
Show HN: A stream of AI-generated art - valentinvieriu
https://art42.net/
======
valentinvieriu
Author Here: Just wanted to share some technical details. The code can be
found here
[https://github.com/valentinvieriu/stylegan2](https://github.com/valentinvieriu/stylegan2)
The main code and modification were put together by
[https://github.com/pbaylies/stylegan2](https://github.com/pbaylies/stylegan2).
I've started with the pretrained ffhq model, and I've trained it using come
hand picked 1000 images of cubist Wikiart paintings.

The frontend is Vuejs and it's using the amazing
[https://github.com/Akryum/vue-virtual-
scroller](https://github.com/Akryum/vue-virtual-scroller) for the very fast
infinite scroll option. The app runs on Cloudflare Workers, using
[https://github.com/l5x/vue-ssr-cloudflare-workers-
template](https://github.com/l5x/vue-ssr-cloudflare-workers-template)

Hope you guys enjoy the experience and would love to get some constructive
feedback

~~~
rfeague
I think you have an opportunity here --- I found myself wondering how much it
would cost to get a nice-quality print on canvas or metal. Something I could
hang in my office. They look that good. Are they (or could they be) generated
in sufficiently high resolution for a large format print?

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
Working in an office decorated by a bot is the most demoralizing experience I
could imagine. I would probably go into an existential rage and start breaking
things until someone more physically powerful came and subdued me.

~~~
GistNoesis
It can be worse you could also work on SAP, like the author (No harsh
feeling/flame war ; thank you to the author for this artsy experience ; but I
couldn't help but notice this, I believe, relevant context).

To me these pictures are very nice looking from afar, but once you try to look
in the details it makes you feel stupid that you don't get it, until you
realize that it is senseless, there is no coherence, no point, no soul and
it's normal that there is nothing to get from the picture as it's not in the
algorithm.

The technique is perfect. But the art side reflection and emotion must still
come from the eye of the beholder. It is deeply moving art in the sense it
inspire strong negative emotions, the feeling that there are some stronger
forces coming to crush you.

One such reflection that these collection should inspire is : "Is this the
direction we want to take ?". Infinitely many garbage art stealing attention
away from human artists.

Don't get me wrong, I like generated art but it's necessary to situate it in
its context. That what makes it interesting. I even believe you can have
machine explore thing and discover interesting thing on their own without it
being formulaic, but we are not there yet.

~~~
valentinvieriu
Your SAP remarks are funny and somehow true (maybe), but I'm maybe one of the
lucky guys. I work for an interesting Labs section inside SAP
([https://cxlabs.sap.com/](https://cxlabs.sap.com/)) and we are lucky enough
to do research on some interesting topics.

I don't fully agree with you on the purpose of art. Art can create different
meanings for every watcher and they could be quite far away from what was the
intended purpose ( the message ) of the artist. I would say that main function
of art is to ask questions, and also to give you a way to experience life in a
way you would otherwise not be able to. In this context I think AI generated
art can bring something new, a new layer of reality, a new set of questions,
that might not been surfaced because we use brains to create art and brains to
interpret it. It could be a new type of input that would push humanity
further.

~~~
shrimpx
I think that postmodern view on art has fallen out of popularity. It’s silly
to abstract away the artist and kinda pretend there may as well not be one,
and that the full meaning may be purely in the sensory matter... because this
leads to an “everything is art” perspective: everything in the field of my
senses at any point is art. Which is preposterous for “art” to tell me that my
senses are meaningful because I can ask questions about them and learn
something. Thank you, art, for intervening to add a completely vacuous
annotation on my experience.

These pictures are interesting though. To me the thing that popped out,
without having read background on the project, was how this robot artist is
copying modernists like Picasso and possibly Pollock and DeKooning. And doing
it along a few themes, with high degree of repetition; or tweaking some small
things in each variation. The limitations are glaring and I’m wondering will
it evolve and how.

------
kengor
Not trying to denigrate the amazing technical skill needed to make this thing,
but from the point of view of someone who makes art, this is a pastiche image
maker. I have yet to see AI generate anything that's not a combination of
existing images and techniques. Probably wading into murky philosophical
waters here but I reckon art needs to be more than a nice 'arty' looking image
to be considered any good. If you are going to make Art that is worth the
capital 'A' on the front, then it has to mean something. However I suspect the
days of actually making Art are in the past. We're on to something else now.
Not necessarily better or worse, just different. Art is an old idea, not
entirely relevant any more.

~~~
iakh
Not trying to denigrate artists, but as somebody that admittedly doesn't
appreciate art, I'm still not sure how artists aren't just pastiche image
maker themselves. Based on your comment, I'm not entirely clear what the
difference is

~~~
craftinator
Well said. I actually do appreciate many forms of art, but I feel that many
artist (that I know) are just a mixture of regurgitators and expert salesmen.
They make something random, then come up with a backstory that makes it
somewhat interesting. This AI can out perform them, without the need for the
ingenuous hook story.

~~~
drongoking
> I actually do appreciate many forms of art, but I feel that many artist
> (that I know) are just a mixture of regurgitators and expert salesmen. They
> make something random, then come up with a backstory that makes it somewhat
> interesting.

I wouldn't call your relationship with art "appreciation". Sounds more like
undisguised disdain.

~~~
craftinator
I appreciate art, not artists. You seem to either have misread what I said, or
are actively trying to misattribute my words.

~~~
TheGrassyKnoll
> "I appreciate art, not artists."
    
    
      Can you have one without the other ?
    
      Apparently, now, you can...

------
allovernow
This is indistinguishable from something that would be hanging in an art
museum, and anyone pretending otherwise only believes so because they know a
priori that it is generated by ML.

Honestly I would consider buying something like this, though I'd never waste
my money on something so pretentious from a human. This, however, is an
achievement, and there's beauty in that.

Edit: in fact, if love to see two tests: a blind test with a series of humans,
and a classifier trained to differentiate between machine and human generated
art. I have no doubt that the humans would not score much better than chance -
I bet only an artificial discriminator would be able to tell, and then only
because of subtle differences in pixel distributions that humans won't
perceive. Throw in a couple different GANs trained on different distributions
and even a machine will have trouble telling the difference!

~~~
justanothersys
"This is indistinguishable from something that would be hanging in an art
museum."

Haha, the exact opposite of my scroll through. I thought to myself: "These
look like a clone stamp sampled and then vomited up all the lovely modernist
paintings I've seen at art museums."

~~~
tomxor
Yes, my first thought was "reconstituted art"

~~~
shrimpx
My first thought was “hotel lobby”

------
mattsahr
The further down the page I scrolled, the more I got a kind of despair. To
realize that the space was infinite, and I would never reach its end. Each
individual image is pretty cool. As a collection, they're sad.

What's funny is that I then tabbed back to HN, where I was deep down the
comments tree, and momentarily I forgot that real humans make these comments.
I thought "I shall never reach the end of the HN comments. It's all AI -
generating a pastiche of plausible opinions and sentences-that-appear-
sentient." Same despair. Quite a relief, then, to get to the end of the page.

~~~
valentinvieriu
Interesting, so would you say that the infinite aspect helped out the
experience or damaged it? I've had doubts first when I've introduced it ( more
from caching perspectives and data transfer costs ). But then I've wanted to
showcase this amazing feature of those networks of generating an infinite
amount of unique items, and also offer an unique experience to every user, the
possibility of seeing unique art and bookmarking / printing it if considered

~~~
mattsahr
I guess there's a time premise to a painting. The artist is not necessarily
asserting -- but I implicitly assume -- that the artist deems any given
painting "a thing upon which to dwell." A stamp of good aesthetic housekeeping
-- trust me, says the painter, your viewer's mind and soul can rest
herewithin. I mean, the painter certainly did. Day upon day of slowly creating
the thing in which their visual cortex swam, lived, breathed and had its
being.

I am standing next to the artist. Seeing what she saw, imagining what it must
be like to arrive from the other direction, without all the layers of
preconception and intention that she baked in. And hopefully, from her
direction and from mine, the good housekeeping seal, there is something "good"
about this meeting of two perspectives.

Your project throws that good-housekeeping seal out the window. Which is not
to say that a given image is bad. Rather, that the social contract between one
viewer and one artist, is missing. My viewer's eye keeps assuming it exists,
and my brain reminds me -- no, this is all fake, there is no humanity behind
the curtain. There is nobody to connect to. Maybe it's still art, but not the
kind I... emotionally expect from a thing that looks, at first glance,
beautifully painted?

So, the infinite aspect definitely "helps" the experience. The exhaustion
helps one feel viscerally how big is the problem space.

------
anigbrowl
Now we just need an infinite stream of AI generated art criticism to tell us
how to talk about it at parties.

~~~
kangnkodos
"It's a master stroke of heartache, brutality, and redemption." \- Lexus book
club commercial

------
alharith
I get the appeal from a "it's fascinating we can make computers do this"
stance.

I don't get the appeal as trying to appreciate this as actual art (or music in
the case of ai-generated tunes).

Art for me is about the connection I can make with the person who made it. I
can't make a connection with an algorithm. I view it and I am like "OK this is
interesting" but that's about it. There's no desire to try and understand it
because it was programmatically generated.

Does anyone else feel this way?

~~~
qmmmur
What about connecting with the person who wrote the algorithm? Imagine a time
in which music was only heard when performed by the right group of people.
Without that the appreciation was mostly for a cultural memory or written
record of the music. There are more ways to connect with art and it's maker
than playing back the audio or opening the image.

~~~
valentinvieriu
I think Mario Klingemann said it the best.
[https://vimeo.com/298000366](https://vimeo.com/298000366) This becomes just a
tool, like everything else

------
Rochus
I wonder how art experts would assess these paintings in a blinded experiment
("blinded" figuratively, of course ;-)

~~~
jan6
I'd bet most of them are quite "low quality art", but interesting anyway...
plus, afaik, generally the image itself is not that important, as is the story
behind it, if you have a story, a black square is a masterpiece, if you don't,
it's junk...

~~~
CuriouslyC
The "story" aspect of art is bullshit, unless the art itself tells that story
in a tangible way. If there's a story behind a black square, it's still just a
black square.

~~~
Balgair
I disagree.

A piece is more than just itself, there is a history to each one and that
story adds to the piece. Some (honestly most) pieces and stories just are not
very interesting, maybe even to the artist, and that is fine. And some are
interesting to just some people at some times.

Art 'speaks' to each person differently, or sometimes not at all. Art is what
_you_ make of it. If you make nothing of some forms of art, that is on _you_.
If you make nothing of all forms of art, you may want to consider why so many
other humans feel so strongly the other way.

Though pretentious, ArtAssignment on YT is a great into to the wider world of
art. I really think you should give it a try:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdGqz6dgvIzbBxo7XJHnO...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdGqz6dgvIzbBxo7XJHnOtHfBzid97rtl)

------
zsz
Is this a portent of truth's final days? Is absurdism the only final, knowable
truth, in a world where only fact carries meaning, as humanity has been
deconstructed and rendered noumenal? The voices of a million potential future
artists just cried out in agony and were silenced forever. The Tesla CEO has
it right. AI is the end of humanity -- but (probably) not in a SkyNet sort of
way, but one that is much worse because it renders the term "hope" itself
meaningless.

------
dsco
This is fantastic! Wrap it in a SmartTV app and sell it for a dollar or two as
a monthly decorative art subscription!

~~~
valentinvieriu
Noted down! Tv targeted app :) Is like a fireplace app, but with art

------
dvh
I think modern art is not about creation, it is about ability to sell.

~~~
Rochus
There are certainly cases where this might be true, but I doubt that this
assumption is generally true; one would have to do some experiments and put
these artificially generated paintings up for real auctions (for the purpose
of scientific knowledge, of course, not to cheat).

~~~
valentinvieriu
I've tried this around with some friends of mine and they could not spot the
difference between Person generated and AI generated. None were art experts
just people with good taste.

~~~
Rochus
Well, there is a considerable difference between "good taste" and professional
experience with the art market. A lot of art sales are made with things that
are totally tasteless from my unprofessional perspective. It would therefore
make a lot of sense to experiment with real art experts with experience of the
market. Maybe you have heard of the experiments where they submitted machine
generated publications to scientific conferences and succeeded with it ;-)

------
starchild_3001
To my untrained eye, many of these images are as good as anything else I've
seen from humans. What qualities make me say that? Your images create a
visceral response. They evoke a lot of interesting thoughts and feelings. If
anything they remind me of 20th century modern art. Very impressive stuff.
It'd be amazing to make these bigger, ensure texture is there, print them
large like an oil painting.

~~~
dillonmckay
The lack of texture is the issue for me.

~~~
valentinvieriu
I need more $$ to feed the GPU monster, and then you will get more texture :)
This is more of technical issue that can be solved quite easy, but you are
right, most of them lack details and texture.

------
alainchabat
I love this idea of generated content. I'm wondering what artists thinks about
that.

There was a recent Show HN project about generate quotes having some great
results having sense :
[https://machineswisdom.com](https://machineswisdom.com)

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
The results are really impressive.

I have been studying art non-professionally for the past 5 odd years now and I
would be hard pressed to tell you if any one of the pictures your software
generated was created by a human artist or not.

Nice work!

------
jcims
This one is amazing

[https://vcloud42.com/file/art42-cdn/cubism/seed_0000086582.j...](https://vcloud42.com/file/art42-cdn/cubism/seed_0000086582.jpg)

It reminds me of those time slice type photos, where the bottom is when the
little 'tree' on the right is young and each layer is a new year or three
along the way, in which the environment gets a bit older and gnarlier over
time.

Absolutely wonderful work.

------
gdubs
Site appears to be down at the moment. Some shameless self-promotion since
there appears to be some interest in this, I recently trained a StyleGAN model
on Fauvist artists:

[http://gregorywieber.com/art/a-walk-through-latent-space-
mak...](http://gregorywieber.com/art/a-walk-through-latent-space-making-art-
with-neural-networks.html)

------
FpUser
[http://www.sanbase.com/](http://www.sanbase.com/) \- these were created long
before AI became a household name. Actually no AI involved at all. All just
pure math. Think it is called "generative art" or something to that tune

~~~
jan6
generative art is of a completely different tune... even if for this style
they might not be that different results, the neural net(s) here (the "AI")
can have details and textures simple math cannot, such as I saw a horse head
in one, some other things in others...

but it's still very cool, even if the site may or may not be slightly
deteriorating (top banner's broke for me, wouldn't be surprised if some other
stuff was too)...

~~~
FpUser
I myself did procedural texture generation at one point. There are also
commercial packages. This was long time ago so I am not sure in what state
those commercial offerings are now. Still you'd be amazed what kinds of
textures can be generated procedurally. Definitely not anything less the AI
can come up with. At least from what I saw on that AI site.

 _" Site broke on me"_ \- interesting I did not notice anything. Maybe because
we might've used different browsers

------
davidajackson
They look great. If you make something where people can pick say
paintings/styles they like, and then you generate custom for them until they
choose one (and presumably then un-watermark or high res it), you may have a
business here.

~~~
tacheiordache
Ok. What’s the point of that, original poster or canvas print? In a way
training AI on existing art and generating some more amounts to vulgarizing
abstract art or art in general and doesn’t add much to it, it is a gimmick. It
certainly looks attractive but does it have any real value?

~~~
davidajackson
Have you ever seen things like fractals on people's walls? They are
curiosities. I guess you could call them gimmicks, but I would just call them
interesting--gimmicks has kind of derogatory tone.

Value is just what people will pay for it. Which is apparently, in some cases,
more than 430k: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/arts/design/ai-art-
sold-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/arts/design/ai-art-sold-
christies.html)

The notion of vulgarizing art is what people said about jazz when it pulled
people away from the "fine art" of classical (the "swamp of jazz"). How wrong
they were. I don't think people will see beautiful art, albeit generated by an
AI, as "vulgar" in the future.

~~~
tartoran
No no, fractals are not gimmicks. Theres a beauty in mathematical relationship
that can be greatly appreciated and taken in. On the other hand this is stats
of existing work remixed. Looks pretty but hasn’t got a lot of value. Yes,
could be printed on canvas if that helps. Could eventually finds its way in
IKEA because it does look pretty and does have some ornamental value. Question
is, would anyone hold onto any particular piece for 100 years or more?

------
Fnoord
Reminds me of Debris by a NullSoft employee. It would download random pictures
using a search engine, and it would craft it together. The end result is
unique, and allowed you to look into the details. You could even edit the
search terms or the result, add cameos (some vague nudity, for example). What
I found really funny though, is that the end results often had actual funny
easter eggs. I guess if you add up all of this randomness, and you watch
closely, the chances of something funny being included increase. It just might
take a while till you find it.

------
ecmascript
Looks exactly as "modern art" to me.

I do not appreciate modern art anyway, but I love this since it will for sure
upset some artists that think they're talented.

~~~
dyadic
Liking something because it will negatively affect other people is a weird
position to take

------
lchiodi
I love cubism and this plain sucks. You see clearly that is not human work,
there is no subject, there is no meaning, there aren't emotions...is garbage.

~~~
maze-le
So.. the very same sentiment people had when they first saw cubist art made by
humans...

------
bluetwo
Allow me to mix it with one of my projects to show you a better way to
display:

[http://blueboxsw.com/labs/shogun/play.cfm?S_Key_Play=281C436...](http://blueboxsw.com/labs/shogun/play.cfm?S_Key_Play=281C4366-E68B-E0A5-2A5D371157763A63)

------
ramoz
Impressive on the surface. but, with a general idea of how the art was
created, I fail to gain emotion, resemblance, or _some form of appreciation_
that I've felt from certain art before.

Still, I guess "art" is all subjective anyway & this is still great stuff.

------
bawana
warhol would have been all over this

------
lsb
What do you like about the latent space that you are sampling from? :)

~~~
valentinvieriu
It's not a particular space, is just random. I'm hoping that by having more
people randomly checking the space, more masterpieces will surface

------
mrcms
This looks fantastic! Amazing that it is possible to make an AI output images
that you want to hang on your walls.

------
neetodavid
I like these. It feels like the paintings version of lying in the grass trying
to find images in the clouds.

~~~
neetodavid
This is my grim little friend in green coveralls and a green hat. Maybe he is
confiscating some masks.

[https://vcloud42.com/file/art42-cdn/cubism/seed_0000213622.j...](https://vcloud42.com/file/art42-cdn/cubism/seed_0000213622.jpg)

------
Jolter
Just an infinite stream of dead picture links, right now. I suppose something
is down?

------
sub7
This is awesome. There's a business here somewhere.

~~~
valentinvieriu
It would be great if it would be :) At this moment is just an art experiment

~~~
sub7
If I were you, I'd build this:

\- An interface where people select a subset of artists they like. \- Build a
model on the fly with art just from those artists \- Get HQ high res downloads
of generated art

Freemium model, with 1 HQ download free and the then $1 per download.

------
dillonmckay
The written code to create these images has a copyright, but the generated
images themselves do not.

------
ritwik310
Doesn't AI generated art violate the whole definition of art?

~~~
Yaa101
This is a good question, I dunno really.

On one hand is art really art without the bullshit story of the maker that
defines the art? Sometimes we really want the creator to shut up making
bullshit stories and just enjoy what has been made.

On the other hand, is a AI algo really a form of being creative? Nature is an
algo that creates things.

Do things have to be art to appreciate their beauty? Is art about beauty? Is
art about statements?

etc. etc.

Probably all answers are personal really.

