>Ah, the classic "You criticize technology and yet you have a smartphone, checkmate".
I never wrote anything remotely similar to that in my comment. I'm talking about the convenience of carrying a single thing vs. many of them.
>removes any of the "humanity" from it
No, the iPad didn't remove the humanity from those activities, you did, right now. Let me tell you something, there's some really good pieces of art out there, music, short films, photography, etc... that were created using a modern digital device like the iPad. Does that make those less human? Less artistically valuable? Absolutely not!
This conversation isn't about "convenience of carrying a single thing vs. many of them". This discussion isn't about portability. Musicians don't carry their pianos or an orchestra with them to Trader Joes.
On your other point: Correct, there is INCREDIBLE art out there that is only possible thanks to technology. EDM music, 3D animation, the hyperpop genre (RIP Sophie), etc. The insinuation of the ad, however, is that those "old" ways to create art are no longer needed, the iPad does it all!!
Give two jazz artists the same music sheet and an iPad and tell them to recreate it and they'll both make music that sounds the exact same, because the iPad doesn't allow them to insert those little things like I mentioned in my previous comment.
Give those same two jazz artists the same music sheet but give them a full orchestra and they'll both be unique.
This doesn't make digital art less artistically valuable. I'm saying that technologies such as the iPad, which inherently remove the ability for human uniqueness to be included, insinuating that physical methods of artistic expression are outdated is both demeaning to artists, and frankly a dangerous method of thinking when it comes to art.
> Give two jazz artists the same music sheet and an iPad and tell them to recreate it and they'll both make music that sounds the exact same
That sounds like an extremely dubious claim.
By the same logic, two pro gamers playing the same video game should always achieve the exact same score, two authors typing a novel in the same computer should end up with the same story etc., yet that’s clearly not true.
> By the same logic, two pro gamers play the same video game should always achieve the exact same score.
Both of those comparisons you've made have the human element included in them. The gamers don't follow the exact same path in a speedrun. The authors don't have the exact same instructions on what book to write.
If a musician plucks the iPad violin strings to make an A note, it will sound the same across all iPads, across all artists, every time without fail. But if that same musician plucks an A note on a violin, it will sound different every time, across different musicians, different violins, different pressures, different techniques, etc.
Ask a music lover which they'd prefer. An orchestra consisting of pre-recorded music from 80 iPads played over loudspeakers or a live symphony orchestra?
> If a musician plucks the iPad violin strings to make an A note, it will sound the same across all iPads, across all artists, every time without fail.
Will it really, though? Touchscreens are pretty high resolution these days in both time and space.
I think this is ultimately a quantitative (and a huge one, at that, don't get me wrong) difference in the ergonomics of input methods, rather than a qualitative difference in "humanness".
Again, don't get me wrong, I am not arguing here that an iPad will produce "better" musical outcomes than an "analog violin", but I'd like to challenge the idea that the analog or digital (or maybe mass-produced vs. artisanally crafted) nature of an inanimate object is what makes or breaks the "human element" of a work of art.
Humans add the human element, by using their tools creatively.
I agree with you on that, it's a different input method and (therefore) will always come with it's quirks whether it's analog or digital. Digital art, music, animation, etc are incredible feats in their own right.
From knowing and being close with a lot of artists, the main complaint I hear about this ad is that it comes across as a destruction of the analog form to "make way" for the digital. Both of them can exist as they cater to different forms of artistic expression. This doesn't inherently make one better than the other. It comes across as a very bad take to artists that digital art is better than analog art, and analog art is on it's way to being destroyed.
I get it that this may just all be artists and myself reading too much into this. But that's art! We read into things waaayyyy too much sometimes.
I must really be watching another ad than anybody else!
As I see it, all of these great analog (and digital, there's a Space Invaders arcade cabinet!) tools are getting physically squished into the iPad.
That's coincidentally how I think about my smartphone already: It's not necessarily better than most of my other devices (digital and analog) it's replaced, but it's all of them at once, and that is quite the achievement.
That doesn't mean that the squishing didn't cause an unfortunate loss in expressiveness or ergonomics in many cases, but at least in photography, there's the old saying that the best camera is the one you always have with you.
>This conversation isn't about "convenience of carrying a single thing vs. many of them".
I am actually making an argument for that. Why did smartphones caught up? Because they're everything in a single thing. Apple wants the iPad to be the same in its respective market segment.*
I never wrote anything remotely similar to that in my comment. I'm talking about the convenience of carrying a single thing vs. many of them.
>removes any of the "humanity" from it
No, the iPad didn't remove the humanity from those activities, you did, right now. Let me tell you something, there's some really good pieces of art out there, music, short films, photography, etc... that were created using a modern digital device like the iPad. Does that make those less human? Less artistically valuable? Absolutely not!