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Under the reign of AI: a new 21st century taste dispute? Reflections about Ian Hamilton Finlay's Little Sparta and John Goto's High Summer.
1  School of Education - Polytechnic University of Porto
Academic Editor: Gordana Dodig Crnkovic

Abstract:

In the 18th century, significant discussions arose under the aegis of what became known as the "Discussion of Taste". This included Francis Hutcheson [An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725)], David Hume (On the Standard of Taste, 1757/1760), Edmund Burke (A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, 1759), and E. Kant' "Antinomy of Taste" (Critic of Judgement, 1790), who stand out (among other philosophers and authors), without forgetting the visionary thought of Mme. de Lambert, Anne-Thérèse Marguenat de Courcelles (1647 – 1733), or the article on the concept of “Taste”, in the Encyclopédie (1757) that was written collectively by Jaucourt, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, d’Alembert, Blondel, Rousseau, and Landois (See Volume 7, pp. 758-77). As the definition of “novelty” proposed by Hume was consolidated, the artistic creation developed in the West sought to assert itself in the territory of the “original” to be homonymous with “unprecedented” and “experimental”. Taste, as an aesthetic standard, implied the search for recognized and canonical stipulations, while at the same time being adorned with countless idealizations. In analyzing the digital applications in photography conceived by John Goto that affect eighteenth-century Oxfordian Gardens (http://www.johngoto.org.uk/essays/High_Summer_text.htm), the articulation emerged under the auspices of the expanded and sovereign norm of taste. But of extreme critical and ironic acuity, it must be emphasized! On the other hand, by signaling the (almost) megalomenal project embodied in the Garden landscape titled Little Sparta (after 1966 at Dunsyre in the Pentland Hills in South Lanarkshire, Scotland - https://www.littlesparta.org.uk/), by Ian Hamilton Finlay and Sue Finlay, a complex and timeless work, another term (Gadamer or Schiller) is incorporated into this discussion, enhancing the thinking of artist-authors who today revise the mentalities of the past. When experimentation was initiated using image-prompting tools on open-access AI platforms, applied to Goto's High Summer (1996-2001) series (from the larger "Ukadia" project), distinct aesthetic tastes were identified that could be shaped according to the prompts, but were limited to a certain stereotypical and "pre-defined" taste that was not entirely plausible to master. When approaching theories of taste in Ian Finlay's work, the research in process, "brief narratives" similar to those applied in the "prompt into image" approach in Goto's work are applied. The sections were identified in the conceived aesthetic--historical landscape—in this case, three-dimensional and spatialized in itself—and not shaped into photographic molds as a beginning and an end in itself, as John Goto principles were directed. In both study cases, aesthetic gardens are a common denominator that was studied under the aesthetics of taste, artistic standards, and ideological issues, though more or less covered in certain specific cases, as will be underlined in this oral presentation. A study methodology emerged and was undertaken, concerning the parks and gardens approached by John Goto, and, as for Little Sparta, Ian Finlay's installation was seen at São Paulo Biennale (2012); in both cases it has been possible to experience this in person in recent decades. We may wonder about the subjectivity and/or objectivity of taste, oscillating between Hume and Kant, but how can it be equated by AI standards of taste, its options, or commands? Will we have unnumerable quarrels of taste, so many as the uncountable number of people that can access AI platforms and pursue an individual desired creation of an “inner” or “outsider” image generated after a subjective narrative of a real or imaginary view, feeling, thought, or intuition insight. We can evaluate the generated image as awful or as agreeable, even or though it is not similar or near the mental imagery or description of a painting or photography. We can consider the image beautiful, very beautiful, or sublime: so we step into Kant' statements; we travel between objectivity and subjectivity. It might seem unbearable, and once again the debate is/will be overwhelming! Are we able to shape, more than two centuries after, other or newer aesthetic categories induced by AI-generated images if proportionated by our reading/ seeing/describing/directing throughout words the images created by contemporary artists such Ian Finlay and John Goto?

Keywords: Ian Hamilton Finlay/ John Goto / High Summer Series/ Little Sparta Garden/ Standard of Taste/ AI Aesthetic Norm(s) of Taste

 
 
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