My thing is art. Yours isn't.

2026-10-08 23:12 · 更新 2026-10-08 23:41

この記事はまだ日本語に翻訳されていません。英語の原文を表示しています。

And, of course, the first real post on here is about AI. What a shocker. Anyways. I've always been on the fence about AI. I think it has a genuine application in every craft. But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about what is art or more specifically, how people define art.

As a terminally online engineer, I have been subject to the rhetoric of "AI is acceptable when used in programming, but not when used in art." Every time I see that, I cringe. Why? Because it's so very obvious that certain people classify things as art by an entirely different standard than I do. I believe programming can be art. In fact, I think a lot of programming is art. It is a form of human expression. I very frequently consider what I program to be art. Do I consider all of it art? Probably not. Do I consider a good amount of it art? Definitely.

I actually think art is a much broader classification of concepts than most may consider it. I think back to a moment when I asked a friend of mine, "What is your favorite piece of art?" to which they responded, "⁠St. Peter's Basilica." I was taken aback for a moment, because the intent of my question was meant to be, "What is your favorite piece of artwork that could be easily displayed in a museum?" I realized what I had defined as art was narrow compared to how my friend had perceived it. I realized that art encompassed many things that couldn't easily be displayed in a museum. Architecture surely is art. Maybe not all architecture (although I'd have trouble drawing a line in the sand), but a lot of it. St. Peter's Basilica clearly has some level of artistic intent and expression through its decision and execution. It was meant to evoke a specific feeling. But it was also meant to be something practical; it is a place of worship and a place of reverence.

So that brings me to my first gripe and what I frequently see in the discourse around whether programming is art: the idea that practical things or things that are first and foremost a means to an end cannot be art. Software is incredibly useful; it's our way of making incredibly complex machines perform incredibly complex tasks that we can't or won't do ourselves. It makes things easier. It improves our lives. The same can be said about a building. We could simply sleep under trees and not have shelter, but we desire something more convenient and more secure. But we desire it to have some aesthetic qualities too; we desire a home with a layout that is practical but also is conducive to how we want to present our space. We want fancy capitol buildings that show off our country's taste while also housing our representatives. And we, very frequently, want software that has some aesthetically pleasing quality. We want sleek, streamlined applications that say, "I'm a piece of software put together by someone with a vision. I'm quality." I could've designed this blog with no CSS, no cool custom Markdown, and no fancy ⁠popovers. But I had a vision, one that is both functional and aesthetic, for what I wanted this blog to be, and thus, I consider this blog site to be art.

I'm not writing this post to give some sound, unshakable argument that will convince you that programming is definitely art, but I think it is obvious that aspects of it contain artistic expression and thus at least aspects of it should be considered art. Maybe parts of it aren't, because they're merely practical considerations needed to make the software usable and presentable. But practical considerations aren't limited to just software. There are pieces of art displayed in museums that are displayed in frames that the artist didn't choose. Either because the artist didn't originally display their piece in a frame or because the frame was damaged or isn't sufficient to protect the artwork. There will always be some practical considerations that aren't artistic considerations for presenting a piece of art. My choice of transport method is likely not an artistic consideration unless I use ⁠IP over Avian Carriers). My choice of programming language is likely not an artistic consideration unless I write it in ⁠Brainfuck. My choice of IDE is likely not an artistic consideration unless I decide to be a masochist and write it entirely in VIM like a weirdo. My choice of tool does not dictate whether or not that I produce is art.

We often consider photography an art, despite most modern photography being "produced" entirely by a machine. You may have immediately started screaming "But the photographer has to find a subject, arrange it, consider the position and angle of the camera when taking the photo, make camera adjustments, adjust exposure, focal length, blah, blah" and... you're right! They have to do all of that. Some of which are more practical considerations at times and some which are more artistic considerations at times. The same standard applies to software. Machines have been increasingly involved in the artistic process as time progresses and we've accepted them as "acceptable" tools for producing art. We accept them because they don't negate the potential for expression. Digital painting software doesn't remove the artist's ability to choose a specific brush and express themselves with it: it just makes painting more available and more practical for most. It does, however, come with drawbacks that may limit expression in some ways, like the inability to really consider a digital painting a piece of 3D art. I won't go on a big autistic rant about this part, but one of my favorite parts of seeing a painting in a museum is seeing layers of paint on top of each other which actually provides more depth to the piece than a simple bitmap could ever achieve unless you gave it some kind of cool normal map which would be epic. Anyways, despite this digression, we still consider digital painting art because there are meaningful ways for a digital painter to express themselves.

So that leads me to the crux of all of this, why is AI-assisted coding treated any differently to digital painting tools? You may say "Because it's doing something I could already do" to which I would say "Please perform millions of integer additions and multiplications for me to produce your digital painting file by hand." It is doing something you cannot do by hand. It is doing something only a machine can reasonably do. You could make the argument, "Well, I could theoretically do that, but I can't manually create the same output from an input that an LLM could!" to which I would say "Actually you could also just perform tons of numeric operations to use an open source model by hand." But that's a dumb request. It's just a dumb as asking you to manually perform arithmetic to digitally paint. I tell Clip Studio Paint to use put a stroke of digital paint on the screen and it complies. I tell Claude Code to implement a cool upside down Markdown and it complies. In both situations, I had intent to do something. I knew what I wanted to do, what I wanted it to look like, and what I expected a tool to output. And in both situations, it came to a specific result using complex mathematics I couldn't reasonably perform.

"I couldn't reasonably perform" is definitely doing some heavy lifting. Because you could tell me that instead of using the LLM that I could've instead written the code myself. That's totally true. I could write it. I am more than capable. I genuinely absolutely could with relative ease. I could also have bought canvas and paint and put a stroke of paint on the canvas. But I choose not to. Because I don't have to unless I want to. Because I can express what I want in Clip Studio Paint. Because I can express what I want with Claude Code.

Where am I going with this? Who knows. I rant a lot. I went on a few tangents. I just wanted to express myself. I just find that there's a lot of gatekeeping around what is and isn't art and it often comes from a defensive place. Even my own statements here are vaguely defensive. But we shouldn't try to define art based on our own personal biases, we should come to a conclusion as a society as to what art is and try not to exclude the artistic expression of others just because it seems different from how some people express themselves. We should not subscribe to rigid guidelines about art. And if we want to keep AI out of art, we need to apply that standard to all artistic expression, not just "really typical forms of online expression like digital illustration or painting."

Okay, that's it. Probably.

tl;dr: Art contains more things than you probably think and if you think AI has no place in art, you should apply that standard to all forms of art and not just the art you care about.

#ai

Markdownを表示

And, of course, the first real post on here is about AI. What a shocker. Anyways. I've always been on the fence about AI. I think it has a genuine application in *every* craft. But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about what is art or more specifically, how people define art.

I actually think art is a much broader classification of concepts than most may consider it. I think back to a moment when I asked a friend of mine, "What is your favorite piece of art?" to which they responded, "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica]]." I was taken aback for a moment, because the intent of my question was meant to be, "What is your favorite piece of artwork that could be easily displayed in a museum?" I realized what I had defined as art was narrow compared to how my friend had perceived it. I realized that art encompassed many things that couldn't easily be displayed in a museum. Architecture surely is art. Maybe not all architecture (although I'd have trouble drawing a line in the sand), but a lot of it. St. Peter's Basilica clearly has some level of artistic intent and expression through its decision and execution. It was meant to evoke a specific feeling. But it was also meant to be something practical; it is a place of worship and a place of reverence.

So that brings me to my first gripe and what I frequently see in the discourse around whether programming is art: the idea that practical things or things that are first and foremost a means to an end cannot be art. Software is incredibly useful; it's our way of making incredibly complex machines perform incredibly complex tasks that we can't or won't do ourselves. It makes things easier. It improves our lives. The same can be said about a building. We could simply sleep under trees and not have shelter, but we desire something more convenient and more secure. But we desire it to have some aesthetic qualities too; we desire a home with a layout that is practical but also is conducive to how we want to present our space. We want fancy capitol buildings that show off our country's taste while also housing our representatives. And we, very frequently, want software that has some aesthetically pleasing quality. We want sleek, streamlined applications that say, "I'm a piece of software put together by someone with a vision. I'm quality." I could've designed this blog with `no CSS`, no :rainbow[cool custom Markdown], and no fancy [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popover_(GUI)|popovers]]. But I had a vision, one that is both functional and aesthetic, for what I wanted this blog to be, and thus, I consider this blog site to be art.

I'm not writing this post to give some sound, unshakable argument that will convince you that programming is definitely art, but I think it is obvious that aspects of it contain artistic expression and thus at least aspects of it should be considered art. Maybe parts of it aren't, because they're merely practical considerations needed to make the software usable and presentable. But practical considerations aren't limited to just software. There are pieces of art displayed in museums that are displayed in frames that the artist didn't choose. Either because the artist didn't originally display their piece in a frame or because the frame was damaged or isn't sufficient to protect the artwork. There will always be some practical considerations that aren't artistic considerations for presenting a piece of art. My choice of transport method is likely not an artistic consideration unless I use [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers]]). My choice of programming language is likely not an artistic consideration unless I write it in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck]]. My choice of IDE is likely not an artistic consideration unless I decide to be a masochist and write it entirely in VIM like a weirdo. My choice of tool does not dictate whether or not that I produce is art.

So that leads me to the crux of all of this, why is AI-assisted coding treated any differently to digital painting tools? You may say "Because it's doing something I could already do" to which I would say "Please perform millions of integer additions and multiplications for me to produce your digital painting file by hand." It is doing something you cannot do by hand. It is doing something only a machine can reasonably do. You could make the argument, "Well, I could *theoretically* do that, but I can't manually create the same output from an input that an LLM could!" to which I would say "Actually you could also just perform tons of numeric operations to use an open source model by hand." But that's a dumb request. It's just a dumb as asking you to manually perform arithmetic to digitally paint. I tell Clip Studio Paint to use put a stroke of digital paint on the screen and it complies. I tell Claude Code to implement a cool :flip[upside down] Markdown and it complies. In both situations, I had intent to do something. I knew what I wanted to do, what I wanted it to look like, and what I expected a tool to output. And in both situations, it came to a specific result using complex mathematics I couldn't reasonably perform.

Okay, that's it. Probably.

tl;dr: Art contains more things than you probably think and if you think AI has no place in art, you should apply that standard to all forms of art and not just the art *you* care about.