AI Ways of Seeing: The Homage, The Faux, and the Fake
Understanding Art Through Intention Rather Than Tools and Techniques
I am excited to present the sixth installment of the AI Ways of Seeing medium.com series, which is exploring art somewhat in the iconoclastic tradition of the great book by John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972, Penguin Books). That book was hugely influential in my intellectual and creative development. I encourage you to read it.
Up until now, all the essays in this series have been visual. But we have reached a stage where it’s time to use our words. Don’t worry, there will still be some pictures. Before we get going you might like to have a look at the previous episode:
Techniques vs. Intentions
Suppose we want to have an intelligent conversation about AI Art or Art in general. To do that we need a shared intellectual framework.
The following is intended to introduce you to the idea that the specific technology, the means of production (manual, mechanical, digital, black magic) is relatively unimportant as a consideration for art appreciation; what matters is the intentions of the artist. This is primarily a psychological take on art.
First, a quick visual aid:
You have perhaps heard of Sergio Leone’s classic Western, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? Good. In this article I will give you The Homage, the Faux, and the Fake.
The Homage
Imagine that we want to learn how to do something that requires skill, practice, and a certain amount of dedication or even suffering to achieve. How will we best accomplish that? Would we just knock around on our own endlessly, or would we take a class? Find a teacher? Perhaps study the greats, or those whom we admire? Emulate and imitate? Even if we never had any formal training, there will always be influences, inspirations, role models who we look up to, articles to read, communities to engage with, and shows and events we enjoyed and drew strength from.
This basic observation leads us to a somewhat psychological theory of what good art is and how it comes about. We can say, with a high level of confidence, that everyone engaged in something creative is also, at its most basic, engaged in what they learnt from those they feared, admired, or wanted to impress — their teachers, mentors, lovers, inspirations, and colleagues. They may compete, they may collaborate. But they all have psychological motivation of a certain kind: to impress, to win over. This is why we can characterize good art as Homage. At least, the claim here is it will always have a component of this quality present.
Now, because we live the times we do, it is probably very difficult for some people to accept this idea. The nature of the Ego is such that we always want to ascribe our best outcomes to something originating in ourselves, and our failures and disasters to the impact of others. And this psychology is actually the opposite of what I just described. Ever met an artist, musician, or wildly talented individual who was not (pardon my French) full of themselves? Well, I haven’t.
Nevertheless, our better selves know what I am saying is true, that art is a craft, a discipline, and a lifelong study, that it is anything but instant gratification and push-button, and what is really of value does not come so easy. One of my great teachers, Bob James, was in the habit of saying we have to “pay our dues.”
Before we leave the subject of “Homage” I will show some images from a project I am working on right now called “God as a woman.” These are images made in the styles of artists that I admire or find expressive. In other words, this is Homage. Do not be too concerned with the technology. Essentially that is unimportant, and I could have waved a wand and said “imagio!” and created this art; or I could have painted it with oil paints on stretched canvases. What does it matter?
Some Homage Examples
So that is Homage. The Good. Let’s move on.
The Faux
The best way I have to explain the Faux is to begin with some photographs I took at a paid accommodation I stayed in recently.
At left you can see a little faux plant in a small plastic pot with faux soil. At middle left, is a small, framed picture of a plant leaf. At centre right, is a larger framed canvas. The image appears to be sweeps of black paint, and there is a clear acrylic resin swiped over the surface with a comb tool to create a milky texture. At right is a closeup on another framed canvas, this one with splashes of grey and black and gold ink.
Now understand, I am completely aware of the reason for the presence of these objects in my paid accommodation. No intelligent landlord is going to furnish their let with anything expensive, and more importantly, no one is going to put anything controversial or challenging or even interesting into a paid flat. The goal is just the opposite — to avoid creating any sensation at all except one of being unobtrusive, of being not empty, but still being furnished. These are placeholders.
So, these are examples of faux objects. They appear to be paintings and plants and pots, but they do not have the reality of such things. They do not grow, our opinion of them does not develop over time as we continue to look at them. If they disappear, we will not miss them, and if we move, they likely end up in the bin.
If we reflect on the industry that created these objects, we know it was entirely created through the requirements of commerce. And, interestingly to this discussion, these objects do have a style. The style is somewhat vacant, it is distant and somewhat mechanical, but it is not ugly per se. It is the style of commerce. It is the style that occurs when the needs of commerce over-ride all else. It is The Faux.
We need to move on, but I will hasten to add that whole industries like that of Stock Images are populated mainly with Faux art. You might say this is unfair, that many of the stock images are good, but anything that exists entirely and only to sell stuff, anything that exists primarily as a backdrop for a pleasant shopping experience, is Faux. It is art, but not homage. It is not fake, because something that is fake is intentionally deceptive. But all of it — every single image used as a backdrop for commerce you have ever seen — is Faux. It has a style and often it is quite sophisticated in that sense. But there are many signals that it is not Homage, that it has no love in it, that it was not created out of a sense of wonder or interest or passion. It was created because someone needed to present the appearance of art or craft or sophistication or quality but does not actually have any of those things. It cannot. Why? Because that would distract from the product that sits in the foreground.
To provide some sense of completeness I thought I would see how challenging it is to make Faux. The below were made this morning for purposes of this article.
I don’t normally discuss prompts, because I understand that the prompt used in an AI Art work-flow is not really of the essence. Sharing prompts is not that useful, what is useful to know is the intention. But for the sake of understanding what is being done, here are the prompts for the above:
a VW t2, photographed in California at dawn, commercial advertising photography style
a tesla Model S, photographed in California at dawn, commercial advertising photography style, high definition, realistic, detailed
You can see that the style I have specified is “commercial advertising photography style.”
Notice that the beautiful California morning sun and light are just a backdrop for the car. The earth itself, having existed for billions of years, is pushed into service to make more money for a Billionaire. If I had wanted to put a bikini-clad girl in laying on the hood, and been completely crass, I could have done that too.
One of the most important signals of the Faux is the presence of human beings who are not themselves, who are paid to smile and act as manikins. In the advertising world they have word for these people: the Talent. In any Homage, in anything good, the human beings represented are not pretending or acting out the part of manikins. They are people, representatives of humanity, they have real feelings and experiences. They are authentic. They may be performing a role, such as an actor does, but their intention through acting is to make the emotions and experience of observing them bigger, not smaller. Whereas in the Faux, the intention of the manikins is always to fade into the furniture, to not draw attention to themselves. They make way for the product to shine through.
There is a wonderful film called Jesus of Montreal, which has as its theme the contrast of the Homage and the Faux.
So that is The Faux, the Bad. Let’s move on now to the ugliness of the Fake.
The Fake
Everyone understands what a rip-off is. But we live in interesting times. Where I live, my mobile phone rings two or three times a day with calls intended to hook me in a scam. My wife gets more, as her mobile number is published. This level of attack — I don’t think any other word is appropriate — is remarkable in that no one is doing anything about it.
We live in a world where the Fake is often present, just around the corner out of sight, and we have become accustomed to watching for its appearance. But what are its attributes?
One that is pertinent to this discussion is what I call Hyperstyle. Hyperstyle is anything that has the property of being “more than it should be” to impress, to fool, to trick. We can see this at work in the deep fake, which uses Hyperstyle to surprise and generate interest in otherwise completely banal material.
Hyperstyle is very much achievable through AI Art methods such as diffusion, but Hyperstyle by itself is not “fake.” To qualify as “fake” something must have a malevolent or intentionally deceptive objective.
The examples in the above “Top 20 Deep Fake Videos” are allowed on YouTube precisely because they are not Fake with the objective of causing harm, but rather use hyperstyle for obvious entertainment purposes. If they were “real” Fakes, they would violate YouTube policy and get deleted. An example of a “real” Fake is a recent propaganda video of the President of Ukraine telling his soldiers to surrender.
I want you to leave aside the idea that art being a copy is synonymous with art being fake. Are lithographs and screen prints (which are made with techniques that copy a design) fakes because of the particular process of their manufacture? Of course not. What about many photographs developed from the same negative? No. What makes something fake is the intention to fool or trick. For example, if a painting is sold as being by an artist but was made by someone else, forged, simply to trick the buyer, that is a fake. The construction process itself is probably not fake, the painting probably uses very similar techniques and materials to be a successful sale.
The Fake is very much associated with cons and conmen. Three Card Monte is a popular con card game scenario in which the mark’s hope of winning cash always turns into losing cash. But is there a popular form of art which is a con like this today? Yes, I am thinking of NFTs. “Nifties” as they are called, are a con. Not because of the technique, but because of the intention. The entire NFT “market” is an elaborate Three Card Monte to separate people from their money.
That’s all for now.
If you found this story interesting, you might like to read about my Stewart Brand homage, The Spaceship Earth AI Project: