The Philosophy Discussion Forum

It would seem one needs imagination to do art. Whether to paint/draw a picture or compose music or write a book e.g. Can anybody pick up a paintbrush and paint a picture right off the bat? Or would forethought and imagination and training be required, roadmap to know where you want to get to?

What say you to this?

PhilX

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I think that whatever I say to that is art.



Even when we take a shit - it's art.



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In a broad sense EVERYTHING we do and even think or fell is art; an expression of ourselves.





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That would be a very wide definition of art.

PhilX


[Edited by iMod]

What would a work of art be or look like by someone without imagination? Robot art perhaps.

I believe everyone has the capacity to make art but first to reach the point where you are making art you would have to lose any preconceptions of what you think art is. Ultimately we need to see or experience the artwork to know if it is art. We can say why something is art and something else isn't. I was in a gallery recently and looking at a show by graduating art students, I put an orange on the floor and positioned it in relation to the other works and to the space itself, immediately the orange changed (as it was now in a network) and took on a new meaning. It 'worked' differently. I imagined this before I did it.

http://www.thelocal.de/20131023/52543

Pluto wrote:What would a work of art be or look like by someone without imagination? Robot art perhaps.

I talked to an artist recently who is interested in artificial intelligence and art. She trained a robot in Japan to sing 'Ave Maria' via Skype, then recorded the two versions, human and robot, for an exhibition.

Most would agree that the human version is better, but her point is that eventually technology will make the renditions indistinguishable from one another.

Imagination is tied quite closely to our ideas of creativity and originality, which were passed down to us from the Romantics. I think we may have to expand the definition of these concepts, or else do away with them altogether, if artificial intelligence continues to progress in this fashion.

On the other hand, there is human imagination at work, even in the creation of these 'artist' robots.

No, you don't need imagination to make art, you just need a museum's director as friend of yours.

I talked to an artist recently who is interested in artificial intelligence and art

Interesting heehaw, do you have the artist's name?

A person singing in the world (about the world) is different than a robot singing. If you see sci-fi tv shows from the 80's like buck rogers for example, when their's a party and dancing the singing is by a robot. Listening to the altered voices of performers today like gaga, we are well on the way.

Depends... all I can say really.

Pluto wrote:

I talked to an artist recently who is interested in artificial intelligence and art

Interesting heehaw, do you have the artist's name?

Hi Hee Haw and Pluto,

That is interesting. So in theory could it be possible for AI to produce every combination of visual art that could ever exist given infinite time? So that if an artist painted a painting from his "imagination", he could scan it in a database and a search engine could find the exact duplicate of the exact second it was first produced by AI?

Gives a whole 'nother perspective to the word 'predetermined'.

Philosophy Explorer wrote:It would seem one needs imagination to do art. Whether to paint/draw a picture or compose music or write a book e.g. Can anybody pick up a paintbrush and paint a picture right off the bat? Or would forethought and imagination and training be required, roadmap to know where you want to get to?

What say you to this?

PhilX

We need will and intuition to produce imagination to make art. But we do also need some discipline in distinguishing high, professional art from simple doodling, or simplistic anything in aesthetics or art.

Art can be simple and complex at the same time. What can make art without an imagination?

Monkeys can finger paint. Just saying.

David Handeye wrote:No, you don't need imagination to make art, you just need a museum's director as friend of yours.

As a professional portrait painter I will say no. Some portrait painters just copy what they see and only use the material basis. No imagination, just the process of A=A. Usually these are boring pieces. An artist portrait painter tries to go deeper by using imagination to capture some illusive inner nature. Imaginative portraits go too far and look like Picasso painting where identity is lost. I believe that a successful portrait, or art in general, must apply both the imaginative as well as the realistic representation. So art without imagination is dry, but imagination alone in art is nonsense.

Philosophy Explorer wrote:It would seem one needs imagination to do art. Whether to paint/draw a picture or compose music or write a book e.g. Can anybody pick up a paintbrush and paint a picture right off the bat? Or would forethought and imagination and training be required, roadmap to know where you want to get to?

What say you to this?

PhilX

Since we all have an imagination then the question is pointless.
The real question is: since we all have an imagination why are some people seemingly incapable of doing art.

There are a couple of other things here. You seem to think that art is something you do by making marks on paper. Surely it is so much more than that?