Aaron: Computer Program And Artist (Maybe)

Logic Bomb writes: "Wired has a story about Aaron, a computer program under development since 1973 that is supposed to creatively make art. Some people have probably heard about Aaron and its creator Harold Cohen before, since this has been in progress for so long. Aaron is nowhere near finished (will it ever be?), but it's far enough along that Ray Kurzweil thinks everyone should get a look. He has sponsored the creation of an Aaron screensaver for Windows that will continuously create 'original paintings' on your idle PC. You can download a trial version for free." Aaron is also programmed in LISP; as I recall it's also one of the many cool things talked about in the truly strange The Secret Guide To Computers (ISBN: 0939151278).

Comments

Re:Umm, first things first

[mattkime]

Any time you define art, you close your mind off to part of it.

No, most people would not concider Marcel Duchamp's urinal to be art. But then again, most people really don't have a clue as to what art is. Duchamp's urinal is one of the most revolutionary works of art of the 20th century.

For those who don't like the urinal, concider these things: Its shaped like the virgin mary, or a sittng buddha. You piss in it. It rejects the idea of art being something that can be possesed by the rich - everyday objects can be art.

Back to the main topic.

The computer is not making art. The programmer, in this case, is selecting what he conciders to be art. I'm sure a lot of stuff has found its way into the trash. His code guides its pixeled paint brush.

How is this any different than how most other artist work? They also choose from a wide variety of forms and select which ones they prefer. They train their hands, rather than their computers, as to how paint should be applied.

I know we get excited about computers here, but it really is beside the point.

Tangenitally related links

[mcc]

In a less-deliberate but still interesting theme:

Andrej Bauer's Random Art Generator

Scottd's Random Art Generator

[enter subtle prompt here for people to post links to other interesting but not-directly-related to-Aaron-itself projects.]

'Light Verse'

[sg3000]

Anyone rememeber the Isaac Asimov short story called "Light Verse"? It was about an elderly woman who was famous for creating beautiful abstract art sculptures. Later it was found out that one of her robots had been creating the works for her. It's a better story than my little summary might suggest.

The question is, if you write an AI program that creates something original, who's the creator of the creation? You or the AI program? If Aaron creates an "original", could I display it for money in my own collection?

If I buy the program, tweak it a bit (or it gets randomly mangled, to make an analogy to the above story) and it produces original art, who's the owner now?

Luckily we're spared the answer with Aaron, because the drawings are kinda ugly.

but is it art?

[fantomas]

One of the best things that happened to me was going to art college aged 27.

I was originally a librarian, but then went off to do a multimedia art course.

Learnt a lot of things, learnt how to program, but the best bit was, I learnt not to be afraid of people who made out they knew what Art was (notice capital 'A'). I learnt you can say 'bollocks' to anything you don't like. Anybody who is defensive about giving away information or sharing what they know is running scared of being found out (true also of the computing world..). So don't get uptight about 'what is art' - it really doesn't matter. Hey, if you like it, that's good enough. You don't need some professor to make your mind up for you.

I guess I am saying that all the Aaron thing is actually doing is forcing people to think about their definitions of what art is, rather than pushing the boundaries of what hardware/ software can be made to do. The most you could say is they are trying to get a computer to guess what humans like and disklike.

Actually

[fluxrad]

This is not true. I have been under development since October of 1979. It's nice to finally get some recognition, however. Let me tell you a few more of the things that Aaron does, though:

1)Creatively eats KFC about once a week. Usually you can find me creatively ordering a number 3 with a mountain dew to drink and a creative biscuit on the side.

2)Creatively plays guitar and harmonica ( with some electronica thrown in )

3)Creatively tries to get laid, followed by truly creative responses by members of the opposite sex. (You'd be surprised how many women have to "wash their hair" on friday nights).BR>
-Aaron


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Yeah Lisp!

[zorba1]

Everyone always stares at me when I profess the beauty of Lisp, as well as its possibilities. While being the second oldest language still in use (after Fortran), it's still modern with respect to the new applications people are finding for the language. For the curious, here's some other cool Lisp/Scheme projects:

A Common LISP Hypermedia Server

UTexas's archive of classic Lisp AI code (SHRDLU, Eliza, etc.)

SPIKE - Planning/Scheduling software for the Hubble Space Telescope

Babylon - an environment for developing expert systems

Lisp-Stat - statistics package


Also, here's a great directory on more info and resources on Lisp:
Association of Lisp Users

What is creative art?

[Reality Master 101]

I submit that creative art is taking an aspect of the world, and representing it in an unusual way in order to faciliate discovery of that aspect's "true nature" in the context of the world.

Given that (possibly incomplete, but work with me...) definition, this program cannot be considered creative. I think to truly be creative, you have to have a knowledgebase of the world in order to understand why a particular piece of art works in the broader view of the world.

Take Picasso's famous disfigured subjects, with eyes and ears all over the place. Sure, you could have written a program to move eyes all over the place, but that's not what makes it art. The artist's intent is an integral part of what makes great art great.

Until solve the grand "context problem", you can't have creativity.

--

Re:What is creative art?

[aussersterne]

You are operating under the fallacy of intent.

You can't know the artist's intent -- you are not him/her, and it is impossible that such intent is unambiguously contained within the visual work itself. Ergo, the only thing that provides meaning is your own context as the viewer. Any sense you feel you have of the artist's intent is merely an illusion [unless you're one of the people that believes that objects can be imbued with "psychic waves" of whoever has handled them]. Thus, creative art is whatever touches you as the viewer.

Imagine it this way. You see a painting hanging in an office, unmarked and unsigned -- there is no signature from the artist, no indication of title or origin. Yet you still form an impression of the painting. It moves you -- you like it. You could argue that it is because that was the author's intent, but you don't even know who the author was -- for all you know, the painting was done by a mass murderer [or a computer?]... In fact, what you are reacting to is the relationship between the representation and your own personal existence and experiences.

Or, put it this way: if you are a Duchamp-hater, then you can argue that no computer can ever make art, nor could a urinal ever be artistic because, after all, it was made in a factory for men to urinate in. But I am a Duchamp-lover...

Art as Experience

[SIWaters]

John Dewey, the pre-eminent American philospher wrote in the 1930s that "art" is the process that the maker goes through in making "art objects" as well as the relationship that viewer has, with and in his or her own experiences, with the art object. Art objects (the objects of the artistic process), have no intrinsic value. Their value is only as a signpost of the expression of experience that the creator has, and any response(s) that a viewer has. The fact that art is possible at all is because of the common, shared, experiences between the creator and the viewer.

What this means is that "art" is whatever the creator calls "art" because, not of their intent or their motivation, but because the process of creation generates aesthetic satisfaction for the maker. That's all that is needed for something to be called art.

At the same time, art is also the response a viewer has with an object. If a person has a genuine aesthetic response to an object, it it not for another person to deride or minimize that response, based on the object itself, or any other knowledge that they might have. It's art to the viewer because it moved him or her.

What does this mean for Aaron? I think it fails the first, or "personal aesthetic satisfaction" test. I don't remember (I read the book in the mod-1980s and there's a copy in storage somewhere) that Aaron is motivated to make drawings because it feels good about the drawings it makes, or that, through some feedback mechanism, it feels "better" about some drawings than others because they more accurately represent its feelings than others.

However, if the drawings that Aaron generates evoke genuine aesthetic responses in viewers, then those responses can be called art. Aaron, or course, is completely oblivious to these responses and can't use them to "improve" its art.

At least, so far. It's an interesting experiment. I read Asimov's story many years ago and have always been struck by its irony and message -- that the best art is made by people who need a little adjustment.

SI

If you like that.....

[grovertime]

You should check out this. It's just good fun but it's quite a blast to use and the launch in June promises to be a really cool experience.

1. 
   what the?
   

The Art Detector is not going off.

[localroger]

Back in the 80's I had a cartoon hanging on my bulletin board which IIRC originally ran in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. It showed several very concerned and professional people standing behind a strange contraption which was aimed at a painting on the wall. An ad-like blurb read: IS IT ART? The Art Detector Can Tell! . The humor was obvious, and this piece of software doesn't impress me.

Cohen's 1.5mloc obviously implement a model of the world from which it can select various groupings of objects, allowed to interact in various ways, and portray them in a way which has been come to be considered "artistic." But that doesn't make it art.

Consider the picture displayed with the story; it shows three women apparently getting ready to play tennis. What is the emotional hook here? What are the women thinking? What is the higher reality behind their situation? The image looks "artsy" but elicits no emotional involvement. It is what some hoity-toity art types would pass off as an illustration, and a pretty murky one at that.

Now I am about the furthest thing from an Art Snob you will ever find, but I will always remember the time a high-roller friend took me to dinner at Melange, at the time the restaurant at the Mirage where Steve Wynn had his personal collection of original Picassos on display. I barely noticed the food for the power of the art; we circled the restaurant as our food was prepared, examining each one. The images were bold and powerful and filled with energy; they almost seemed to leap off the canvas. It was not always obvious what Picasso's abstractions represented but one could sense in every one of them a concentration of power, or sexuality, or awe; some of them left you thinking for hours, teasing multiple meanings out of the symbology used. Picasso was also fond of piling on the paint, and in person his works have a three-dimensionality which does not come across even in lithographically reproduced art books. That evening, for the first time, I realized what art was about.

I look again at the picture of the tennis players, and nope, it doesn't do it. The program does not really have emotions to attempt to represent; it merely throws things together and illustrates them, without any sense of a dynamic behind the scene. An artist would have made something of this image -- you would look at it and know who hated whom, who was worried about their performance, maybe who was having an affair with the others' man. But there is nothing like that. Ho hum.

One day we will have AI, but this ain't it.