
- 1 The Road, by Ross Goodwin (Jean
Boite Editions). A book written by a neural network connected to a car equipped
with several sensors. Having now received the book, we comment
in a specific post. Shortly : a poor realisations,
but a great idea which could lead us to really important pieces. See more comments.
But let's say... "digital art" as a label never succeeded to create something really meaningful in the world (and market) of Art. Will "AI art" do the job" ? The answer lies more in the market than in rationality.
P.B.
