A Closer Look at Life
Noticing the world in greater detail disguised as "how to learn about art using AI"
Happy Friday Life Examiners,
As someone who didn’t believe they had a creative bone in their body until a few years ago, I don’t exactly have extensive experience appreciating art. It’s always been somewhat binary for me:
My eyes like that
That’s dumb
with a few flavors of each in my repertoire.
Having dispelled the myth of not being creative and seeing the benefits of exercising it, I’ve felt called to explore other areas outside writing such as art.
Given that my experience to date consists of my last elementary school art class and a few museum trips since, I had a lot of catching up to do. Or to look at it another way, a unique opportunity to learn something with a completely fresh set of eyes.
Rather than looking for an Art 101 book1, I thought it’d be more fun to have an interactive sesh with GPT. What started out as a using AI to appreciate art exercise ended up becoming a masterclass on how to notice the world more.
Weekly Wonderings and Wisdom
Beginner’s mind is a beautiful thing. With a little bit of humility, it affords the opportunity to sincerely ask the most basic questions with a straight face and an open mind.
In this case - what are the basic elements to start noticing in a piece of art?
Most of these I would have thought of but is perspective something I’d take a closer look at? Probably not. Within the lighting of a painting, would I have thought to identify the source and analyze its impact on colors and forms? Definitely not.
Already my brain is firing, starting to think about all the different ways I can look at an image and speak to its sensory characteristics or its more interpretive meaning.
This is a delightful intellectual exercise for me as I’m treading on completely new territory. It feels like being a curious puppy brought to a dog park, everything’s fresh and intriguing, I’m stimulated by what I encounter, sparking a desire to fully immerse myself in my surroundings.
So I run a few laps, sniff around, exploring this world of art characteristics, ideating ways to articulate the subtleties of a piece. As this exploratory phase concludes, I find myself eager to apply this newfound vocabulary to something I can look at.
With a familiar sight in front of me, I run through my new checklist, putting words to my felt experience. With GPT it’s like having the study guide in front of you where if nothing comes to mind in assessing say the brushwork, I get quick feedback telling me
Van Gogh’s brushwork is highly expressive and individualistic. The swirling, rhythmic strokes contribute to the painting’s sense of turbulence and emotion.
Feeling like I had a solid grasp on the basics, I was interested in going deeper. Having now critically thought about something like the perspective of a piece for the first time and then observing it within a specific piece I became curious what other ways to play with perceived depth and space. If Van Gogh uses atmospheric perspective to:
create depth in the night sky with a bright prominent moon, while the rest of the sky appears to recede into the background, creating a sense of vast, expansive space
Then what would be alternate approaches to bring about differing effects?
Narrowing in on one specific element I could now delve deeper into these various tools at an artist’s disposal, each one able to meticulously alter the viewing experience.
This gives me the opportunity to explore in greater depth by expanding the descriptions, probing with more insightful questions, and requesting specific examples to ultimately get a clearer, more comprehensive understanding of how these artistic tools work in harmony to create the overall effect of the piece.
You can see how this becomes like a descriptive Russian doll set where you take a broad goal - I want to appreciate art more, and then start with high level elements with which to describe it. You can then continually unpack each one further and further to get into levels of minutiae and nuance you never knew existed.
This exercise is an effective way to get from zero to one in your understanding of just about anything. I’m by no means an art expert because I played around with GPT for a few hours one day but I’m at least a few weeks into the semester by now.
But this isn’t a piece about getting a rudimentary understanding of something you know very little about.
After doing this I noticed something else happened - something that goes beyond just looking at squares hung up on a wall. By taking this Russian doll approach to learning about art, I noticed myself taking more interest in the finer details of other aspects of life.
As I’d take a bite of food I’d find myself hypothesizing what 10 elements GPT would tell me I should be noticing and seeing how granular I can get naming my experience with it.
Looking out on my balcony, I’d observe how the sun’s rays cast a shadow out on the rolling hills, pretending an artist painted it, imbuing meaning and significance to the various elements in my visual field.
All of a sudden, my entire sensory experience has opened up to an infinitely large, expansive universe for me to appreciate. I find myself taking a greater curiosity in the external world like never before. I want to learn what objects are made of, how they were created, why someone would choose to construct them as such. I’m eager to talk to people that know how to design movie sets, plan cities, and build chairs.
And it’s not just about the chair as a piece of furniture in a house. It's a culmination of decisions - design, materials, craftsmanship. Then there's the act of sitting. The human body interacting with a non-human object, each chair a silent testament to the sitter's shape, weight, the way they shift and settle.
It’s equal parts daunting and exhilarating. On one hand, I’m realizing just how little I know. But on the other, there are more things to learn than I have in one lifetime. So at least I won’t be running out of material.
Although I would appreciate any interesting, non-academic recommendations here