Interpreting Art

[forcebwithu]

The latest mural by Banksy caught my eye. I have an interpretation of what it means, one that's not mentioned in the article. Before I post my thought I'm interested to hear what other BM's think his latest creation means.

Banksy Replaced by a Robot: A Thought-Provoking Commentary on the Role of Technology in our World, London 2023

[Stillearly]

I'd go with the article regarding concerns over AI  ... machines creating art in the style of a human - whether that be painters , actors, writers , musicians ...  but trying to stop the machine isn't going to work .. not sure if "another world is possible" means hope .. 🤷‍♂️

[Derek Dangleberries]

I'm going with a group of modern day Luddites trying to destroy the concept of AI through fear of losing their jobs rather than how it might improve their life ...

But then again I'm on my 2nd pint of Mont Clair Red !!

[forcebwithu]

My first impression of the Banksy mural, and before reading the article, was the three humans were a slave to the robot/AI, and the cable the article referred to as unplugged was instead an electrified whip to force the humans to do its bidding.

The "another world is possible" I took as meaning the vision of AI doing good things for us meat sacks could turn out to be just the opposite.

I think the best artwork is one where the artist renders something that can have different meaning to different people.

[fygjam]

17 hours ago, Derek Dangleberries said:

I'm going with a group of modern day Luddites trying to destroy the concept of AI through fear of losing their jobs rather than how it might improve their life ...

But then again I'm on my 2nd pint of Mont Clair Red !!

Smash the looms, smash the looms...

 

[fygjam]

I think Banksy got it wrong. Plenty already enslaved by their mobile devices.

https://hmpg.net/

 

[Lemondropkid]

1 hour ago, forcebwithu said:

My first impression of the Banksy mural, and before reading the article, was the three humans were a slave to the robot/AI, and the cable the article referred to as unplugged was instead an electrified whip to force the humans to do its bidding.

That was my interpretation too. Will read the article later.

Noticed it was by a London bus stop. Found myself hoping they were London Transport employees being whipped😛

[Aqualung]

 

[boydeste]

8 hours ago, forcebwithu said:

My first impression of the Banksy mural, and before reading the article, was the three humans were a slave to the robot/AI, and the cable the article referred to as unplugged was instead an electrified whip to force the humans to do its bidding.

The "another world is possible" I took as meaning the vision of AI doing good things for us meat sacks could turn out to be just the opposite.

I think the best artwork is one where the artist renders something that can have different meaning to different people.

Any art that is thought provoking has done it's job methinks. 

[Jambo]

9 hours ago, forcebwithu said:

My first impression of the Banksy mural, and before reading the article, was the three humans were a slave to the robot/AI, and the cable the article referred to as unplugged was instead an electrified whip to force the humans to do its bidding.

 

I go with the warning of a world where humans are totally "enslaved" by technology.

I commend all to read "The Machine Stops"  by E M Forster written I believe in 1909. This envisioned a world where everyone lived underground presumably having destroyed  the natural world above ground.

Humanity was by then totally dependent upon technology to produce all the basics of life including artificial "food" heating, oxygen etc etc. Nobody went anywhere and communicated verbally and visually on what was described as being very similar to, say, a Laptop. Remember this book was science fiction at the time having been written in 1909.

Everything in the human world to maintain life was controlled by "The Machine" but the irony was that "The Machine" was starting to go wrong for the simple fact that in an AI world "Who repairs the repairers, repairers?" Certainly outside the ability of the totally dependent humans.

When "The Machine" stops for good so ends humanity.

[Butch]

Yep I'll go with the humankind being enslaved by machine, in the literal sense, because now we seem to have become unconsciously dependent upon technology in our daily lives.

The "message" is positive - again, suggests we are being sold something that is to our benefit when the opposite is true (ring any bells?), given that the message delivered by the machine while being "served" by subjugated humans. The irony being that a machine shouldn't need dependence upon Humans, it should be the other way around - so the people here are being used not out of necessity, but out of spite, again the whip of the flex suggests that AI has developed emotional intelligence.

The statement it makes, to me, is that this might the next stage of evolution which we are not aware of. I also like how the mural depicts a cross section of society, from a businessman in a suit to a kid. Suggests that no one will be safe.

I never really understood much about art anyway...

Edited October 19, 2023 by Butch

[coxyhog]

4 hours ago, Butch said:

I never really understood much about art anyway...

I think a lot of 'art' is pure shite....an unmade bed springs to mind.

[Aqualung]

On 10/19/2023 at 10:24 PM, coxyhog said:

I think a lot of 'art' is pure shite....an unmade bed springs to mind.

As @Pumpuynarak would say "Bingo".

Plus a cow in Formaldehyde. Total fucking nonsense. 

Each to his own I suppose but modern art does nowt for me. Total shite some of it and could have been done by a 2 year old on steroids. 

Went to the gallery on trafalgar square one time and was in awe at the paintings from hundreds of years ago... Pure brilliant talent. 

Been to the Vatican and seen more of the same. Beyond belief given when some of these works of art were done. Michealangelo... Would be turning in his grave now if he saw some of the crap being churned out as art. 

[fygjam]

Blue Poles, painted by Jackson Pollock in 1952.

Sold in 1955 for $US8000.

Sold in 1957 for $US32000.

Sold in 1973 to the National Gallery of Australia for $AU1.3 million. The director of the NGA was only authorised to spend up to 1 million so the purchase was authorised by then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Whitlam copped a boat load of criticism for the purchase.

Current valuation. In excess of $AU500 million.

The shit you see today might be worth a fortune in the future. Or it still could just be shit.

 

Edited October 20, 2023 by fygjam

[forcebwithu]

13 minutes ago, fygjam said:

Blue Poles, painted by Jackson Pollock in 1952.

Sold in 1955 for $US8000.

Sold in 1957 for $US32000.

Sold in 1973 to the National Gallery of Australia for $AU1.3 million. The director of the NGA was only authorised to spend up to 1 million so the purchase was authorised by then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Whitlam copped a boat load of criticism for the purchase.

Current valuation. In excess of $AU500 million.

The shit you see today might be worth a fortune in the future. Or it still could just be shit.

How much is a name worth. Would that "art" have been worth even a small fraction of $AU500 million if it were painted by some unknown artist.

Reminds me of NFTs. Essentially worthless until mob think pushes the price up.

[Phantom51red]

Once were enslaved by machines,now there hauling it to throw off the nearest cliff.

[fygjam]

15 minutes ago, forcebwithu said:

How much is a name worth. Would that "art" have been worth even a small fraction of $AU500 million if it were painted by some unknown artist.

Reminds me of NFTs. Essentially worthless until mob think pushes the price up.

Begs the question, how do you become a "known artist"?

Being dead helps.

 

 

Edited October 21, 2023 by fygjam

[Butch]

On 10/19/2023 at 4:24 PM, coxyhog said:

I think a lot of 'art' is pure shite....an unmade bed springs to mind.

Yep, I agree and WTF was all that commotion over it at the time all about?.

I honestly couldn't see anything other than a filthy unmade bed. Same for a cow in formaldehyde.

True art, to me is a picture that captures a moment in time, be it of someone's life or a scene. If "art" was an unmade bed in a shit pit then my teenage daughters bedroom is a bloody modern art masterpiece.

[Cleator]

Are AI's creators objective, or are they activists? Are their data, and findings being subjected to review by objective peers?

For example - how would an AI search engine define hate speech? Would it's results be censored accordingly?

[Butch]

31 minutes ago, Cleator said:

Are AI's creators objective, or are they activists? Are their data, and findings being subjected to review by objective peers?

For example - how would an AI search engine define hate speech? Would it's results be censored accordingly?

not sure how it would, but as AI technology advances and if it ever becomes fully self aware and / or gets emotional intelligence and empathy, then able to interpret the impact its speech has upon others from their perspective then it might be able to recognise or categorise hate speech. It will need to learn its own parameters by which to judge. ( I'm literally just guessing here though 🙂  )

Hopefully a long way down the road as yet, but with quantum computing and advances being made exponentially in the field, it might not be.

Edited November 20, 2023 by Butch

[Cleator]

45 minutes ago, Butch said:

not sure how it would, but as AI technology advances and if it ever becomes fully self aware and / or gets emotional intelligence and empathy, then able to interpret the impact its speech has upon others from their perspective then it might be able to recognise or categorise hate speech. It will need to learn its own parameters by which to judge. ( I'm literally just guessing here though 🙂  )

Hopefully a long way down the road as yet, but with quantum computing and advances being made exponentially in the field, it might not be.

Interesting. (Speaking as a layman) Perhaps future  AI would give answers from different perspectives: "Group A finds X offensive, yet group B finds X to be both harmless and productive. After scanning the historical records, and peer reviewed journals of sociology and psychology, I find that the evidence to support perspective B is overwhelming. Oh dear, group A has just called me many bad names😀"

Imagine if AI could write equations that made physicists view Einstein and Company's works as they now view Newton's.

[Glasseye]

I get it big time. But something I have to wait before trying to articulate my thoughts on it. 

 

And.... as others have mentioned. Everyone interprets things in their own way. 

 

Nice thread Force. I think this one will have some legs.

[gs joe]

Machine is more popular than the Beatle's

[Butch]

It is odd how some of us define art.

A piece of complex engineering in operation, to me, is artistic. for example, a Napier Sabre Aero engine (in H24 guise)  , to me, is an incredible thing to look at, and even more "artistic" in how it operates and moreover, the tolerances it operates within. When I see a painting of the Golden Gate bridge, I'm not interested in the sunset behind it, but the fact that someone has painted a piece of civil engineering and presented it as art.

compare that to say, more "contemporary" art then my interpretation is somewhat limited and my interest is soon lost.

It's not just engineered stuff, I also find architecture very much falls within the realms of art, even some of the modern stuff. I look at it as a sculpture with use.

[maipenrai]

9 hours ago, Butch said:

It is odd how some of us define art.

A piece of complex engineering in operation, to me, is artistic. for example, a Napier Sabre Aero engine (in H24 guise)  , to me, is an incredible thing to look at, and even more "artistic" in how it operates and moreover, the tolerances it operates within. When I see a painting of the Golden Gate bridge, I'm not interested in the sunset behind it, but the fact that someone has painted a piece of civil engineering and presented it as art.

compare that to say, more "contemporary" art then my interpretation is somewhat limited and my interest is soon lost.

It's not just engineered stuff, I also find architecture very much falls within the realms of art, even some of the modern stuff. I look at it as a sculpture with use.

 I too find complex engineering to be art, and here is another fine example related to yours, a Bristol Pegasus radial motor with sleeve valves from the same WII era:

I remember many years ago visiting an auto museum on my first trip to New Zealand, and seeing a beautifully cut-away Napier Sabre engine - I'd never seen or even heard of sleeve valves before this and found it absolutely fascinating.