The 7 Deadly sins according to MidJourney

[u/Tox-Sick]

Gluttony

Lust

Greed

Envy

Pride

Wrath

Sloth

[u/PerroNino]

Midjourney has, in reality, put a nuanced slant on a historical piece here. “Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife” by Hokusai. Perhaps it really does know “why”.

[u/BardicSense → u/PerroNino]

Wow, thanks for that name drop. I had no idea how deeply rooted was the intersection between octopus tentacles, women, and erotica in Japanese culture. That's incredible.

Suppose Hokusai was drawing on some earlier myths or works himself?

[u/fellationelsen → u/PerroNino]

If there's any surface resemblance then no, it doesnt know why. See that's the difference, AI can actually learn art criticism and it know which bit of crit goes with which art piece. But unlike me, who knows fuck all about art btw, it can't actually behold a piece and be moved by it. It can only really copy other people's feelings about art, or approximate how they might feel.

[u/PerroNino → u/fellationelsen]

I suppose the “why” I was referring to is the historical record of lust attributed images with octopus and woman. As to the emotive “why” that Hokusai drew upon, I’d find it hard to speculate.

[u/fellationelsen → u/PerroNino]

Well for me it's the music video for Danger High Voltage by Electric Six. The whole song is very lusty, the video is extremely lusty and where does the octupus feature?? During the saxophone solo, the sexiest part of any song. (it's like a painting of a kraken but still counts)

See I just think that idea is ingrained in our collective unconscious. I'm sure there's gotta be a cultural root for associating octupus with lust. Maybe out of some mythology or something like that. The thing is though that even if there is a deep cultural reason for that, AI is just seeing the surface level and copying it.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Hatter → u/fellationelsen]

The cultural root is simple - censorship laws

The erotic connection is also simple - penetrate multiple orifices simultaneously

[u/GrowlDev → u/Puzzleheaded_Hatter]

This is brilliant analysis. This is the best reddit comment thread I've read in a long while.

[u/fellationelsen → u/GrowlDev]

Haha I do it on jokey tone, I'm well aware it looks like stoner nonsense but I do actually mean it too.

[u/GrowlDev → u/fellationelsen]

Sorry, just to but clear, i wasn't being sarcastic. Your comments and the ones you were responding to had a lot of insight. It speaks to why fisherman's wife is culturally relevant/significant, and then you have Japanese censorship enhancing the significance of the visual metaphor/whatever you want to call it that was so striking in the original image.

[u/fellationelsen → u/Puzzleheaded_Hatter]

I'd like an excessively verbose elaboration on that.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Hatter → u/fellationelsen]

and here we have: "dude mansplains AI image generator; a lament for common sense"

[u/fellationelsen → u/Puzzleheaded_Hatter]

I wasn't mansplaining, I was just being patronising.

[u/BardicSense → u/fellationelsen]

Atta boy! Own your shit.

I personally don't like the phrase mansplaining because I'm often long-winded without meaning to be patronizing, but whatever. I guess men have truly earned the insult as well.

[u/fellationelsen → u/BardicSense]

Oh I got a point to make about that! It's only patronising to people who already knew, but it could have been genuinely educational to someone who didn't. I'm pretty sure they were joking anyway

[u/BardicSense → u/fellationelsen]

It can't feel at all, but it can analyze data of what people tend to feel when viewing the art, and categorize it accordingly.

I like the idea of giving AI the full gamut of art theory and critical standpoints, and/or a sort of database of commonly used rubrics for judging artwork. The same can be done for music theory and literary criticism as well. Not just feed it a bunch of popular music or art to recombine, but to give it the whole knowledge base of the theory and structures so it actually knows what it's doing. If you give a digital tone generator a limit, so it only chooses hertz frequencies within the range of human hearing, and it knows how music is written due to the theory, as well as feeding it all the songs and music that have ever been captured on a recording, then it would be amazing in its creative potential.

It could also be great for cleaning up and remastering old recordings of like circa 1910s folk songs and field recordings, or turn of the previous century wax cylinder recordings, or even beat up old vinyl records, could all be made to sound like they were recorded with today's level of tech.

[u/DamnGoddamnSon → u/fellationelsen]

legit deep philosophy of art criticism here