Art Perseveres
Art is fickle. First, by its very nature, it is subjective. It does not really have an exact definition. Furthermore, no art is new. Something is inspired by something else, which in turn was inspired by something else — it could go on until infinity. However, what continues to fascinate and intrigue people when it comes to art is the fact that it has some sort of value. Be it cultural or financial, art has something to it that keeps humans coming back, whether they create it or consume it. Art represents the human spirit — the desire to create order in an otherwise disorderly universe, or vice verse. What perhaps began as a way to identify threats via impressively detailed cave paintings of animals, has developed into something that allows us sentient beings to question our place in the universe, addressing not only the physical world around us but the metaphysical universe beyond that. Now, a new breakthrough has been born — artificial intelligence, and with it, we revisit the age old question of “what is art”?
If you were to ask an artist, their work is a culmination of their life — what they’ve learned, the things they’ve connected, and more. If you were to ask an AI, assuming it could talk, it would possibly merely say that it created a piece of art because it was directed to do so. This is the key difference in defining art, at least in our own anthropomorphic sense. It is something with intentionality, it is something with culture, it is something born out of the desire to seek, and not necessarily something that is birthed through explicit orders. Of course, this discussion can persist until the last stars fizzle out in the universe and neither human nor computer remains — and for the sake of brevity art can be concluded as something born out of human willpower. So how can we utilize our technology to create even more?
In this project, I looked towards two starkly different, but at their core, very similar pieces of media. That being manga, specifically Berserk, written and drawn by the late Kentaro Miura, and Batik, a traditional form of Indonesian pattern making that is distinctly characterized by repeating patterns drawn with wax onto a cloth. Both of these works are born of the human hand, meticulously planned and crafted with immense attention to detail. Miura’s work is regarded as one of the best in the entire manga industry, and Batik is well known for its intricacy and staying power as a cultural heritage in Indonesia. I then asked myself, “what can an AI do with this?”.
Utilizing Runway.Ml, I fed image sets of both forms of art including more than 500 images each and trained them on the provided data set of landscape images. This resulted in hauntingly beautiful patterned images that carry the essence of their original photo sets.
The Berserk model produced works that strangely possessed a form of deliberate composition — that is, elements in the image seemed to be placed with intentionality. This is most likely attributed to the fact that Miura’s work is known not only for his massive attention to detail, but also his keen eye on creating thoughtful compositions. “Objects” in the images followed the rule of thirds, even exhibiting some form of the golden ratio. The strokes and linework the AI produced resembled that of Miura’s work, mirroring his strong attention to detail. Overall, the AI was able to produce works that carried the dark, brooding essence of Berserk with a more organic twist.
The Batik model was similar in the way it seemed almost organic, with images resembling bacteria and other single-celled lifeforms. What was most impressive about this model was that it was able to also capture the “essence” of what made Batik, like key patterns and color schemes. If viewed from a sizable enough distance, the distinction between the AI generated Batik and real Batik would be ambiguous — but because of the lack of intentionality
in the part of the AI, the patterns oddly seemed more random than if a human were to draw them on themselves.
Despite that, what united both models in their conception was just how organic they felt. Putting them side by side with living micro-organisms like slime molds or bacteria in petri dishes, the way the AI grew and evolved was shockingly similar. A computer program was able to seemingly replicate the way a living organism grew and moved, which was the most intriguing aspect of this project to me. How is it possible that a literal computer program, made of ones and zeroes, so accurately depict the tiniest form of life that has been on Earth for hundreds of millions of years?
Perhaps, the way an AI grows and evolves really is analogous to how living organisms evolve. The evolution of a GAN model mirrors natural selection — we weed out patterns that do not work and replicate patterns they do. There is a real sense of “organicness” to the generation of AI artwork — but on a metaphorical note, to me, it reveals something more in terms of art, especially in the early 2020’s.
Art perseveres through time and space, without exception. Artists, rain or shine, press on with their work. Even during a pandemic, cultural heritage refuses to stop, and the production of works of fine art only ever cease during death. Watching these AI models unfold into something so organic — something that evolved and grew — mirrored the way a bacteria or a virus evolved, but even through its growth, we see that the essence of what made the art “art” persevered. Both models show this exact characteristic, perseverance even within change. No matter how many generations passed, despite not looking exactly like their trained photosets, they were able to create something totally knew that carried the essence of what their predecessors were.
The AI was unable to create something perfect, but it was able to preserve what made it work. In essence, the AI shows us how the preservation of culture throughout time works -
and as much as we say that a program cannot create new art, it can, most definitely, show us how to create and develop ours.
