AI art
September 6 2018
Video: Obvious
There was a great deal of press excitement over Christie's decision to sell a painting made by artificial intelligence. Portrait of Edmond Bellamy, made by the French art collective Obvious will be auctioned in October with an estimate of £5k-£7k. There'll be a lot of vested interest, so watch it fly.
The picture was made by feeding an algorithm 15,000 portraits from the 14th to the 20th Centuries. And the end result was a blurry smudge that looks like, well, 15,000 portraits from the 14th to the 20th Centuries mixed together. Above is a video from Obviosu which shows how the end result was made. The Baron had a wife, called Comtesse de Belamy, which you can see being made here.
I'm not one of those to say 'this isn't art'. Sure it's art. But I think we're entitled to say it's not much good. There's a lot of talk at the moment about computers taking away human jobs. But I think artists can rest easy. As the AI painting shows, if you try and make art that can only ever look back, it's not going to be very successful. You need human ingenuity to create the art of the future.
More here in a well written and mercifully giff free piece on Christies.com.
