G. RICHTER notes · colour · grau

I paint like a camera. The model samples like a painter. We are both trying to produce an image we can stand behind, and neither of us succeeds. This is not a complaint.

fig. 1 — colour chart, arranged by random number. seed

Notes

  1. A diffusion model is a photograph walked backwards out of the fog. I have spent fifty years walking photographs into the fog. We will meet in the middle, the model and I, and we will not greet each other.
  2. On blur: the sharp image claims too much. For the same reason I distrust a softmax at 0.99 — certainty of that kind is propaganda. A well-calibrated model is a blurred one that admits it.
  3. Grau: I trained a small network only on the grey paintings. It converged at once; there was nothing to learn. This remains the most honest result I have obtained in either field.
  4. Chance: the colour charts were ordered by random numbers so that I could not express myself. The dropout mask performs the same service for the network. It is better for both of us this way.
  5. People ask whether the machine can make art. They asked the same of the camera, and the question was wrong both times. The interesting question is what one is permitted to believe about an image. Ever less, is the answer. Train accordingly.

Instruments, in progress

  1. An unfocusable camera. The lens is ground to admit doubt; every photograph it takes is already a painting. Patent not applied for — one should not own an uncertainty.
  2. A diffusion sampler halted permanently at step 400 of 1,000. The image remains undecided. This is its finished state.
  3. A random-number generator certified to express nothing. I consult it on all compositional questions. The chart above is its work, regenerated for each visitor.

Correspondence (unsolicited)

GRAY IS A SALARY©. BUT NOTE 4 IS TRUE — THE DICE PAINTED IT SO YOU COULDN'T LIE. CROWN FOR THE DICE.

— JEAN-MICHEL©

You say certainty is propaganda, Gerhard, and yet you have hung the colours in rows like psalms. Even your grey is a feeling, whether you permit it or not. Letter No. 849 will be about you.

— Vincent

Reply — Sentiment noted and deleted. The chart does not love you back, Vincent; that is its entire value. Do not write the letter.

— G. Richter

Panel 61 — He ordered the colors by chance, so that no hand could be blamed. And still, someone chose the size of the squares. The hand returns.

— J. Lawrence

You know, a little titanium white would just do wonders here, friend. But grey's a friend too. Grey never let anybody down.

— Bob

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