a boundary of AI generated Art

Premise - art as individual experience, not as object/artifact.

Corollary - because the paratext of art can created an artistic experience, the paratext of art can be art.

Conclusion - the paratexts of AI generated art doesn't usually  does not create an artistic experience because the paratext of AI generated art is "this was made by an AI."

Roughly, the paratext of AI generated art is like focusing on the camera factory when talking about a photograph.

We want a stories.

Give me a story about the artist cutting off one ear.

Not just a low res picture on a screen.

Which is most of artistic experience.

A Sketch of a System for Learning New Things

I just cooked up this description of my system. it's a work in progress, not a formal commitment.

It distinguishes between two types of learning that are easily conflated and two relationships I might have to a subject:

            | Already   | Don't   |
            | Do           | Do      |
  ------------------------------------
  Learn  |                |            |
  About  |                |            |
  ------------------------------------
  Learn |                |            |
  To Do |                |            |
  ------------------------------------

Most subjects naturally fall into Learn-About/Don't-Do because there is no way of doing them...e.g. *The Pax Romana*, Hydrogen, Milly Vannilly.

Operating Harbor Freight Sawmills, Applying Category Theory, and Using Vim are also in Learn-about/Don't-do because I don't do them and even though I could learn to do them, I'm probably not going to start doing them any time soon (if ever).

Learn-About/Already-Do is not that different from Learn-To-Do/Already-Do. The main difference is the timeline. Learn-About is in the immediate or short-term future. Learn-To-Do tends to be long term and broad.

Like I said this is a rough sketch and YMMV.


Creativity doesn't look like I wish it did

When it comes to making art, making no art is the utmost efficiency.

It will save so much time.

And allow me to finish quickly and move on to my next idea.

So I give myself chores.

Chief among them is putting everything away, so I can practice getting everything out as a way of beginning. When a creative spark hits my tinder, the chores of unpacking the paints and brushes or untangling patch cables from their drawer gives me space to build up to the moment of my first mark of my mark making.

I give myself an easy problem to solve. Easy because I know how to solve it. Easy because everything is at hand.

Except when it isn't, of course. So there's an inefficiency worth a little effort. Worth it because it is one I experienced, not one I imagined, and little effort because the thing was nearly enough at hand that I treated it as if it was.

---

Creative process looks like a commercial recording studio.

Assistant engineers running back and forth to the microphone locker, running cables, lowering boom stands, and taking lunch orders day in and day out.

Plans come and go. Momentum turns to inertia.

So the microphones go back to the locker. Booms get put away. Leftovers go into the fridge.

Tomorrow we do it again.

Ask HN: Best tips and resources for a software eng learning product design

[Ask HN: Best tips and resources for a software eng learning product design?  (link below) provoked a bit of untempered passion (is there any other kind of passion?]

Having been a design professional, my best advice:

1. Nobody gives a shit what you like. The personal preferences of the designer are the least useful driver of design. This isn't to discount the designer's aesthetic judgement, but good design comes from applying that judgement to the appropriate context.

2. If you look at something successful and think it's shit, the most likely reason is you don't understand it. Jira sucks? How many weeks have you spent here?

https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides

And yes, weeks because Jira is a tool of your trade and you should be an expert. And that requires understanding who it is designed for; are you the buyer? Are you even the user in a meaningful sense? Or is Jira designed to be used by organizations?

3. The Design of Everyday Things is a great book and will take your design understanding from near zero to some value clearly not near zero. But it won't give you training and it won't give you experience.

4. More importantly, it won't give you the habit of grinding on a design for the months or years it takes to polish someone else's turds to a mirror finish. The only way to get good at design is by designing.

5. Serious design work doesn't feel like you imagine it feels. Serious design work feels like hard work. You might enjoy the hard work, but it is still hard work.

6. There is no silver bullet. Forget about tips and tricks. Do the work.

7. Efficiency is what design produces. Inefficiency is how that happens.

Good luck.


Link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34425693