Painting elephant

spookmineer · Post by **spookmineer** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 6:58 pm

Elephant Paints Self Portrait

I am speechless.

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 8:25 pm

Wow!
Inspirational.

of Course a few videos down is this ....

Warning! Not for the squeamish...

"Elephant eats poop."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2y_LEbd ... re=related

tehfire · Post by **tehfire** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 9:30 pm

Not to take anything away from the video, which is really cool, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to call it a self-portrait, or art as it is usually defined...

The thing about art is it is more than making something "pretty". The main point of art is to convey a message or a meaning (even if the only meaning is the beauty of the scene). I don't think that the elephant has developed the ability to recognize this and I don't think it is trying to convey this via drawing. I think it is more likely that the elephant was trained to draw a certain picture. I doubt that the elephant knows on some deeper level that what it is "drawing" on the paper is a representation of a being like him or anything like that. A more convincing demonstration would be for a person to hold up a random object and see if the elephant could draw that.

Again, not to take anything away from what the elephant is doing. It is an amazing feat of dexterity and memorization to create what it did. I just don't think that it implies "art", as I've heard the term loosely applied lately.

mr. poopyhead · Post by **mr. poopyhead** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 9:31 pm

i wonder how many times a day they beat the elephants to make them do this...

waiting for those PETA terrorists to jump all over this... if they haven't already...

spookmineer · Post by **spookmineer** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 10:14 pm

tehfire wrote:The thing about art is it is more than making something "pretty". The main point of art is to convey a message or a meaning (even if the only meaning is the beauty of the scene). I don't think that the elephant has developed the ability to recognize this and I don't think it is trying to convey this via drawing. I think it is more likely that the elephant was trained to draw a certain picture. I doubt that the elephant knows on some deeper level that what it is "drawing" on the paper is a representation of a being like him or anything like that. A more convincing demonstration would be for a person to hold up a random object and see if the elephant could draw that.

Again, not to take anything away from what the elephant is doing. It is an amazing feat of dexterity and memorization to create what it did. I just don't think that it implies "art", as I've heard the term loosely applied lately.

Are you serious? Who said it was art?
Comparing art humans are used to, to "art" from elephants?
Art in human culture is how old...?

You are trying to explain the concept of art to an equivalent of a 6 year old (the drawing from the elephant could be from a 6 year old human).
It's just a drawing, no art. Even if the elephant is doing the same a 6 year old could do, I'd say it's pretty amazing.

"Art" between species is a new thing. If another species can draw anything that is meaningful to *us*, I'd say that it's a pretty amazing effort. Let alone if it's art.

You can train animals, but with this kind of stuff, if they don't *know* what they're doing, the result will degrade into nothingness very soon. They really are recreating a "photo", or an image in their mind.
In other words: if they don't know what they are trying to paint, it will result in disaster.

tehfire wrote:The main point of art is to convey a message or a meaning (even if the only meaning is the beauty of the scene).

I think the elephant succeeded in that.

In an even bigger picture, we are looking for extraterrestrial life (big stretch here). What are you expecting from them if anything?

What they (elephants) need to do is this:

Remember a picture in their brain
Visualise this picture
Convert 3D to 2D
Try to recreate this picture with the tool they're given and their trunk
Trunk-eye coordination involved to make this happen

I mean, even if training is involved, they still need a lot of intelligence/visualisation/coordination to pull this off.

Michael Sandstrom · Post by **Michael Sandstrom** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 11:48 pm

Believe nothing that you hear and only half of what you see.

yefi · Post by **yefi** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 6:52 am

I remember reading years ago how they trained a female gorilla, her name was Koko, to semaphore a sign language. (Gorilla's, don't possess the larynx to vocalise the extraordinary range of tones we humans can.)

There was some disagreement about whether she actually understood it or whether she was merely conditioned, like Pavlov's dog, into responses through the reward mechanism of her handlers. Which reminds me of a speech given recently by Tony Blair on religion, and makes me wonder why we have double standards?

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 10:37 am

We talked about this in art class. The teacher clearly stated this is not art by definition. My question - what would an expert critic think of it if he didn't know the source?

Either way the elephant is impressive.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 12:07 pm

yefi wrote:I remember reading years ago how they trained a female gorilla, her name was Koko, to semaphore a sign language. (Gorilla's, don't possess the larynx to vocalise the extraordinary range of tones we humans can.)

There was some disagreement about whether she actually understood it or whether she was merely conditioned, like Pavlov's dog, into responses through the reward mechanism of her handlers. Which reminds me of a speech given recently by Tony Blair on religion, and makes me wonder why we have double standards?

I thought such apes could tell us when they were mad or upset with something. My question-suppose such an ape ended up in a lab, and told the experimenters that it did not want to participate. What then? Better yet, what if it said "I want some strange, get me outta here. This place is boring, it sucks."

mr. poopyhead · Post by **mr. poopyhead** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 2:34 pm

it IS pretty cool... but i'm really not that impressed... you can train animals to do almost ANYTHING, if you're smart/patient/extremely cruel...

how do you think they get those bears to ride little bikes around at the circus?

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 2:56 pm

Food is a good motivator as well.

yefi · Post by **yefi** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 4:14 pm

aristide1 wrote:I thought such apes could tell us when they were mad or upset with something. My question-suppose such an ape ended up in a lab, and told the experimenters that it did not want to participate. What then? Better yet, what if it said "I want some strange, get me outta here. This place is boring, it sucks."

Well, it may be no surprise they picked a female gorilla. One may only speculate at the sort of uncooperative language you'd get from a male.

poopy wrote:you can train animals to do almost ANYTHING, if you're smart/patient/extremely cruel...

Yeah, they're called public schools here in England.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 4:17 pm

Is that why Pink Floyd gave us "The Wall"?

OT - Did you see the movie 28 Days Later?
There a scene where the older woman is trying to shove drugs down the younger girls throat and the young one remarks in that tone of nothing but pure inquisition, no fear whatsoever:

"Are you trying to kill me?"

No American can put emphasis on a sentence like that. It was great.