RR Week 10 | Music 256A

Cody Hergenroeder

11/30/21

Responding to: Humans in the Loop: The Design of Interactive AI Systems

I want to talk about the relationship Ge pointed out between photo 1 and photo 2. Specifically, the dysphoric contrast of the meaning mismatch between the two stylistically-matched images. I actually didn't notice at first what was so artistically amiss about the first image compared to the second, until I put on my Art History goggles. Then I returned to my beginner's mind and I found some redeeming qualities about it mirroring our deepening relationship with artful design technology like DeepArt.io. Let's examine the 3 lenses I transitioned through when viewing the pieces.

(1) To Be Like 'The Scream'

The initial way I saw photo 1 was sympathetic and appreciative, but also literal and shallow. I saw that the vacation photo matched The Scream's brilliant colors, stroke styles, and "way of looking at the world" expertly and was a delight to look at. Essentially "ooh, pretty colors. What a novel depiction of this familiar scene!" It was simply nice to look at, making it a great copy of The Scream. Picture 1 thus has good elements; it is like 'The Scream'.

(2) To Be 'The Scream'

Then, with more of a critical lens, I noticed it a second way that made the two "worlds apart" from one another. I noticed the manifestation of picture 1 seemed to deny the style/purpose/raison d'etre of picture 2; The Scream is about deconstruction, its tone is one of insanity and the way it contextualizes the world is hazy and schizophrenic--while the vacation photo reads as "casual, kitschy", and sunset-seeking. The contexts are utterly mismatched and the vacation photo's tone is too shallow for the nuanced ("screams, silently") medium that is the style of The Scream. This lens asks "What is 'The Scream'?" and reifies the idea that picture 2 is 'The Scream' and that picture 1 is not 'The Scream'. Picture 1 thus makes distasteful use of the good elements it borrows from Picture 2; it is not 'The Scream'.

(3) There is No 'The Scream', and that's okay

But I also noticed a third way of looking at the pair that found a new fascination, building upon both our initial fascination and post-novelty distaste. This interpretation was inspired by my growing fascination with Web 3.0 and NFTs. With this lens, we must ask "What even is The Scream? How do we know where The Scream begins, and where it ends?". By virtue of using this style transfer tech, an AI has helped us to expand 'The Scream' de-jure (the masterpiece we all know and love) into a whole de-facto The Scream multiverse. That means whole universes replete with their own microcosms of sorrows, joys, triumphs, and losses, rising and falling at the click of a button. This way of seeing would argue that comparing Photo 1 to 'The Scream' the masterpiece (as in our last paragraph) rather than The Scream the style (this paragraph) is to take it out of its proper context. Photo 1 isn't a failed attempt to replicate Photo 2's specific qualia of ennui and madness, it's meant to breathe life into a way of looking at the world that didn't exist before. Photo 1's relationship with Photo 2 irrevocably redefines it, such that there is no longer any separate 'The Scream' to be worth forging/replicating stroke-by-stroke. By finding the 'style of The Scream', the new AI-assisted piece is meant to be a new context that redefines what 'The Scream' was in the first place. In this re-defining, you can now *own* The Scream (de facto) in an intense and meaningful way that didn't exist before style-transfer technologies, by contributing your own artwork to be revealed in the style of The Scream.

'The Screamverse'? The style of The Scream

That maddening red-orange sky that existed in 'The Scream' de jure is now a lovely sunset and a glowing lava sea in The Screamverse. While the art collector scoffs at the flawed interpretation of the sky from the perspective of 'The Scream' the masterpiece, we are now in The Scream the universe, where the concept of 'original artwork' is itself flawed. The recontextualization raises questions. What if the glowing red sky would have been a sea in the calming context of the ocean? What if the people would've looked beautiful and vibrant if only we'd looked at them when the sun was shining on them? Now The Scream as truth lives and breathes in the network of its many worlds of interpretations. "What will The Scream be next?" an AI somewhere asks, "Awaiting further instruction." Neither Picture 1 nor Picture 2 are 'The Scream'; both converge on some ineffable locus of shared stylistic meaning ('The Screamverse'?) that also re-defines them, and will continue to re-define them as AI tools continue to excavate The Screamverse.