submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [M] to c/genart@lemmy.today
 

We refuse art_anti-art as product, brand, credential, and personality package.

We’re done asking galleries, critics, algorithms, institutions, or strangers on the internet for permission.

We reject the idea that the right materials, the right training, or the right process make something more legitimate.

Paint on canvas, junk mail glued to cardboard, a photograph, a broken chair, code, a photocopier, or an image generated with AI. Everything is a tool. Nothing more sacred than that.

We’ll use whatever we want.

Art_anti-art doesn’t have to mean anything any more than a bird has to mean something when it flies. A hawk doesn’t circle because it represents freedom. A wild boar rooting through the dirt isn’t beautiful or ugly. It just exists. Art_anti-art can exist that way too. It doesn’t owe anyone beauty, ugliness, skill, labor, difficulty, a message, or an explanation.

We refuse the demand that every object justify its existence. If we call something art_anti-art, it’s art_anti-art. If somebody else refuses to call it art_anti-art, fine. Their refusal doesn’t change ours.

And we refuse the new gatekeepers who tell us which machines we’re allowed to touch. AI generation belongs here for exactly the same reason scissors, cameras, synthesizers, photocopiers, software, found objects, and paint belong here: because we choose to use it.

The process isn’t an embarrassment to hide. Generation, prompting, selection, rejection, alteration, collage, painting over it, destroying it, or leaving the output exactly as it came out are all available to us. The naysayers can declare that it isn’t art_anti-art. We refuse their authority to decide.

There’s no required amount of work and no approved way to make something. Make something painstakingly by hand. Generate it in thirty seconds. Tear up an advertisement and glue the pieces together. Paint over your own work. Make something useless. Make something stupid. Make something nobody sees.

Refusalism begins with a simple claim: art_anti-art is whatever we decide to call art_anti-art, made however we decide to make it.

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[–] [S] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I used to be a graphic designer, but AI is already making the field obsolete.

My other response to you was overly long, but I want to respond to this directly. Most of my career was in graphic design as well. I designed logos (which was 50 percent of my job and I HATE creating logos) and junk mail. Even before AI, cheap outsourcing and ease of tools was making it tougher.

The amount of times I had a co-worker or boss say, "Hey my nephew designed this in photoshop, can we use this in an ad..." was crazy.

I had one boss who would take my work, then "re design" in Quark Xpress (back before InDesign became widely used), give it back to me, and ask me to use it. But of course he knew nothing about typography, margins, or layout. Not only that, but our main print shop was pretty nitpicky about color seps on their ancient 4-color press, and the boss knew nothing about that, so I'd spend so much time having to tweak shit.

Good graphic design has always been a tough field. Everybody thinks they can do it better. Before AI there was "Fiver" taking our work. It is what it is. Ya just gotta shrug, do what you can do, and move on.

I'm out of that grind now and just paint and fuck around with AI all day (my wife hate it). But most of my social circle is still in the industry.

typographers probably said the same thing about desktop publishing

They did. I had an older guy in our office bitch about how we didn't know how to use wax roller, or strip color negs by hand. He also refused to use a digital camera, and insisted on using a high-res scanner to scan in his photos from film. All fun stuff, but when you gotta get shit to the print shop by noon, that ain't gonna fly.

I guess what I’m saying is that there is value in expertise that is lost with AI generated work.

But that comes with any technology in any field. Back when I was using Quark Xpess and InDesign, most common plebes couldn't design a magazine because of the costs of the software and printing. Then layout became easy. Then online. Then apps. Now AI. It's always been a race like this.

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