hmm i generally agree with everything written here, though i actually think engaging with art primarily via vibes / aesthetics / expression is usually fine? in my experience people who ask questions like "X art made me feel Y, why did it do that?" or "i am working on X art to express Y but it's not going well, how do i accomplish this more effectively?" will fairly quickly run into the kinds of technical questions you mentioned, and vibes are an intuitive interface for guiding the exploration
with ai art specifically, maybe there's a risk that people get in the habit of expressing themselves without ever engaging with art at a technical level, but i'm optimistic that someone who genuinely cares about self-expression will need to dig into the technical details anyway because the results ai gives the user out of the box are likely not close to optimal expression and the technical details provide the user with language to better steer the ai
hmm i have qualms about this, mainly because most people lack taste & taste is a v hard thing to develop. god knows i lack taste outside of one or two fields here and there; if you ask me to investigate visual art i just don't know enough things to tell apart masterpieces from merely good work from nonsense lol. (i.e. if i let vibes guide me toward what is good / has potential for greatness i will go wrong)
but i think here is where we might diverge because i have extremely strong intuitions toward wanting to judge / evaluate / critique / learn as a way to engage w art rather than wanting to feel. i think anything can make me feel and good art is not particularly exceptional in this regard. in this way i see (a lot of) art as in some sense extremely academic (though obviously in some sense all art is political, etc.)
i also think debargue (for example) is a good example of an artist who almost certainly engages with these questions (subconsciously) and i feel like i have made my opinion on him known
i think also that there's a particular sense in which one of the points of this post is not just to defend the arts but also to push back against a certain notion. that is, the notion that they are somehow magical, some sort of indescribable beauty or truth, that their makers are ensouled in a way that others are not. certain people (artists) i've met before / i know will make these claims and this irritates me to no end. i think talking more about how to engage with art in a way that is less vibes-y is a good way to reveal the intellectual bankruptcy of this take. i think it's as unserious a take as the ones i describe in the interlude. and to do this pushback i want to talk about engaging with art on technical levels.
also wanted to note that it's obviously totally fine if you're mostly interested in self-expression / people are mostly interested in self-expression, i just think that's a very incomplete view of art as a historical Thing & there's much more depth beyond self-expression
one of the points of this post is not just to defend the arts but also to push back against a certain notion. that is, the notion that they are somehow magical » yeah i have never heard anyone express this take but agree it's wild :p
i can see how following vibes without having taste would be misleading. i mostly view this as a lack of seriousness though - eg. i also have poor taste in visual arts but that's because i only engage with very specific kinds of visual art on pinterest, and if someone actually forced me to consider a wide variety of visual art pieces and think about the vibes and etc i think it would probably work out? (at least that seems to be how my taste was built in domains i do have taste in.) but also the status quo is fine because i'm aware enough of my own lack of seriousness to not go around proclaiming things i like are masterpieces
i also think debargue (for example) is a good example of an artist who almost certainly engages with these questions (subconsciously) and i feel like i have made my opinion on him known » it sounded like your issues with debargue are mostly about his inability to take feedback rather than about his art (which i agree with, and i do think is probably hindering his ability to sound better). but if he had given the same performance and instead replied with "yeah sorry my bad i haven't done much studying of jazz norms" i don't think we would be having this discussion?
just in case unclear — I think the magic thing refers more to certain strains of essentialist bullshit (people have brains wired for art or not, taste is innate, etc)
i mean it’s the feedback thing but also specifically the *attitude toward art* thing, I think he just has the wrong attitude? I think he thinks he can approach all the arts the way he approaches classical music now — because for classical music he’s internalized all the foundational stuff and he can proceed more by (in his mind) vibes — which is why I said I think he basically follows the questions you outlined, and these questions lead him down the wrong path for an art form he’s less familiar with. maybe I am misunderstanding you though
yeah perhaps it’s just lack of seriousness. I think that’s also a reasonable take, idk. I haven’t tried to properly build up my taste in a completely new field without technical training. I’m not sure how that would go
I wonder how you feel about the claim that "how technical a thing is" is essentially "how well can we understand/leverage causality in the thing"? the causality between e.g. inputs to a musical performance & the output of the performance is nonobvious, and this is part of what makes art fascinating
i think this is a subset-ish of the definition i currently espouse
intriguing that you write the causality between inputs to musical performance & output of that performance is nonobvious; i think in many first-order ways it is quite obvious but agree that in second-order and higher-order ways it is not. also agree that this particular brand of non-obviousness is what makes art fascinating
wow what an extended treat. the roommate from below good heavens. there’s also ofc ‘technical’ [dismissive, by contrast to ‘conceptual/worth attending to/of general interest’] as in math proofs
yep, that's another way of using the word ,,, sadly i feel as if this describes (to me) much of statistics rn, hoping the next semester can fix my annoyance at the subject ,,,
we didn't actually go over the proofs for clt / wlln. we didn't do *that much* proofs in the masters'-level inference course. i think we did a bunch of derivation stuff, but didn't necessarily prove the really foundational stuff. guessing the phd-level one will have more?
hmm i generally agree with everything written here, though i actually think engaging with art primarily via vibes / aesthetics / expression is usually fine? in my experience people who ask questions like "X art made me feel Y, why did it do that?" or "i am working on X art to express Y but it's not going well, how do i accomplish this more effectively?" will fairly quickly run into the kinds of technical questions you mentioned, and vibes are an intuitive interface for guiding the exploration
with ai art specifically, maybe there's a risk that people get in the habit of expressing themselves without ever engaging with art at a technical level, but i'm optimistic that someone who genuinely cares about self-expression will need to dig into the technical details anyway because the results ai gives the user out of the box are likely not close to optimal expression and the technical details provide the user with language to better steer the ai
hmm i have qualms about this, mainly because most people lack taste & taste is a v hard thing to develop. god knows i lack taste outside of one or two fields here and there; if you ask me to investigate visual art i just don't know enough things to tell apart masterpieces from merely good work from nonsense lol. (i.e. if i let vibes guide me toward what is good / has potential for greatness i will go wrong)
but i think here is where we might diverge because i have extremely strong intuitions toward wanting to judge / evaluate / critique / learn as a way to engage w art rather than wanting to feel. i think anything can make me feel and good art is not particularly exceptional in this regard. in this way i see (a lot of) art as in some sense extremely academic (though obviously in some sense all art is political, etc.)
i also think debargue (for example) is a good example of an artist who almost certainly engages with these questions (subconsciously) and i feel like i have made my opinion on him known
i think also that there's a particular sense in which one of the points of this post is not just to defend the arts but also to push back against a certain notion. that is, the notion that they are somehow magical, some sort of indescribable beauty or truth, that their makers are ensouled in a way that others are not. certain people (artists) i've met before / i know will make these claims and this irritates me to no end. i think talking more about how to engage with art in a way that is less vibes-y is a good way to reveal the intellectual bankruptcy of this take. i think it's as unserious a take as the ones i describe in the interlude. and to do this pushback i want to talk about engaging with art on technical levels.
also wanted to note that it's obviously totally fine if you're mostly interested in self-expression / people are mostly interested in self-expression, i just think that's a very incomplete view of art as a historical Thing & there's much more depth beyond self-expression
one of the points of this post is not just to defend the arts but also to push back against a certain notion. that is, the notion that they are somehow magical » yeah i have never heard anyone express this take but agree it's wild :p
i can see how following vibes without having taste would be misleading. i mostly view this as a lack of seriousness though - eg. i also have poor taste in visual arts but that's because i only engage with very specific kinds of visual art on pinterest, and if someone actually forced me to consider a wide variety of visual art pieces and think about the vibes and etc i think it would probably work out? (at least that seems to be how my taste was built in domains i do have taste in.) but also the status quo is fine because i'm aware enough of my own lack of seriousness to not go around proclaiming things i like are masterpieces
i also think debargue (for example) is a good example of an artist who almost certainly engages with these questions (subconsciously) and i feel like i have made my opinion on him known » it sounded like your issues with debargue are mostly about his inability to take feedback rather than about his art (which i agree with, and i do think is probably hindering his ability to sound better). but if he had given the same performance and instead replied with "yeah sorry my bad i haven't done much studying of jazz norms" i don't think we would be having this discussion?
just in case unclear — I think the magic thing refers more to certain strains of essentialist bullshit (people have brains wired for art or not, taste is innate, etc)
i mean it’s the feedback thing but also specifically the *attitude toward art* thing, I think he just has the wrong attitude? I think he thinks he can approach all the arts the way he approaches classical music now — because for classical music he’s internalized all the foundational stuff and he can proceed more by (in his mind) vibes — which is why I said I think he basically follows the questions you outlined, and these questions lead him down the wrong path for an art form he’s less familiar with. maybe I am misunderstanding you though
yeah perhaps it’s just lack of seriousness. I think that’s also a reasonable take, idk. I haven’t tried to properly build up my taste in a completely new field without technical training. I’m not sure how that would go
it's out, it's out, hooray!
it's out : D
You know well what my consensus is. However, I sincerely doubt you realise how strongly I feel about this.
Please reply to my request ASAP(!), and I assure you I'll be keeping admin short next time (and for the forseable future).
Forever in favour of vibes,
S****.
LET'S GOOOOO defying humanities stereotypes one andrew ragepost at a time
LOL
I wonder how you feel about the claim that "how technical a thing is" is essentially "how well can we understand/leverage causality in the thing"? the causality between e.g. inputs to a musical performance & the output of the performance is nonobvious, and this is part of what makes art fascinating
i think this is a subset-ish of the definition i currently espouse
intriguing that you write the causality between inputs to musical performance & output of that performance is nonobvious; i think in many first-order ways it is quite obvious but agree that in second-order and higher-order ways it is not. also agree that this particular brand of non-obviousness is what makes art fascinating
Beautiful, such an insightful read!!
thank you!
vibesy
super clever comment Holden
Finally!! Absolutely loved reading it and I expect to re-visit this multiple times in the future
thank you!!!
wow what an extended treat. the roommate from below good heavens. there’s also ofc ‘technical’ [dismissive, by contrast to ‘conceptual/worth attending to/of general interest’] as in math proofs
yeah i hate that guy
yep, that's another way of using the word ,,, sadly i feel as if this describes (to me) much of statistics rn, hoping the next semester can fix my annoyance at the subject ,,,
how much proof-stuff r u doing
i just learned to prove CLT & WLLN w MGFs yay (SLLN proof is outside course scope)
lol this is such a lydia nottingham comment
we didn't actually go over the proofs for clt / wlln. we didn't do *that much* proofs in the masters'-level inference course. i think we did a bunch of derivation stuff, but didn't necessarily prove the really foundational stuff. guessing the phd-level one will have more?