Consciousness and art. How do I think they are related?

Consciousness and art. How do I think they are related? Why am I even asking this question, and how is consciousness related to it?

When it comes to the connection between consciousness and art, the main idea is that art is something only consciousness seems able to create. For example, a thermostat can process information and respond, but I don't think it's expressing anything. Art, on the other hand, seems to need an inner world or a sense of experience behind the brushstrokes or musical notes. Painters and composers often talk about trying to turn a feeling, memory, or mood into something others can experience too. It's unusual because a personal experience, which only one person can truly feel, gets shared through paint or sound. In this way, art could be seen as a tool that consciousness uses to share those inner experiences.

There’s also another perspective: creating and experiencing art can make us more aware of our own consciousness. It can pull us out of routine and help us notice the details of our experiences, like the exact shade of red or the feeling a certain chord creates. Some philosophers and artists believe this is the real purpose of art—not just to decorate, but to make us more aware of our own minds.

There’s also a more difficult and speculative side to this question, which might be why it’s so interesting right now. If art needs an inner world, what does it mean when AI systems start creating things that look like art? Does that mean they have an inner experience? I don’t think so. Just because something produces good results doesn’t mean it has real experience. Honestly, I don’t even know if there’s anything it’s like to be me as I write this. It’s a question we can’t answer just by looking inside ourselves, since a system without real experience could still claim to have one.