
This Artwork Does Not Exist - davikr
https://thisartworkdoesnotexist.com/
======
tomhoward
I found it interesting to note how viscerally uncomfortable I felt while
looking at some (or, most) of these pieces.

Of course not all art has to be pleasing to the viewer, but
confronting/challenging art is made deliberately that way by the artist, and
the process of experiencing the art involves understanding the feeling and
learning something from it.

It's a different feeling altogether to be discomforted by art, but for no
purpose.

~~~
narag
Honestly, most of them feel very bland to me. Often in the same way, with the
blank white square as the extreme case, but there are a number of other series
typical of its style.

The algorithm could use some additional imbalance-creating modules.

~~~
possibleworlds
The Apple Maps screenshots book and 9-eyes.com are two projects that really
stood out for me. Neither was intentional and both involved curation, which is
perhaps what is missing from this (and similar) projects.

~~~
andybak
Apple Maps screenshots book?

~~~
trevordixon
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/pedernorrby/sets/7215763227711...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/pedernorrby/sets/72157632277119513/)

~~~
spiralganglion
These are vastly more artistically satisfying than the OP, and most other GAN
images that are presented as art. That's a great statement about process
mattering as much as result (or is that just my POMO talking?)

Thanks for sharing this.

------
lucidrains
Hi all, this was trained by Michael Friesen
([https://twitter.com/MichaelFriese10](https://twitter.com/MichaelFriese10)).
I liked the latent space so much that I decided to share it with everyone.
Have fun! I'll add some html to credit Michael with the training once I find
the time.

~~~
valentinvieriu
Credit should have been mentioned at the beginning of the project. HTML is not
that hard!

~~~
StevenRayOrr
The initial page just shows the art, but after a couple seconds it pops up
with an explicit credit to Michael Friesen and a link to his twitter:

> Imagined by a GAN (generative adversarial network) StyleGAN2 (Dec 2019) -
> Karras et al. and Nvidia Trained by Michael Friesen on images of Modern Art

------
arxpoetica
By and large, the artwork generated herein totally speaks to me.

This is almost beyond the uncanny valley for me.

~~~
earthbound19
For me it's about 1/3 hit 2/3 miss, and those that hit I usually want to tweak
the composition or alter it somehow. Rarely am I completely satisfied with
output from it, but that does happen.

I would take many of them and scale them up to a resolution that would work
for LARGE prints, with a tool that does its own upscaling/stylish embellishing
(like Dynamic Auto Painter), then work them up further in digital.

I think it's a fantastic tool for brainstorming ideas.

Anyone know the license terms for images generated by this web site?

~~~
earthbound19
(it seems I can't edit this comment. Per a reply in another thread: public
domain.)

------
leshokunin
So what's next? Combine this with thispersondoesnotexist? Generate fake
descriptions about the art? Make a real-fake exhibition? Make a fake Wikipedia
entry?

I guess at one point, all this makes it real art, where the artwork isn't the
object, but the craftsmanship is. Might be interesting to put the repo on
display at a gallery.

~~~
hhs
> Might be interesting to put the repo on display at a gallery.

This is what artists like Marcel Duchamp did when selling “readymades” with
the conceptual art movement.

~~~
leshokunin
Interesting. Got any good reads on this?

~~~
hhs
Sure, I think Wikipedia does a good job [0]. There's also a neat book called
the "Duchamp Dictionary" [1].

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readymades_of_Marcel_Duchamp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readymades_of_Marcel_Duchamp)

[1]: [https://thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/the-duchamp-
dictionary-...](https://thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/the-duchamp-dictionary-
hardcover)

------
MarkusWandel
Funny that of all the "This X does not exist" sites, this one only gives
relatively small, low-res pictures. Because I'd totally print out some of that
stuff and hang it up!

~~~
valentinvieriu
I've launched a similar project some weeks ago.
[https://art42.net](https://art42.net) see the previous thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22344254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22344254)

~~~
gdubs
Hopefully you all don’t mind me tagging on (again) with a link to my project —
similar space, but with Fauvist art:

[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)

------
coldcode
As an abstract digital artist I find most of these not interesting enough for
me but the real issue is a GAN cannot make images that are big enough to print
without looking like crap or taking forever. A decent sized 30x30in looks good
at 300 dpi which is 81M pixels. I need a decent computer and video card to
work at this size. A GAN would need to be massively bigger to function at this
scale.

~~~
arketyp
GANs can be made fully convolutional so that you can generate images of
abritrary size. But the training of the latent space will still be limited by
memory and speed, so you'd end up with images that are perhaps quite
repetetive in nature.

------
pxndxx
I've always wanted to do something like this, but wired up to your webcam to
detect when you blink. When you do, update the picture to a new one, to make
extremely ephemeral art.

~~~
nkrisc
So it will be like a timelapse video but in every picture you have your eyes
closed?

~~~
sp332
No, it just uses your eyeblinks to time when to switch artworks.

~~~
nkrisc
I totally misunderstood your comment. I thought you meant it would track you
and take a picture of you and create art out of those pictures. Reading your
comment again I'm not really sure how I came to that conclusion at the time. I
thought that was a really dumb idea, but turns out it was mine the whole time.

Your actual idea is much cooler.

To expand on your idea, it would be cool if every time you blinked or looked
away, it wasn't a completely new picture, but the same one that is subtly
changed, such that it slowly morphs over time, but only as you aren't looking.
I suppose you could pre-generate quite a few steps in advance and then mete
them out gradually.

------
hhs
In 1929, Rene Magritte made a painting of a smoking pipe and, on the bottom of
the picture, he wrote “this is not a pipe” in French [0]. So, this website
seems to be using that same surrealist theme.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images)

~~~
david-gpu
I think the domain name is simply following the pattern of other domains for
AI-generated images, such as
[https://thispersondoesnotexist.com](https://thispersondoesnotexist.com) ,
[https://thiscatdoesnotexist.com](https://thiscatdoesnotexist.com) ,
[https://thisrentaldoesnotexist.com](https://thisrentaldoesnotexist.com) ,
etc.

For these and more, see
[https://thisxdoesnotexist.com](https://thisxdoesnotexist.com)

~~~
amoebaarriba
This(this(x)doesnotexist)doesnotexist=x

~~~
downshun
Wicked for x=quine

------
dawnerd
This is basically a NIN album generator.

(Of the ones I've seen)

~~~
eyelidlessness
I had the same reaction to quite a few.

Edit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xg-
Wk2DEXs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xg-Wk2DEXs)

------
joosters
I think the more shocking version would be ThisArtworkDoesExist.com - just
fill it with some of the worst 'real' modern art that has somehow got
displayed in a gallery.

~~~
pzumk
Just forward the domain to the $ 120.000 Banana [1] or something even more
ridiculous.

[1] [https://www.vogue.com/article/the-120000-art-basel-banana-
ex...](https://www.vogue.com/article/the-120000-art-basel-banana-explained-
maurizio-cattelan)

------
frereubu
Reminds me rather of that not-technically NSFW image generator based on
Yahoo's NSFW-detecting neural network, particularly the art gallery section.
(Probably NSFW, by the way):
[https://open_nsfw.gitlab.io/](https://open_nsfw.gitlab.io/)

------
nkrisc
Unlike "This Person Does Not Exist", this artwork does, I should think, now
exist.

Is it possible to create artwork that doesn't exist?

~~~
bloak
It exists, but is it art?

~~~
sp332
Orson Welles reciting (and slightly modifying) Kipling: "...but is it art?"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6r_s1ugKgE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6r_s1ugKgE)

------
mjfl
how long is it going to take someone to download 100,000 of these, hang them
up on a bar wall somewhere and sell them for $20 apiece?

~~~
gridlockd
You must be underestimating the effort it takes to sell any kind of art at any
price.

The first "image created by an AI" kind of painting has already sold for a lot
of money. It'll be much tougher for the next 100,000.

~~~
pharke
I think they meant to sell them as generic commodity art. Just something to
fill a spot on a wall, not for appreciation.

------
abriosi
[https://thiseyedoesnotexist.com/](https://thiseyedoesnotexist.com/)

------
Juliate
It's abstract per construction. There's no intent, no meaning, no purpose, no
origin, no artist into these.

~~~
6nf
I agree. Pure art!

~~~
Juliate
Pure material for art, rather.

------
pjbk
Now get a robot to paint it.

------
buboard
Thanks. i downloaded some prints for my next exhibition, ironically called
"originals". art is in the eye of the downloader

------
mattkevan
Really tempted to paint some of these, thereby closing the human > machine >
human loop. Could be an interesting experiment.

~~~
gildandstain
My (human) collaborator and I took on something like this a couple of years
ago: [https://veronica-projectspace.com/zack-davis-rebecca-
friedma...](https://veronica-projectspace.com/zack-davis-rebecca-friedman)

------
rolling_robot
[https://thisxdoesnotexist.com/](https://thisxdoesnotexist.com/)

------
jeffmcmahan
The results are indistinguishable from real modern art. That is to say, this
AI is really bad at producing art.

------
bkeating
This reminds me a lot of Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/77_Million_Paintings](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/77_Million_Paintings)
Perhaps this could fuel v2 ;)

------
sgt
Would like a higher resolution of this, print'em out and open up an art
gallery. Only joking of course.

Or am I..

------
freepor
It all looks terrible to me but then so does 60% of the stuff in the museum of
Modern Art.

------
sreekotay
Raises the question (again) eloquently: is art about what is expresses or what
it evokes?

(Nice work!)

~~~
O_H_E
*expressed ?

~~~
adrianmonk
I think they're using the so-called "literary present" verb tense.

[https://style.mla.org/literary-present-
tense/](https://style.mla.org/literary-present-tense/)

~~~
mkl
Only if "is expresses" is supposed to be " _it_ expresses". Which would also
make sense.

~~~
adrianmonk
Oh! I read it multiple times, and each time, my brain auto-corrected "is" to
"it".

------
stolen_biscuit
I won't lie, I don't get it. Are these generated by a NN or something?

~~~
ly
Yep! They're from here:
[https://twitter.com/lucidrains/status/1232699234354204672](https://twitter.com/lucidrains/status/1232699234354204672)

------
alg_fun
wow, it somehow looks a lot better than previous GAN paintings I've seen. And
there are weights of this network, shared by the author in twitter.
[https://mega.nz/#!TCgSVCTa!ZmcV381soxyqiQyHO4p60F5ogoHcaO1Pq...](https://mega.nz/#!TCgSVCTa!ZmcV381soxyqiQyHO4p60F5ogoHcaO1PqDF9ZuiHVQw)

StyleGAN2 takes 512 dimensional vector as an input. Would be neat to attach
some physical input device, like a matrix of dials... And encode your own
painting with it :)

------
benkoller
Out of sheer self-interest: Do you intentionally obscure the source of the
file? I'd be interested to save some of these (for non-commercial, strictly
private usage).

~~~
yreg
I can save the jpeg just fine.

~~~
benkoller
Indeed. Disregard my comment while I facepalm.

------
listic
How does this page disable "View Source"?

~~~
ozten
It doesn't serve up HTML, just an image.

    
    
        curl -v https://thisartworkdoesnotexist.com/
        GET / HTTP/2
        content-type: image/jpeg
        ...
        Warning: Binary output can mess up your terminal. Use "--output -" to tell

------
hestefisk
[https://thishorsedoesnotexist.com/](https://thishorsedoesnotexist.com/)

------
salamanderman
This artwork does not exist, and is generally unattractive.

------
jonplackett
Who owns the copyright to something created like this?

~~~
gwern
No one. All the 'X Does Not Exist' websites use random generation, without any
human curation; the US Copyright Office is clear, non-humans (and machines in
particular) cannot create a copyright, and since there is no human author
expressing any creativity in random generation via NNs, there is no copyright,
and they are automatically public domain. I got this question a lot on my
anime faces as well and provide a few references on why they're public domain:
[https://www.gwern.net/Faces#faq](https://www.gwern.net/Faces#faq)

~~~
gridlockd
What is that interpretation based on? I'm not aware of any case law on this.

The input of these networks are all copyrighted. The closest analogy in terms
of copyright is probably "collage".

In any case, the idea that you can just take some artist's life work, train a
CNN on it, and then do what you please with the results doesn't seem "right".

~~~
gwern
> What is that interpretation based on? I'm not aware of any case law on this.

There's plenty of case law that non-humans are not creators and cannot get a
copyright. How could you have not heard of the Naruto case, for example? It
was famous! (And funny.)

~~~
gridlockd
Late reply, but here we go:

You're ignoring the fact that the inputs _are_ copyrighted and that therefore
the "non-human" is not the (sole) creator and the "work" is derived. The CNN
isn't _creating_ anything new except for random numbers.

Taken to the extreme, your position would be that _any_ transformation
performed by a computer program and involving random numbers would effectively
remove copyright. That can't possibly be true, so there would have to be some
"threshold of originality". Again, no case law on this, as far as I'm aware.

In effect, I believe you are spreading legal misinformation based on a flawed
understanding of copyright law, which may put others in harms way.

> How could you have not heard of the Naruto case, for example?

Not really a good comparison. The "inputs" here are the monkey and the jungle,
neither of which are themselves protected by copyright.

A better comparison would be a monkey creating a "director's cut" of Disney's
Jungle Book, interspersed with footage from National Geographic, both of which
are copyrighted. I doubt the "a monkey did it" kind of defense would stand
here.

~~~
gwern
The 'inputs' are the random numbers. Not the training data. They don't produce
a copy of an existing work, any more than a human trained on looking at faces
is producing a copy and 'stealing other people's lifework' (without even
paying them a cent! how dare they), unless it's so similar to serve as a
substitute (among other considerations).

> A better comparison would be a monkey creating a "director's cut" of
> Disney's Jungle Book, interspersed with footage from National Geographic,
> both of which are copyrighted.

That wouldn't be a good comparison at all, because a human could very easily
identify exactly which frames are literally copied from which copyrighted
work. That's not 'transformative' at all. In contrast, if you look at the
faces, most of them don't have even a remotely similar exemplar in the dataset
(you can do nearest-neighbor lookups using features or pixels, and GAN papers
often do to demonstrate that they are not just 'memorizing' \- I discuss this
in my FAQ section).

~~~
gridlockd
> The 'inputs' are the random numbers. Not the training data.

You're dodging. The inputs to the neural network are clearly the training
images, they don't just disappear. The outputs are derived works, at least.

> They don't produce a copy of an existing work, any more than a human trained
> on looking at faces is producing a copy and 'stealing other people's
> lifework' (without even paying them a cent! how dare they), unless it's so
> similar to serve as a substitute (among other considerations).

I'm not talking about the faces, I'm talking about CNNs in general. Surely
these faces all look like generic anime faces, because that's what you trained
on. On the other hand, if you trained on the works of Van Gogh with his very
distinctive style, that would easily be discernible.

Also, the very fact that it is _not_ a human doing this task is very relevant
for copyright, as you point out yourself.

Note that I'm not saying this is illegal or that this violates copyright, I'm
saying that there is no case law on this, so you can't just claim that there
is no issue here. It's undecided. It comes down to the _intention_ behind
copyright. Furthermore, even if you can dodge copyright law, you may not be
able to dodge trademark law.

> In contrast, if you look at the faces, most of them don't have even a
> remotely similar exemplar in the dataset (you can do nearest-neighbor
> lookups using features or pixels, and GAN papers often do to demonstrate
> that they are not just 'memorizing' \- I discuss this in my FAQ section).

Again, your argument fails the general case. Overfitting and memorizing is a
problem when working with CNNs. Some CNNs may just literally copy - and
visibly so. At which point are you _not_ just literally copying? What's the
"legal threshold" here? It would have to be decided on a case-by-case basis,
just like a "fair use" defense.

------
throwaway_2047
We need a corpus of story, generated of course

~~~
buboard
first we need "thispaintingtitledoesnotexist.com"

------
Avi-D-coder
Can it be made to generate 4k images easily?

~~~
visarga
It would be nice to upscale by auto-redrawing with a simulated brush and
paint.

~~~
earthbound19
A program I mentioned in another thread, Dynamic Auto-Painter, can do that--
but it will stylize the work according to some other preset.

------
indigodaddy
This is seriously awesome

------
pwason
It does now.

~~~
preillyme
haha haha haha

------
fcbrooklyn
Is it really a work of art if it doesn't include the obligatory ridiculous
description? Something like "Opus #4, in mixed media. Through a re-imagining
of the interaction between form and light, the artist challenges our
preconceived notions regarding the interplay of history, science, and
religion, transgressing the boundaries imposed by our own engagement in a
patriarchal society, and forcing us to reconsider the role of art as a medium
for change."

~~~
deanCommie
I know it's popular to hate on modern art, and your post will be the most
upvoted (and I upvoted you too, so that my response would be more visible),
but I want to offer an alternative view.

Art is about the artist attempting to generate an emotional response in an
audience. Books, painting, music, are all there to create joy, sadness,
melancholy, laughter, suspense, excitement.

Human emotions are universal, which is the beauty of art.

But humans themselves are not. What one person finds funny, another finds
disgusting. What one finds sad, another finds pathetic. Which is why we need
so many genres of art.

This is why we need both Classical Music, and Heavy Metal, and Country. Dramas
and Comedies.

But what happens when art ceases to generate an emotional response? Does it
even have value?

This is what happened to the classical art world at the turn of the
impressionism. Classic "Renaissance"-style painting styles perfected the human
form to the point that there was nothing exciting any more about the form.
Nothing stimulating the viewer. And besides, photo-realistic representations
of scenery was about to be improved and replaced with...photography.

So the artists went back to the drawing board, started challenging the status
quo, and came up with Impressionism. Cubism. And a million other *isms that I,
an uneducated rube, can't even begin to name or speak about with competency.

But each one isn't meant to be universal, to generate an emotional response in
the audience. You can walk through a museum, and see a 100 paintings, and feel
nothing. And that's okay! What's worth it is the one painting you see that
causes you to feel something. Then it worked.

"Modern art" (which itself can be exploded into a million different categories
falls into a bit of that. And it simply cannot be appreciated with a simple
low-resolution gif on a monitor.

For one, it sits on the context of what came before. It responds to art that
preceded it. You can get mad about that and think it should stand on it's own,
but consider how much of mass media depends on an implicit understanding of
the culture and what preceded it.

For another, it's frequently a 3 dimensional medium. Seeing the brushstrokes
of an impressionist painting must be seen in person to truly marvel at the
incredible ability to make something appear out of nothing ("This brush stroke
is a dog. It's clearly a dog. but when you look up close, it's just a single
simple brush stroke.")

Finally, and this brings me full circle to your point, sometimes you need to
actively place yourself into a position to feel something.

Consider the difference between listening to a new song on earbuds on a loud
subway train, vs on high quality headphones on your beanbag chair at home
alone, vs with an audience in a magnificent concert hall. Your emotional
response is going to be entirely different.

So when you see something like "Opus #4, in mixed media. Through a re-
imagining of the interaction between form and light, the artist challenges our
preconceived notions regarding the interplay of history, science, and
religion, transgressing the boundaries imposed by our own engagement in a
patriarchal society, and forcing us to reconsider the role of art as a medium
for change.", you could default to "Wow, whoever painted this must be a giant
gasbag".

You could scoff and say "My 4 year old niece could have painted that, and I
wouldn't put it on my fridge"

You could say "What does this millennial know about the role of art as a
medium for change."

Or you could stop, clear your head, and actually think about the words. How do
you feel about society? How does the art before you make you feel? How does it
feel to stand on the shoulders of giants?"

Maybe you'll feel nothing and move along, and that's okay.

But maybe you'll actually get some insights or an emotional repsonse from the
piece, which is what the author hoped you would.

~~~
fcbrooklyn
I agree with everything you've said. However, many people I know who produce
art, are not thinking in these terms, and resent being forced to do so, and
they are forced to do so, by the commercial reality of the fine art industry.
Furthermore, if someone is trying to find meaning in the word salad I produced
in about 90 seconds, I wish them luck, because whatever meaning is there
exists entirely in their own head. I suspect the same is true for a great many
(not all) descriptions of modern art.

~~~
deanCommie
YOU created that word salad in 90 seconds.

What I'm asking of you is to be less cynical about what actual art and artists
and be genuine in the search for meaning.

If you don't find it - no harm.

Also, the meaning in the author's own head is irrelevant. Death of the author.
You can find your own. Maybe their guidance and perspective helps there, maybe
not.

~~~
fcbrooklyn
"What I'm asking of you is to be less cynical about what actual art and
artists and be genuine in the search for meaning."

There's a typo here, and I honestly am not sure what you're trying to say. I
will say this: I am not a modern art hater. Far from it, I love modern art,
and I go well out of my way to enjoy it. My complaint is entirely with the ham
handed descriptions of pieces that require no descriptions at all.

~~~
deanCommie
Got it, thanks for clarifying!

You're right, I definitely accidentally a word there, may be several.

Ironically, I DO hate most modern art, and the treatise I wrote out is a
description of my own journey, and what I frequently have to consciously
remind myself to allow myself to experience and feel things that I don't have
an immediate connection to.

------
Apocryphon
Ah, modern art.

[https://imgur.com/JxOzgTM](https://imgur.com/JxOzgTM)

~~~
Waterluvian
It's clearly about depression. Look at the drab blue and the computer's lack
of motivation to continue after one stroke. It knows it needs to get back into
painting to snap out of this feedback loop of sadness. But even one brush
stroke in and it feels like a pointless endeavor.

~~~
Apocryphon
The only winning move is not to paint.

