Artificial art?

At the risk of making a topic too narrow for a whole thread, what is your opinion on robots that can play musical instruments or imitate other forms of human art? See this video:

I was just interested in the mechanics of it all, but many of the commenters found it disturbing or offensive, an insult to the musical craft. Just more Youtube comment stupidity, or are there some things that machines should not do (not just because the robot's playing here wasn't very good)? Or, are things like this okay as long as they are explicitly set apart from human-generated music if marketed? Can "art" generated by a machine be called real art? What do you think?

whoever wrote this shit needs to step on a rake in a comedic fashion

In my (limited) experience, it's just not very good. That sax sounds a lot like a MIDI, especially on the slower parts. Is that solo programmatically improvised or prewritten?

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

Robots FTW? What were you asking about again?

Fight smart, not fair.

There's no reason why procedural art should be labeled any differently than art produced through more traditional means.

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Really expensive speakers for the musical instrument, although I've seen robots that paint by "random numbers" one even used wind as a key to modify it's algorithms.

In my opinion it's not insulting to the musical craft. If there are tasks people do not want to do such as record a score for the 9th time for 3 different videogames then so be it.

Also, Honest marketing is important so unless there is a strong AI writing the music some man or woman should get the credit for it.

I'm not sure what I consider "art" but if I enjoy something created by a person I don't see why I can't enjoy something created by a machine created by a person.

Also, If I were you I'd Ignore youtube commenters but YMMV.

This is pretty much equivalent to electronic music compositions that a lot of video games use. I don't see why it can't be art.

No, video game music is generally composed by humans. The point of difference here is that this is composed by AI.

Or at least, so I assume, since whether electronica is music seems like a silly topic.

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

Even procedural art has human inputs.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

I think this is really cool, actually. It's a long way off from being good music, but I'd say it's art. And like other people said, it's not entirely "artificial" - the art goes back to the person who programmed the robot.

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The robots have human input its just less direct human direction.

Who watches the watchmen?

There's certainly art in it. Maybe not in the music itself, but certainly in the process, even if the music winds up being pretty awful in the end.

It's a question of whether something produced by an entity that has no self-consciousness can be called art. Although one could argue that it is the original programmers who created the art (then the robots just become a complicated instrument).

edited 7th Nov '10 8:47:16 AM by DeMarquis

No but that's silly, it's code that is making the music in a pre-determined method. That method is determined by the programmer who is the artist.

That is like saying "cubism" cannot be art because you dislike the product produced by the method. An artist came up with it, and whether or not he is the one making the strokes of paint on the canvas or he orders a robot to do it, it is still art.

This has left a warm and fuzzy in my heart.

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This thread was way ahead of its time. I think we should hear robots out. Robots aren't complaining that we devalue skills we're better at, why should we complain they're encroaching on skills we say they're better at. We also live in an age where we date robots, so it's kind of weird to think of them as outcasts.

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Uh... what? First, that's a very questionable point. Second, we already have a thread on AI and art, not sure why you're bumping this 12-year-old thread.

Edited by harryhenry on Oct 10th 2022 at 11:30:28 AM