[HN Gopher] You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let ...
___________________________________________________________________
You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be
respected
Author : cdahmedeh
Score : 101 points
Date : 2022-08-16 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cdahmedeh.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cdahmedeh.net)
| falcolas wrote:
| I saw a great commentary from an art gallery owner on Tiktok
| about the "inherent value" of art. The inherent value of art is
| zero.
|
| That is, the art itself has no inherent value. The actual value
| of a piece of art is whatever you can convince someone to pay for
| it.
|
| One thing that can help is having receipts of what you've sold an
| artists work for in the past, since you can use that to inflate
| that amount a current piece will sell for.
|
| To put it another way, how good of an artist you are is secondary
| to how good of a salesman you are (or how good of one you hire on
| your behalf) when it comes to making a living.
| [deleted]
| emptyfile wrote:
| Not terribly insightful. You could say the same for dog
| haircuts.
| [deleted]
| themacguffinman wrote:
| I agree but that's basically the case for literally everything:
| the value of _everything_ is determined by how much someone
| else will pay for it. Art isn 't notable for conforming to that
| universal law of capital valuation. Nothing, not even the most
| technically nutritious food or the hardest of metals, has a
| value beyond the demands of others.
|
| It does become a bit circular. Just saying "the value of art is
| what other people judge it to be" just begs the question "how
| do those other people judge it?" ad infinitum. When I hear
| "inherent value", I usually think of a non-monetary value, a
| value that exists outside a system of multi-party transactions,
| some utility that is _possible_ even if no one ends up using
| it.
|
| For art, I believe the inherent value is what it makes you
| feel. If a piece of art doesn't make you feel anything, it's
| pointless and useless as art.
| it_was_cool wrote:
| Not trying to be a dick, but it's "inherent".
| falcolas wrote:
| Naw, you're right. Typos are evil.
| polotics wrote:
| I was totally reading "Inherit value" as meaning the value of
| a piece of art that's not based on any quality, but only
| because it got enough public traction to let you hope your
| kids will be able to resell it at a profit...
| voxl wrote:
| This is a capitalist view of value, but it has flaws in
| relation to art. The problem is that art does not exist in a
| vacuum.
|
| To get at the real value of art, something that is not a
| necessity, you would need to somehow query every individual in
| a way where they had all their needs met and enough expendable
| income to use on art so that they would seriously consider
| buying it. But it can't be too much wealth or the situation is
| trivialized. The context puts a lot of restrictions on when
| someone is willing to buy an aesthetic good that doesn't
| provide other functions.
|
| Yet, as a society we can recognize that art benefits us on a
| social and intellectual level. So a society as a whole may want
| to patron some artists, regardless of what they make. This is
| an inert value for art, a recognition from society that there
| is value there, even if they don't know it exactly and wouldn't
| buy it for themselves.
| falcolas wrote:
| > So a society as a whole may want to patron some artists,
| regardless of what they make.
|
| But do we? As in, are there artists who receive money
| regardless of their production?
|
| Even on Patreon, most artists are paid because they're
| regularly putting out art, not because they exist as an
| artist. They're being paid to churn out art on a regular
| basis for their patrons, not for society as a whole.
| prewett wrote:
| That's a post-modern/materialist/rationalist philosophical
| take, but I don't think that is the major historical view. Does
| Beauty have intrinsic value? I suspect that many people go to
| art museums to see Beauty, but they certainly don't go there to
| find out how good of a salesman the artists were [a) the
| original prices are rarely displayed, b) the museum did not
| usually buy directly from the artist]. Some people might go to
| see what historical people thought was art-worthy (filtered
| through the museum's view of what is worth buying/displaying);
| an art-historian approach. Others in the field might go to
| explore the craftsmanship. But I think Beauty is a large draw.
| And the exchange of Beauty for (often) artificial meaning in
| modern art is why it remains controversial for museum-goers
| today.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| > That is, the art itself has no inherit value. The actual
| value of a piece of art is whatever you can convince someone to
| pay for it.
|
| This goes for any good or service. Usually when people talk
| about the "value of something" they mean "the price that people
| are willing to pay for it".
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Sure, in a sense, but I think the point of where exactly it
| occupies on the hierarchy of needs is worthwhile to keep in
| mind.
| wyattpeak wrote:
| I don't think that argument holds up. A VR headset, say, is
| astronomically high up the hierarchy of needs, but I know
| very few people who'd say the inherent value of a piece of
| modern technology is zero.
|
| It really seems to be art specifically which people are
| often keen to describe as worthless, not any particular
| category of good that artwork might fall into.
| phoe-krk wrote:
| > The inherent value of art is zero.
|
| So is the inherent value of gold, sans its use in electronics
| and dentistry.
| [deleted]
| falcolas wrote:
| That "sans" is doing a lot of work, especially with regards
| to electronics. Gold's traits - high conductivity, low
| reactivity - provide a lot of inherent value _because_ we
| build electronics in a highly reactive atmosphere.
| ModernMech wrote:
| But then the question becomes: what is the inherent value
| of electronics? If I buy a TV with gold conductors in it,
| I'm not buying it for the sake of just having a TV; in
| large part I'm buying it to display art (movies and TV
| shows). So then we're back to the gold only being valuable
| in the process of providing me access to art, whose
| inherent value is...?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| True. I enjoy documentaries about art forgers, who have
| followed this logic to its inevitable conclusion. They combine
| enormous technical ability with an antiquarian's exactitude and
| a dramatist's understanding of social dynamics to create the
| illusion of discovery for a market in which perverse incentives
| abound.
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| This is why you have actors who are the children of billionaires.
| And even Armie Hammer, as one of them, can't find time to be an
| actor because he's so busy having a breakdown.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Art is a service industry. I'm into electronic music and it's
| interesting to think about the youtuber's I watch, who very
| likely make most of their money from not music. I think we as a
| society should aspire to art that pushes conventions or makes us
| uncomfortable, but it also seems somewhat anti-human to think
| that people shouldn't pay for what they like. "Art that appeals
| to the lowest common denominator is popular" is just a practical,
| self-evident statement. Sometimes I think trying to get away from
| this and idealizing that it should be the best art and not the
| best marketed art that should be popular is arrogant. I think
| this is why a lot of artists end up moving to big cities, sure,
| to find opportunity, but also to find a community of people you
| can share your art.
|
| I think there is this perception that some people - Ed Sheerhan
| or Skrillex just get to be uniquely themselves, and maybe they
| do. This is kinda the thing about living in a big complex
| capitalist system. I think we can all see that as consumers of
| art that our limited reach and sharp opinions are one of the
| beautiful things about being human, but it's hard to see it from
| the other side.
|
| I don't know if it's sad or hopeful or human. I certainly wish I
| could quit my job and make music for a living. I don't really
| know what the answer is, but at the same time, I think it's like
| the if you build it they will come thinking that comes with
| building a startup.
| rafaelero wrote:
| I find a bit annoying how artists tend to think their craft is
| ~so important to humanity and that their originality is the
| engine to new creations. There is this idea that they provide
| immense value to us and I just don't see that. Sure, I do love
| the entertainment they offer us, but that's about it.
| sinecure wrote:
| Online artists, particularly those gunning for a big twitter
| following, have to hit it with a specific niche to make it big.
| I've seen people blow up for drawing really great knights, or
| sexy sea monsters, or for making really cool space ships. The big
| artists typically have an area of focus that goes viral. Or they
| are the highest professionals who work on Disney, Pixar, Video
| games etc.
|
| I have a story of watching someone go big on twitter with their
| art. I met a girl from New Zealand with incredible talent on
| discord. She painted amazing humans and wonderful creatures. She
| would paint daily and really struggled with getting a following.
|
| One day she posted a cute Pokemon girl with some busty
| cleavage... the post took off. She got thousands of likes and a
| flood of followers. She said she didn't want to resort to sexy
| smut to get a following, but the attention was too powerful. 6
| months later she has 30,000 twitter followers and a whole
| community oriented around her work of drawing sexy Pokemon
| characters and anime girls with increasingly skimpy outfits.
|
| While not the path she hoped for, she found her niche and as such
| she's made it into the limelight on twitter. So I think the moral
| of this story is that there is a path for artists to flourish
| online, but you need to find and target a specific area or
| interest... or draw lewd babes...
| empressplay wrote:
| "Give 'em what they want..."
| [deleted]
| ohiovr wrote:
| Who paid for the great works of music in the period between 1700
| and 1918? From such musicians as Liszt, Beethoven, Mozart,
| Bartok, Handel, Debussy, Bach etc... there were a heck of a lot
| of great composers in that period. I was analyzing Bach the other
| day. His Brandenburg Concerto #2 has tens of thousands of notes.
| That is a heck of a lot of work.
| klipt wrote:
| Rich patrons mostly.
| nine_k wrote:
| Also, the church(es) which employed many of them.
|
| On top of that, music was not a commodity back then. Live
| performances literally made a living for many of them as
| these performances were the only source of music. (And a
| church needs this music for every mass, for instance.)
|
| Now music is abundant, recordings are cheap / free, and the
| best performance is easily available in a recorded form. Live
| performances are still a thing and still feed many of the
| music creators. Royalties, too. But you better be a superstar
| for that to bring enough. (Liszt and Mozart were superstars,
| in a sense.)
|
| Wait until a Dall-E equivalent for music emerges though.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Dall-E for music will be interesting, but I think it's
| different. In a sense I think we're already there. Not in
| the sense that AI makes music but that music is so
| abundant, and there already aren't a ton of jobs in music
| writing. It's not a trade in the same way that like graphic
| design is. I mean, maybe Hans Zimmer loses his job but
| socially it doesn't seem like that big of an impact.
| Musicians don't tend to make money from streaming, and if
| you like going to shows to see performances, you're
| probably not going to watch a server rack on stage (Maybe,
| who knows what the future will bring!).
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Well, you might not want to watch a server rack, but what
| if that server rack were eventually powerful enough to
| run a light show, splice a video montage, and compose a
| song in real time, together based off of audience
| feedback? I've gotta believe that people would show up
| just for the spectacle.
| nine_k wrote:
| A "Dall-E for music" will put much of the control into
| hands of _listeners_. That is, you will not search for
| the music that matches your mood, you will ask for it
| directly, and maybe adjust in near-real time.
|
| A DJ will arrive with a unique set, likely with every
| track custom-made for a given gig.
|
| Selling any records at all will become very-very hard,
| except for rare hits with outstanding human vocal
| performance. In music clips, music will be relegated to
| the position of a movie soundtrack, if not lower.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I suspect ai music will have the uncanny valley/98% done
| problem for a while. For 1 I suspect the 'DJ' in your
| example, being an actual DJ or the artist themselves
| plays a larger part in how people listen to music,
| especially when it comes to 'pop music' (it may be less
| so for electronic/classical/jazz/"artistic" music.
|
| Obviously for anything sort of focus-y, house music
| downtempo etc. If we're not already there, we'll probably
| be there soon, though I am curious if a careful listener
| will eventually notice the uncanny valley problem there.
| But pop music I'd say has two problems. 1. There's a je
| ne sais quoi quality that's hard to replicate, and two I
| imagine the corpus is just not that big. I mean sure,
| there's a decently large corpus of pop music, but good
| pop music? how many hip hop billboard charts have there
| been a thousand, maybe a few thousand. How do you combine
| Beyonce, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston
| into a banger that doesn't sound too much like Beyonce',
| Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston without
| the titular character marketing said music.
| trebbble wrote:
| I hadn't thought about it until just now, but soundtrack
| music has been so terrible for the last 15-20 years that
| it's one area AI might genuinely be much better than what
| we've got now. Be hard to do worse, anyway. Studios and
| producers don't want to pay for good music anymore, so
| maybe they can get so-so AI music for cheap, and at least
| it'll be better than the crap they're using now.
| ohiovr wrote:
| I think a lot of them were royalty. But they competed with
| other royalty. See I have the best music!
| runevault wrote:
| I feel like the patron system of old ended up turning into
| the modern professional sports system instead of supporting
| the arts. Which sort of shows the shift in priorities at
| least the rich have had in more recent years.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| Except it's really local governments bankrolling the
| stadiums and upgrades. And then ticket and merchandise
| sales are mostly the fan base, not some patronage class.
| Maybe sponsorships are closest to patronage but those are
| still more of business transactions. It's all just
| business, and the wealthy aren't donating anything (unlike
| arts patronage).
| runevault wrote:
| The stadiums yes (and that's a rant I could go on for
| hours) but the salaries are based on the actual money
| coming into the league. And if you argue that isn't the
| same thing, what makes it any different from Kings
| funding patrons using tax money?
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| I draw the distinction because the fans themselves are
| (at least in theory) voluntarily choosing to support
| their hometown team, whereas the decision to apply taxes
| towards patronage is unilaterally made by the king.
| Though we could probably debate over whether the
| descriptor of a "hometown team" is truly honest, since
| it's more accurately a wealthy owner's team that happens
| to be located in / named after a city which benefits very
| little from the team's success.
| [deleted]
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Eh I don't know, I think to an extent Patreon which is
| explicitly this model has helped allow anyone to patronize
| artists they support.
| runevault wrote:
| The patron system of old was rich people/nobility, not
| large swaths of people. Patreon is named AFTER the idea,
| but isn't quite the same thing.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| They were also something that most modern artists and writers
| are not: good.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I am quite sure there were _a lot_ of bad contemporaries,
| but they never ended up in the history books.
|
| One of the new genres that really impresses me, is 3D art.
| The art form is getting quite mature, and often requires as
| much work as any Dutch Master oil painting.
|
| One of my favorite 3D renderings, is _Worth Enough_ , by
| radoxist[0]. Nowadays, I'm sure that there are works that
| beat it, but it was quite amazing, when he posted it.
|
| [0] https://www.deviantart.com/radoxist/art/Worth-
| enough-7324787...
| pojzon wrote:
| We have now pretty successful art creators like Alan
| Walker, but overall I dont see them ever being in the art
| history books.
|
| Ppl also dont see art where it is in its pure form
| -Engineering.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| In 100-300 years people will probably only know the names
| of the "good" modern writers and artists too.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Bach had a salary while he was the Cantor at Thomasschule, but
| most of his income came from funerals and weddings.
|
| https://bachnetwork.org/ub12/ub12-heber.pdf
|
| There were a lot of great composers in that period, but that's
| over 200 years and there were probably many more who are
| forgotten or were never even given the opportunity. And today
| there are probably more songs released on Spotify daily than
| were written in all of the 1700s.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Patronage. Honestly music was profitable for a very brief
| period of time between around 1940s-1990's. Every other time in
| history it's required someone rich to like you enough to pay
| you to do it, or be a traveling minstrel who lived on the edge
| of society.
|
| Like even Wagner who is arguably one of the most influential
| and popular composers of all time spent most of his life
| destitute and only was stable when the Kaiser himself was
| sponsoring him.
|
| I think in the same way though this speaks to something deep
| and profound about music, I once heard the saying "You can buy
| anything in this world for money" and I think that the problem
| we have pricing music has to do with how transcendental it is,
| it is designed specifically to convey or share something that
| transcends mere language or description, musics purpose is to
| communicate from one soul to another in a way that is deep and
| meaningful, that touches people and brings them in alignment
| and helps people see that which we can't quite understand in
| normal life.
|
| It is beautiful, and I think the attempt to commoditize music,
| make it corporate and subjugate it to the whims.of the market
| end up making music a little less musical.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| Hypothetically music should be priced like medicine or drugs.
| What you "get" out of it is a mood, like a stimulant or
| depressant (but with more complexity and side effects).
|
| "For $20, I can sell you this audio file that makes you yearn
| for the deep friendships you created that summer a few years
| ago. Side effects may include vivid visual memories and
| internal hallucinations of what could have been, sudden mood
| swings including finding them on Facebook to see what they
| are up to, and in some cases: crying".
| tschwimmer wrote:
| The problem with this approach is that unlike drugs, the
| effects of music are heavily influenced by the taste of the
| consumer. Some people find Celene Dion inspiring and
| heartwarming. Personally I find it to be sappy, generic
| garbage. Just because you're telling me it's inspiring
| doesn't mean it will be. That ambiguity leads to much
| higher price elasticity than a drug.
| wwweston wrote:
| > Honestly music was profitable for a very brief period of
| time between around 1940s-1990's.
|
| And having a market like this for a while bought us an
| incredible bounty of all kinds of music, some incredibly
| sophisticated, some with subtle & important things to say,
| some with all the art of a schoolyard taunt, some finding
| both wide and deep appeal.
|
| If the conditions were unusual, so was the harvest --
| bountiful enough that hopefully people will give a second
| thought about dismissing such conditions simply because
| they're potentially ephemeral (especially given that so are
| we).
|
| As for commodification: it's different from monetization.
| It's distinguished by fungibility; muzak for grocery stores,
| elevators, hotel lobbies, customer service calls, etc being
| the greatest example, but of course some pop music is
| disposable too. And yet people don't always know the
| difference in advance (art is tricky in that way). In any
| case, monetization which rewards successful indelible efforts
| provides a powerful reinforcement for creators who have a
| knack for things people value or even find transcendent.
|
| > You can buy anything in this world for money
|
| In the story where I heard this, that's something the devil
| says, and while the devil isn't above telling you the truth,
| he's much more likely to say whatever he needs to (true or
| false) in order to get you focused on a model/direction that
| serves malevolent purposes, like the Cthaeh.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| > In the story where I heard this, that's something the
| devil says
|
| I appreciate you pointing this out the full quote I am
| referring is "You can by anything in this world for money,
| so if something can't be bought for money it is not of this
| world."
|
| I feel like music tries to give us something that is not of
| this world, which is why we have so many problems when
| trying to figure out how to price music.
| watwut wrote:
| Neither Mozart nor Bach were poor. Quite a lot of these were
| basically middle class - respectable good paid job, but you
| are not Elon Muck rich.
|
| And some of them earned less then they could due to own habit
| of alienate people (Beethoven).
| nosianu wrote:
| Both examples you picked were at the very top of their
| profession - and then some - even at their time. I'm not
| sure if looking at the Newtons, Einsteins, or Mozarts and
| Bachs of the past tells us all that much for the current
| discussion.
|
| Not to leave it at criticism, while highly specialized, the
| _excellent_ lectures of Professor Christopher Page of
| Gresham College linked on the bottom of
| https://www.gresham.ac.uk/speakers/professor-christopher-
| pag... include a lot of details that tell us a lot about
| more ordinary musicians and (here: guitar) teachers, even
| if it's mostly about one instrument and a few limited
| locations and periods of time. A very interesting anecdote
| in any case, especially given the quality of the
| presentation(s). It is not explicitly or even mostly about
| the economic situation, but enough can be deduced from the
| context.
| shams93 wrote:
| This is very true in the traditional centers for the arts - new
| York, Chicago and Los Angeles
| jrh206 wrote:
| You're right. It sucks.
|
| I think I might have stumbled on the impossible miracle passive
| income technique you're referring to, though. I'm trying to get
| some traction, but it's hard because of virality filters. Please
| could you take a look at this and see if it matches your
| experience?
|
| https://gitlab.com/bartokio/bartok/-/blob/main/StartSomewher...
| fleddr wrote:
| The article is spot on. To a degree, the world has decided that
| it's actually not interested in high quality / long form content
| at all. I want to unpack that brutal statement a little.
|
| Distribution: Completely broken. Wherever you look, algorithms
| are gamed by a small group of people knowing how to play the
| game. It's incredibly demotivating to see mediocre grifters
| constantly winning, whilst people producing far better content
| get no traction.
|
| Winning is not winning: say you get lucky and do have a little
| hit piece, imagine 100K likes. This typically translates into
| very little meaning. Hardly any new followers, only low quality
| comments, no real "conversion", donations, etc. The engagement
| "success" is very inflated.
|
| Saturation: People are already on their max screen time, the
| difference between your awesome work and some lesser work is tiny
| as it comes to what consumers will do, which is not much at all
| if everything is endless. Hence deep engagement becomes almost an
| impossibility. This "Tiktok-ization" of the internet makes this
| even worse.
|
| Popularity: In big spaces where the masses hang out, you're
| subject to popular taste. A cute kitten will outrank your very
| best work.
|
| Monetization: pretty much nobody will pay for anything even if
| they directly and deeply engage with your works. Typical donation
| rates are 0.1% of the actively returning audience. Virtually
| nobody has an audience size to make this meaningful.
|
| So the bottom line is that if you do something high quality,
| genuinely, out of the goodness of your heart, the internet has
| infinite ways to encourage you to stop doing that.
|
| If you think all of this is bad, just wait what this next AI wave
| will do.
| gizajob wrote:
| The thing with starving artists is: they're meant to starve.
| joe_hills wrote:
| I hope anyone who wants to pursue the arts doesn't let pessimists
| like this discourage them from expressing themselves in the ways
| they love best.
|
| I can say from experience that becoming a self-employed artist is
| possible, but not easy or quick.
|
| My path was to find a full-time job that used different parts of
| my brain from my art. I used my limited free time to brainstorm,
| create, and publish whatever I could make time for to slowly
| build an audience for about a decade.
|
| Eventually enough folks discovered my work (and found themselves
| jobs themselves that allowed them more discretionary income) that
| becoming a self-employed artist became feasible for me.
|
| Over three-quarters of my revenue is direct audience support like
| tips or Patreon. I make enough for my kid to have opportunities
| my parents couldn't afford for me--while determining my own
| schedule and being more available to her day-to-day than my dad
| could be either.
|
| I acknowledge it's a gamble to buy supplies and spend time to
| make something, publish it, and travel to meet your audience a
| few times a year. I admit I'm lucky it paid off for me. But it
| isn't as near impossible as the author makes it out to be.
| palijer wrote:
| I think some of the best advice you can give folks who are
| looking to pursue arts as a full time career is 'don't do it'.
|
| It's incredibly difficult, and not at all like arts as a hobby.
| I think it is terrible advice blindly telling folks to pursue
| arts because it makes it seem reasonably achievable, and sets
| people up to waste far too much of their time becoming
| miserable with real consequences for themselves and those
| around them.
|
| If someone is discouraged by the "don't do it" advice that
| easily, then they were likely not going to be making it their
| full time employment.
|
| And the folks who have the drive and determination to see their
| goals to the end that aren't going to be dissuaded by some
| random person on the internet or at a conference telling them
| they are going to fail.
|
| Robin Williams had advice like that all the time, and along the
| same lines I really thing Cal Newport's 'So Good They Can't
| Ignore You' is incredibly beneficial to anyone at the beginning
| of a career path.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Or write you first few books, gain a following using social
| media, and then decide whether you want to make it a career
| based upon your previous success.
|
| I know a person who makes upper 5 figures at her day job and
| makes about that much writing zombie romance novels (as in,
| the main character falls in love with a zombie) for online
| publication. Clearly, it's her niche, but it's also a hobby
| that she's been able to buy a house with.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > I hope anyone who wants to pursue the arts doesn't let
| pessimists like this discourage them
|
| I would call it realism, not pessimism.
|
| > I can say from experience that becoming a self-employed
| artist is possible, but not easy or quick.
|
| Congratulation on making it, But that's the survivorship bias
| the article mentions. For every one like you, there are a
| thousand who did not make it, and will never make it. Should
| they stop trying because of this? Nope. But should they be
| aware of this and not bet their whole life on their art?
| Definitely yes.
|
| There are far too many people living in the decision that they
| just need to make an attempt or hustle for a short while, and
| they will swim in money and fame. And too many of them invest
| their life, money and future into this. I know some of them,
| and have seen where it ends. Realism is not pessimism, it just
| keeps you away from the darkest parts of life by pointing at
| darker parts.
| jfengel wrote:
| I am active in non-professional theater, and a lot of people
| come through my group with the hope of becoming professionals.
|
| My advice to them is that if there is anything else they can
| do, do it. Being a professional actor is miserable. The odds
| are it will fail entirely; most of the remainder will barely
| make subsistence.
|
| Much of what I do is to provide a place for people to be
| genuinely creative in ways that they couldn't afford to if
| their living depended on it. We get to take artistic chances
| that please us. You don't get that if your livelihood depends
| on it.
|
| A few people have taken my advice and concluded that they
| needed to do this. Some have had minor successes. Good for
| them. Others tried and discovered that indeed, it was not fun
| and not good for them, and they left. None, fortunately, are
| starving, convinced that persistence is the key to success
| because they read it on a motivational poster.
| Geonode wrote:
| As a long time theatre professional, all theatre is non
| professional. Or rather, it's not a business, and therefore
| there's not an avenue to success.
|
| All theatre, even (and especially) Broadway exists only
| because rich people funnel free money into it. Regionally as
| donors, and on Broadway as "investors" who almost never make
| a return.
|
| It is a rich people's hobby and for those who do make a
| career out of it, it's lottery winning odds to be middling
| comfortable. One percent of one percent become well off.
|
| You may also notice, as an audience member, that it is almost
| universally terrible entertainment. It just sort of shuffles
| on through the centuries with an occasional Hamilton and lots
| and lots of wealthy networking opportunities.
| kcindric wrote:
| Would love to see your art! Care to share it?
| oigursh wrote:
| Read as pretty pompous?
| delisam wrote:
| Art, in its current state, has been fully commercialized in that
| if you don't have someone who is "in the know," then there is
| very, very slim chance of being successful. I was briefly in the
| art world (paintings) and everyone wanted to kiss the successful
| dealers' asses to get exposure and get a curated exhibition. W/o
| it, nothing's going to happen. It's sad but that's what it's
| become.
| lancesells wrote:
| I think success in art is very much like any other industry.
| It's part luck, it's part "playing the game", it's part
| networking, and it's part skill & talent.
|
| I'm a fine artist and would put myself in the "not successful"
| category. I don't make nearly enough to live off of it but it's
| inherently something I have to do. I could, and have, done
| commercial work in the past that I could live off of but I just
| can't bring myself to feed the content machine.
|
| edit: And although I'm kind of ok with the "not successful"
| part I think my work is important and should be seen. More than
| anything my measure of success is to add to culture.
| aschearer wrote:
| My question for the author is: What do you have to offer the
| world that is original and compelling? Why should we give you our
| time?
|
| It's fine if there aren't answers to these questions. But if
| you're going to create something professionally I think they need
| affirmative answers.
|
| Creating is very personal, rewarding, and fun. Those are reasons
| enough to be creative. But they aren't reasons for commercial
| success or critical respect.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| There's a lot of entitlement from "artists" who sit on a moral
| high horse and expect special treatment because they're
| "expressing a higher truth" while the rest of us normies toil in
| obscurity and sell our souls to corporate overlords to pay the
| bills. Not all artists are like that, and IME the more successful
| and experienced ones are the least likely to think that way, but
| the attitude is quite common with beginners who haven't
| accomplished much yet.
|
| I have more admiration for someone who's laying down cement in
| 100 degree weather to put a roof over their family's heads, or
| someone who's putting in the hours massaging mindnumbingly boring
| spreadsheets to be able to support themselves, or someone putting
| in overtime at a hospital. The expectation that people must
| support you and give you preferential treatment because you're
| expressing yourself never made sense to me. There are lots of
| other ways in which people make sacrifices, many more
| commendable.
|
| Being able to express yourself and having an audience is a
| privilege, not something people need to be shamed into giving
| you. You always see signs exhorting you to "support your local
| artists", yet you never see encouragement to support your local
| roofers.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| It saddens me that wanting enough time to develop yourself is
| considered a " moral high horse" implying "special treatment".
| Personally, I think virtually anyone should be able to get
| spartan survival with a part time job giving them enough time
| develop themselves - or work a full time job to live reasonably
| well. Reading Samuel Delaney's biographical sketch The Motion
| of Light On Water, the US seemed to offer that possibility in
| 1962 but today minimal rent in most places requires two jobs.
|
| The same forces that mean those people "laying down cement in
| 100 degree weather" often can't actually "put a roof over their
| family's heads" are the forces that keep poor artists for
| existing in this society.
| pcwalton wrote:
| A lot of people would say the same about programmers.
| finexplained wrote:
| Sure, but we actually provide business value and our toolset
| is applicable to a broad set of problems.
| filoleg wrote:
| Yeah, but programmers aren't trying to justify higher pay or
| claim they deserve some special treatment because they are
| "expressing themselves".
|
| Programmers are simply paid what they get paid because
| businesses they work for can make up that cost (of paying
| programmers the salary) with profit multiple times over,
| using the work produced by those programmers.
| rafaelero wrote:
| With the development of AI, it's been quite an experience to
| see artists grasping the fact that their craft is not the
| magical thing they think it is.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| DALL*E 2 and co are pretty neat, but the output mostly sucks
| as art. Good art comes from somewhere, having provenance in
| person, place, culture, and time. Really great art can be
| quite moving, and I've yet to see anything AI generated that
| elicits more than a chuckle or a mild "huh neat" from anyone
| who doesn't know why it's technically impressive.
| rafaelero wrote:
| It's quite simple to verify your assertion. Someone should
| show people some pieces of art and ask them to rate the
| quality of each of them. If the rating between human-made
| art and machine-made art doesn't differ significantly, then
| we can comfortably say that there is nothing special on art
| produced by humans. I think I know what the result will be,
| but hopefully some researcher will carefully investigate
| this issue.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| You're talking about a question of taste, and I'm sure
| you could find a group of people and some samples where
| the group prefers the AI generated images. That seems
| almost tautological.
|
| There's more to art than the mere appeal of an image to
| random people. Some great art is disturbing, but it is
| emotionally resonant. No doubt some of these AI images
| are quite neat to look at, but they're basically
| assemblages, high tech collages. It's a futurist parlor
| trick.
|
| Philosophically art requires consciousness and a
| conscious will to express something. These AIs aren't
| conscious and don't make art.
| rafaelero wrote:
| I don't think you understood what I was saying. It's not
| about taste, it's about being able to differentiate
| between human and machine made art using whatever metric
| people have about what constitutes good art.
| bulatb wrote:
| ~ A take ~
|
| "Quality" is what we say when what succeeds is not what we think
| should succeed.
|
| There's an actual objective function that defines success: that's
| fitness. Quality is what we call the difference between that one
| and the one we'd like. Expecting everything to rearrange itself
| to use our function is a high-"quality", low-fitness strategy.
| a4isms wrote:
| I don't think that's how I use the word "quality." Yes, it is
| not synonymous with popularity. But no, I don't think there's
| something wrong with the world that people prefer a certain
| thing that is "lower" quality.
|
| Is champagne higher-quality than coca-cola? Of course it is,
| but no serious person argues that the world ought to prefer
| champagne to coke. Quality is a combination of a bundle of--
| cough--qualities, not all of which are accessible to everyone,
| nor are they necessarily desirable to everyone.
|
| One example of the accessibility aspect is that many mediums
| have a natural progression. The music educator Jerry Coker
| provides a simple model: He wrote that the enjoyment of music
| requires--amongst other things--a balance between familiarity
| and novelty.
|
| In his model, when we listen to music our brain is constantly
| "playing along," basically predicting what the next note or
| whatever will be. When it's always right, we can grow bored of
| it because it lacks novelty. When it's always wrong, we grow
| frustrated with it because it lacks familiarity. Somewhere in
| between is the right combination of "yes, I know this, but
| whoa, that was cool!"
|
| This model explains one kind of progression: We begin in a new
| genre with things that are relatively simple to digest and
| which are repetitive. As we gain familiarity with simple and
| repetitive music, we seek out more complex music that has
| provides a little more novelty, such as unusual chord voicings
| or progressions.
|
| Of course, we eventually grow overly familiar with that, so we
| seek out even more novelty, and at some point, we find
| ourselves enjoying music that our friends who haven't taken our
| journey find repellantly random.
|
| Is that music of higher quality? Yes? It's something that
| people with more experience with music prefer, which is one way
| to define "quality."
|
| Is there something wrong with the simpler music that is more
| accessible to those who haven't taken the same journey? No.
|
| Is there something wrong with the universe that most people do
| not enjoy the "higher quality" music? Also no.
| bulatb wrote:
| That model about music is really interesting. Thanks for
| sharing, I never would have found it.
| bulatb wrote:
| _> Is champagne higher-quality than coca-cola? Of course it
| is_
|
| Hm. I don't think I'd use the normal definition that way. I
| see it, but I wouldn't compare them.
|
| But maybe that's why I'm suggesting this weird definition.
| The thing that people point to with the word, even in your
| example, is a bundle of traits that either stops existing or
| becomes irrelevant when you remove the speaker's preference.
| I don't think there's anything in "quality" except that
| normative aspect, because we can articulate the other stuff
| by just describing the champagne.
| a4isms wrote:
| "Quality" may be hard to pin down in super-objective terms,
| but that doesn't mean it has no value as a word or a
| concept. To paraphrase, "Quality is like art. I know it
| when I see it."
|
| Sure, you and I might have slightly different ideas of what
| quality is, but in various fields, we find established
| consensus on these matters. I happen to know a little about
| music.
|
| But surprise, surprise, while I listen to Bach, I also
| listen to Cameo. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't
| presume that Bach's music can't be considered of higher
| quality just because it's hard to write an algorithm to
| score quality, or just because Cameo were more popular than
| Bach in the 80s and early 90s.
| bulatb wrote:
| _> "Quality is like art. I know it when I see it."_
|
| I think that's the minimal repro. The thing objectively
| will have those traits, but you can just enumerate them.
| Labeling them "quality" adds information about you, not
| the thing.
| nbzso wrote:
| A little life story:
|
| I had commercial success in art at the humble age of 23. Not only
| were my paintings respected and collected by accomplished and
| wealthy individuals, they formed commissions for years to come.
| My success was the result of an obsession with craftsmanship and
| clever word-of-mouth marketing.
|
| Suddenly, one day after insisting on meeting the deadline of the
| expensive commission, I had a headache and my nose was bleeding.
| Fortunately, it turned out to be a minimal problem as a result of
| stress.
|
| I stopped painting for a month and went to rest in the mountains.
| There I discovered that, influenced by success and the pursuit of
| perfection, I had lost the most valuable of my talents.
|
| To enjoy the process.
|
| I then vowed to no longer let the need for material success and
| validation come before my need to express myself visually and
| feel enjoyment of the freedom to change my artistic style or
| experiment without direction.
|
| I returned the prepaid orders, apologized for the disappointment
| I was causing, and moved on.
|
| Not only that, but I realized that I would have to work another
| job if I wanted to keep the purity of the process for myself.
|
| I began in graphic design, moved to web design and started a web
| solutions company.
|
| And when my friends ask me to this day: How could you turn your
| back on your successful art career?
|
| I answer them:
|
| I don't paint for you. I paint for myself. It's part of my life.
| A place where there are no compromises, no demands, no
| expectations, no projections, no assessments, no tasks, no
| metrics, no applause and no glory.
|
| A place where I am happy.
| syndacks wrote:
| Hi Ahmed, I want to read your piece, but your opening sentence
| needs some work:
|
| >Us denizens of the Internet have become familiar with concepts
| that were foreign more than a decade ago, one of the most that
| causes the most influence is going viral.
|
| This is largely unintelligible and, as a writer, I think
| something you should consider making more concrete. Otherwise,
| you run the risk of leaving your readership confused and,
| ultimately, not reading your work.
| golly_ned wrote:
| This is so patronizing.
| Alupis wrote:
| Constructive feedback is not patronizing.
|
| People need to be able to receive constructive feedback and
| improve, without feeling attacked.
|
| I did not detect snark, or superiority in this feedback
| comment. Instead, it seems to genuinely attempt to offer
| constructive feedback.
|
| The parent pointed out a specific fragment that needs re-
| work, which is an actionable item for the OP. Perhaps it
| could have been framed more positively, but constructing a
| place where people cannot offer direct, actionable feedback
| is quite unhelpful for all involved.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I'm mostly on your side, although the specific phrase "I
| want to read your work but..." [your opening sentence isn't
| good enough for me to grace your article with my superior
| writer eyeballs?] is perhaps problematic.
|
| Otherwise, I agree that it appears helpful and applicable.
| Geonode wrote:
| No, throughout the article there are major hallmarks of
| underdeveloped English writing mastery, and overall the whole
| thing is a bit more florid than it is clear and to the point.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| It's the same when trying to be a professional sports player,
| streamer, music producer, and many more things. Just don't go
| into these things thinking it will become a full time job that
| will pay enough to support you.
|
| And for god's sakes, the last thing you want to do is go into
| debt while paying for an art degree at a liberal arts college
| that has no vested interest in whether you can get a job that can
| support you afterwards.
| uwagar wrote:
| then be a starving artist.
| swayvil wrote:
| Freedom to be an artist is exactly the same as freedom to be a
| parasitic slob.
|
| Say we do UBI program.
|
| What's the minimum percentage of artists/opensource-
| coders/gardeners to make it worthwhile?
|
| 1 out of 1000?
|
| What if we suddenly had 1000 new Edisons and Picassos running
| around? Would that be cool?
| didgetmaster wrote:
| It begs the question of whether software can be akin to art,
| music, and poetry. While most software just attempts to be
| functional (minimally at times), at least some programmers take
| great pride in their work and try to create software that is
| elegant and interesting.
|
| It is kind of like traditional architecture. Most buildings are
| just designed and built with a purpose in mind with not as much
| thought into creating a 'work of art'. But there are some really
| beautiful buildings that get all kinds of awards for how they
| look. Likewise, most software is just built to accomplish a task;
| but some is the work of much thought and design to make it do
| some amazing things.
|
| Software is one of those fields where a true 'artist' can have a
| lot of enjoyment from creating it while still making some money
| because what they created is not just cool to look at, but
| provides some real utility.
|
| Software 'artists' tend to have two different projects. One is
| their day job that must be built to someone else's specification.
| The other is a side project where they can express their creative
| side and build something really cool.
|
| I have such a hobby project https://didgets.com that I have
| thoroughly enjoyed building.
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| Didget looks pretty interesting, I'd be interested in hearing
| more. I just dropped you a message on your site...
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| "I have the impression, as some others have taught me, rather
| than through my own intuition, that what 'makes it' is something
| that fits the most common denominator."
|
| Very likely true. Often the most-creative artists are out on-the-
| edge. Escher for one example. Unless that 'edge' is riding an
| arriving zeitgeist (like the Beats), the artist may die before
| recognition ... like Schubert, like van Gogh. Such artists are
| often not gifted with self-promotion and negotiation skills (and
| struggle with finances).
|
| Usually the people most capable of arousing interest are not
| endowed with vision (or great advisors, like kings and emperors).
| And so the trendy buuut less-than-new 'wins' by virtue of mere
| novelty. And we all lose.
| eikenberry wrote:
| You can certainly be a working artist. Get paid to create things
| for someone else while doing your own thing on the side. I
| thought this was pretty much the standard, you were either a
| working artist or a starving artist. The big stars that can make
| a good living from patronage is small compared to artists
| overall.
| boredemployee wrote:
| The big stars are less than 1%
| Max-q wrote:
| Well... you can make what people like, and get paid (the mediocre
| stuff) or make thing you and a few like, and get little money out
| of it. I think this is how it always has been.
|
| With every new platform or tech revolution (like streaming) we
| hear that now it is the little guys turn. But the opposite
| happens, the big ones take an even larger share.
|
| Maybe I misunderstood the article, it was hard to read for my
| mediocre mind.
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| There have been a few Spotify-clone studies that showed 70-80% of
| musical success was attributable to "quality" but the ranking of
| the top 10-20% was essentially random ("luck" to use the author's
| word). Now consider Dall-E and other art-making tools. If it
| becomes easier to make quality art, then the luck factor gets
| much more important, because the baseline quality is higher. So
| one can ask whether e.g. the Mona Lisa got famous because it was
| one of the few quality works of its time. I expect that if
| someone made a similar-quality painting today they would probably
| have to sell it on the street. The trend is that art's value goes
| down but at the same time quality art becomes much more
| prevalent. Meanwhile economic success becomes even more random.
| ghaff wrote:
| In fact, the Mona Lisa didn't become an iconic painting to the
| general public for a very long time.
|
| But, in general, while there's a lot of variation in musical
| styles/art styles/etc. that a given person likes, I find that
| there's fairly broad agreement that an expert list of, say, the
| 50 top classic rock songs are pretty good--among people who
| like classic rock even if they might disagree on the order.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Yeah but the "classic rock" phase came at a particularly
| unique time in history when hegemonic record labels and
| focused their efforts to popularize a very small cohort of
| artists. And cheap broadcast technology and syndicates made
| uniform radio the cheapest form of entertainment in human
| history. I can't say it enough. Mid 20th century America and
| Western Europe are one of the mlst unique media landscapes in
| human history.
|
| Monopolistic mass media which reaches hundreds of millions of
| people is weird. Like most of the mid 20th century we should
| be cautious about using it as typical of anything.
| ghaff wrote:
| I could make the same statement about classical music,
| opera, ballet, film, "oldies," folk for at least some
| subcategory, etc. and I think it would still be generally
| true.
| dexwiz wrote:
| It got famous after it was stolen and "returned." I know a
| few art nerds who are convinced the one we know is a fake and
| the original is lost/destroyed.
| frozencell wrote:
| The original is in the Castle of Bois, near Da Vinci tomb
| AFAIK.
| mikkergp wrote:
| One thing that interests me about Dall-E and other art-making,
| is, I wonder if it will eventually lead to individuals making
| their own high-quality animated feature films and "triple-a"
| games. Will these tools get to the point that an individual can
| make a unique triple-a game in their bedroom?
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| Well, there are already high-quality films / games by small
| teams with no external funding, like
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsGZ_2RuJ2A, Braid, and
| Celeste. But for long form stuff like these, the tools don't
| matter as much, it is more like writing a novel where the key
| is to get something done every day. The main issue is
| perseverance - a tool dropping the workload from 100 days to
| 10 days is nice, but it doesn't change the fact that most
| people will get bored and give up in 10 minutes.
| [deleted]
| evouga wrote:
| I'm pessimistic. I see DALL-E and other generative algorithms
| as akin to the camera (or video camera): they are powerful
| new tools for creating art, and their full impact on the art
| world remains hard to foresee. But what is clear is that AI-
| assisted art will become a new medium, and "triple-a" games
| may just shift to being produced by teams of professional
| experts at using the new tools.
| boredemployee wrote:
| Precisely there are some old studies linking popularity in
| music (as a metric for success) to blog posting about the given
| songs in that field/niche. It turns out that luck could be just
| money, media press or just a good network.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| This phenomenon you mention is interesting in other disciplines
| and topics. The gradient of power law distributions across many
| measurable spaces looks the same.
|
| There is a steady, near linear association with "quality" (no
| matter how you abstract this definition), and then the more
| exponential gains are typically exceptional instances with more
| unique circumstances for how they were measured along this
| portion of the curve.
|
| Another widely measured example is income. Most people have
| jobs with increasing pay commensurate with market demand, but
| the top have exceptional combinatorial factors involved: e.g.
| they are BOTH highly skilled AND own a business or have some
| obscure high risk job, were an inventor of something, receive
| substantial trust fund income, etc.
|
| The more boring way of stating this is... exceptional results
| are by definition exceptional.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Underrated piece. In many creative or specialized subfields, some
| of the best work is being done for peanuts or being given away.
| Prices are generally thought of as ruled by supply. demand, and
| product quality, but inferring the latter from the first two
| really only works in terms of commodities that are relatively
| fungible.
|
| Preferential attachment is a large and underappreciated (by most)
| factor. You could do experiments by uploading the same piece of
| media under different accounts, both within and across platforms,
| and using aggressive promotional strategies for one as a kind of
| A/B testing. One will perform much better than the other.
|
| Then follow up with the opposite approach; add another piece of
| media, and have the less popular account use the more aggressive
| promotion strategy. It might still do less well, as there can be
| a halo effect from the previous success.
| egypturnash wrote:
| This strategy kinda selects for "great at SEO and promotion",
| not "great at art".
| a4isms wrote:
| Of course it does. There are some very skilled musicians who
| are extremely popular, and also thousands of entirely
| interchangeable boy-bands and girl-bands and what not that
| have hits as long as a large PR machine is there to market
| them, and as long as they focus on milking their celebrity.
|
| Making money in music isn't that much different from making
| money in tech. This very day there is/was a post on the front
| page about Adam Neuman(sp?) getting bankrolled yet again.
| Why? Because he is described as the world's greatest pitch
| man.
|
| Likewise, crypto. Who's making money? The smartest
| programmers? or the people who know how to promote their
| projects?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Yes, that's my point: popularity and quality are only weakly
| correlated, and platform economics select for the former.
| fsloth wrote:
| Reciprocally, historically this is nothing new. Fame begets
| adoration. Mona Lisa became famous painting and hence
| valuable only by the publicity created due to it's theft.
| Without the publicity it would be exactly the same painting,
| only not as valuable.
|
| There are several effects at play affecting an art pieces
| "market worth" and "quality and skill of the art" is only one
| component.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa
| drukenemo wrote:
| As a music composer, I'm a bit cynical about his statement around
| artists giving their work out of love for others. As self-
| expression, art tends to be intrinsically selfish. If other
| people love it too, that's even better. But that's not what I
| think good artists focuses on. Art is to me the reverse of a
| business: you expect a market to be created or to exist for the
| product you decide to create. If you're good, persistent and a
| bit lucky, you might succeed.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I love art, artists and want the good ones to
| thrive.
| vanadium1st wrote:
| Outside of my regular job, I am an indie folk music artist,
| trying to rise in the local music scene here in Dnipro, Ukraine.
| Even though learning to be a musician from scratch in my 20s was
| a hard process that took years and years, by far the hardest part
| of it was trying to establish a passive income, so I could have
| enough free time for practicing, performing and writing music.
|
| A lot of my talented peers are so much better then me in all of
| the music and performing stuff, but can't find enough time for it
| between regular boring work. Woody Allen said that 80% of success
| is just showing up, and it seems true. But now I see how a lot of
| talented people simply can't afford to show up. They are missing
| open mics and performing opportunities because they can't skip
| another shift as a barista, they can't find time for rehearsal
| because of soul killing the low paying bank job. I keep thinking
| about all the beautiful songs that are left to be unwritten.
|
| I guess the life of artists was always like that - either you are
| struggling, or you have a source of passive income that carries
| you through the development years. And I do think that this
| moment in history is as full of opportunity as it ever was.
| Still, it was a surprising discovery for me. I really thought
| that at least at the starting level it would be mostly about who
| plays their chords better, and it surprisingly isn't.
| perfmode wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. Do you have any music online?
| vanadium1st wrote:
| Thank you for your interest. At this moment I am only
| performing live and am not proud enough of my performance
| level to record it and share it online
| boredemployee wrote:
| I believe in the statement by Albert Barabasi who says that to
| be successful in art all you need is a good network, nothing
| else.
| sidlls wrote:
| That's true for almost any field.
| boredemployee wrote:
| Not for fields that require some kind of performance
| munk-a wrote:
| So it's good for some fields other than performers?
|
| I've met plenty of stock brokers and engineers that skate
| by on credentials - I try to avoid them professionally
| because they tend to produce workplaces with exceedingly
| high demands and low compensation due to the drain they
| introduce on the system... but they continue to exist.
|
| Heck, HN has many time had discussion on C-level folks
| who basically revolving door their way from failure to
| failure and still get huge golden parachutes when they
| sign on to a new company even though their performance
| history is trash.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Is the local music scene up and running? Aren't you like 100
| miles from the front?
| vanadium1st wrote:
| Yeah, it's weird. The music scene is as live as it ever was
| here, along with all other parts of the normal city life.
|
| It's not really a new situation for us. This war continues
| for 8 years, and all this time the front was about 200 miles
| from us. During this new phase of the invasion the frontline
| got a little closer to Dnipro, but not that much.
|
| Regular life here stopped in winter-spring, when we didn't
| know which cities will withstand this phase of the invasion.
| Tragically Kherson, Mariupol and many others are lost as of
| now. But we in Dnipro were lucky enough and life kind of
| continues here.
|
| There are changes of course. Practically no artist in Ukraine
| gets paid now at any level. Every single concert is for
| charity, gathering funds for arms or refugees. And, as with
| all other life, there are constant interruptions of air raid
| sirens.
|
| Other than that, music scene lives as usual. People still go
| to concerts and artists still perform. Predictably a lot of
| sad sad songs gets written now, but honestly no one really
| wants to hear them - everyone here gets enough negativity
| from everywhere else. The best bet is to stick to the happy
| and hopeful stuff.
| bsder wrote:
| I really do wish we had "basic income" in the US. Besides
| helping out the lowest socioeconomic class, it really seems
| like this would benefit artists, too.
| qaq wrote:
| Well the COVID gave a taste of it still can't put inflation
| under control from that experiment.
| thethethethe wrote:
| Seems a little entitled to me. Why should artists be able to
| spend their time doing exactly what they want while all the
| boring plebs have to pick vegetables/write CRUD apps?
|
| Sounds like someone is upset that more people dont find utility
| in their work
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I hear this a lot from people who don't understand how much
| hard work is involved in the art life, or generalize from
| notoriously feckless examples.
| watwut wrote:
| I like programming, actually. I have a sense that most my
| collegues currently like it too.
| swayvil wrote:
| Because artists make the world an objectively better place in
| an uncommonly powerful way.
|
| Because it's an excellent investment, socially speaking.
|
| Because investment in the arts (I mean serious investment. Not
| like USA) has worked pretty well for some countries.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Because investment in the arts (I mean serious investment.
| Not like USA) has worked pretty well for some countries.
|
| I think that's just misunderstanding cause and effect. It's
| more that nations "invest" more in art as they get wealthier.
| It's not that they pay a bunch of people to do whatever they
| want and tada, the country becomes industrialized.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| I enjoy the arts as much as anyone else, but the narrative
| that art by default is a transformative force for social good
| is just that, a nice marketing sleight of hands. Most art is
| entertainment, with a rather minuscule slice having something
| interesting to say. Not to say that entertainment isn't
| valuable and pleasurable, but there's a big gap between that
| and it advancing humanity.
| swayvil wrote:
| No, not by default. 1 in a 1000. But still.
|
| And we're talking all realms of unrestrained creative
| effort here. Science, technology and stories about dragons.
| Opensource software as well as basement watercolorists.
| This is where the shiny new legos of our society come from.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| This seems a little motte-and-baileyish. You start with
| "arts make the world a better place" and when presented
| with a critique you retreat towards "arts are the same as
| technology and science, let's treat them as one single
| group", which I don't buy.
| kradeelav wrote:
| This piece touches on the inherent tension between originality
| and selling out (or selling to the masses) that I've definitely
| seen in comic circles. So many aspiring indie artists/comic
| creators who think Patreon is their easy ticket to a passive and
| liveable income when the stark reality is much different.
|
| It's why my first piece of advice to any creative is to have a
| dayjob that maximizes their free time to create freely without
| financial strings. Even if burnout or predatory publishers don't
| get you, following the whims of trends is a slow creative death
| that's far more insidious than the other two.
| pizzathyme wrote:
| I used to work in the games industry, which was me trying to
| feed my family and pursue an art passion at the same time. It
| wasn't great at either: pay is low and the art you get to make
| not so fulfilling.
|
| I switched a few years ago to splitting these apart: I (1) got
| a non art tech job that I love (which is key) and that pays
| great, and (2) I started doing pure artistic games on the side
| as a hobby, no need for money from them.
|
| I am much, much happier. I think many people, my past self
| included, cause themselves a lot of pain by trying to lump
| everything together. If someone loves baking pie no one says
| "When are you going to quit your job and open a bakery?!" It's
| just fun! Why does it need to pay the bills?
| digitallyfree wrote:
| This sort of leads into the "debate" between two perspectives
| on work which I saw a lot in my school years.
|
| The first camp is those who believe that you should find a
| job in a field you love (maybe that's art). The idea is that
| even if you don't make much, you'll be happy and have the
| drive to do well.
|
| The second camp is that you should find a field you don't
| necessarily love, but is more stable/higher paying and thus
| allows you to comfortably do the things you like in your
| spare time.
|
| I've heard these two argued to death among students in high
| school and among parents today. I took the second route and
| am happy with my choice, though I agree it's not for everyone
| (really depends on the work you do and whether or not you
| have the time/energy/will to work on your creative passions).
| dinosaurdynasty wrote:
| > Why does it need to pay the bills?
|
| Because life is so expensive for so many that every effort
| has to have money in mind or they starve. Especially if you
| are chronically ill (or simply have less-than-average energy
| levels), meaningful stuff outside work just will not happen.
| genewitch wrote:
| there's a screenshot of greentext from one of the *chans where
| a visual artist describes the physical and mental revulsion of
| furry art (the artist is revolted), and the fact that no matter
| what, they pay the most, usually up front. the artist would
| love to make normal commissions, but there's no money in it.
|
| I've personally been part of about a dozen musical albums, i've
| never seen a penny or any recognition for it. One thing i
| managed to upload to the internet got a third of a million
| hits, but it was happenstance, not music, and i just happened
| to edit wikipedia very quickly and have a really good sound
| file host at the time. It was the "re-awakening" of the UVB-76
| "buzzer" in ~2010 - and i can't even remember how i recorded it
| anymore! Wired magazine and a few other outlets approached me
| to license the recording. If you've heard the "NAIMINA"
| recording of UVB-76, that was something that was originally put
| on the internet by me.
|
| I haven't released a "real" song in over a decade.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Patreon isn't an easy ticket, but it does seem like it's opened
| up some interesting opportunities. I listen to a few podcasts
| where the hosts have been able to quit their full time jobs and
| live on Patreon income. Being funded by Patreon as opposed to
| ads means you don't necessarily need to maintain a huge
| audience to live, just a dedicated one. So you're more free to
| explore less popular topics that you know the audience will
| like.
|
| Most podcasts being created now will probably still fail, but
| it feels like a nice step away from the current ad-induced
| hellscape.
| genewitch wrote:
| > Most podcasts being created now will probably still fail
|
| there's somewhere in the ballpark of 5,000,000 serialized
| podcasts. "Most ... fail" is barely descriptive!
| vlunkr wrote:
| Yeah well I don't have the numbers. Just saying it's still
| not easy.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| This is assuming that people make art as a career. I just
| released my first music album this week (NOT going to post a link
| here). I did it for me (well other than the lullaby, which I
| wrote for my daughter). Art as passion project is still alive and
| well, and I'm totally fine with chasing the long tail, and going
| full word of mouth and obscure stumble upon style suggestions to
| find new things. Certainly works better than listening to
| marketing.
| jp57 wrote:
| I don't understand why somehow lots of people are discovering the
| economics of art as if it's some new situation, when the notion
| of the "starving artist" has been around for ages.
|
| Rewards in creative fields have always been distributed on a very
| steep pareto curve, and the expected financial ROI across all
| aspirants is non-positive. This situation isn't some new
| development of the internet age.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| additionally, great art can kill the artist
|
| source: artist
| dexwiz wrote:
| The 20th century was an interesting time for art. Art for the
| sake of art became the norm. Historically art has always been
| paid for by 1) the church 2) the state or 3) the rich. Many
| subjects in museums are religious, propaganda, or vanity. Even
| the Sistine Chapel was a job.
| jesuscript wrote:
| Let people do what they want. Stop lecturing.
| Msw242 wrote:
| How can anybody read this?
|
| This is _bad_ prose. It 's flowery, self-indulgent, and lacking
| substance.
| balentio wrote:
| The system is mostly pay to play. However, it is not really art
| that's the problem. It is the platform on which to display your
| art where things get complicated. It's rather like first have the
| talent to paint a Mona Lisa, then have the talent and time to
| shove it in everyone's face on social media in the hopes someone
| recognizes how great you are. In the meantime, crowdfund and keep
| track of all your accounts so the newly formed IRS gun mafia
| doesn't come knock on your door requesting your nothing.
| golemotron wrote:
| Interesting to see this after reading how American ex-pat artists
| lived in France in the 1920s. They were lucky to have running
| water. The same for artists in NYC in the 1970s.
| dxbydt wrote:
| There are places in the world where the art/author scene is
| thriving. For example - there's only 30K journalists working for
| 6K newspapers in the ENTIRE USA[1], which is a rather tiny,
| pathetic number if you think about. it. Whereas in developing
| countries such as India, that number is much, much higher.
| Newspapers and media are a growth industry in India. Whereas in
| the USA, newspapers are shutting down at the rate of 2 per week.
| Since the average Indian is very likely to read an English
| newspaper, it paradoxically makes sense for American journalists
| to relocate to India and practice their craft there! The
| canonical posterboy for this case is Anand Giridhardas[2]. His
| parents, like most Indian immigrants, bent over backwards to
| obtain a coveted American visa, became citizens and settle down
| peacefully in Seattle - only to find that their All-American kid,
| born & brought up entirely in the USA with zero connections to
| India, decided to become a journalist, went to journo school,
| then decided to relocate to India & become a reporter over there!
| I used to be a member of a journo association back in the day,
| and Anand's name was always mentioned as some sort of puzzle -
| why would an American kid, that too born to Indian parents who
| would insist that their kid pursue STEM or medicine so some such
| stable lucrative profession, end up as a journalist, and even
| worse, go back to India, when it was so difficult for his parents
| to immigrate to the USA in the first place ?!
|
| [1] https://whyy.org/articles/us-newspapers-dying-2-per-week/
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anand_Giridharadas
| jimchou wrote:
| This article seemed poorly written... also somewhat entitled. Few
| people make a living doing what they want. People give money to
| those doing what the payer wants, which is poorly correlated with
| what the payee wants.
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(page generated 2022-08-16 23:01 UTC)