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Is Computer-Created Art, Art?
eobanb writes "While playing with an interesting site called TypoGenerator I became compelled to write an article about how much of TypoGenerator's intriguing and seemingly original creations were actually art. Inevitably, it comes down to humans really being the origin of what TypoGenerator makes. Is such a unwitting collaboration between myself, Google (which TypoGenerator uses to create the images), and the programmers of TypoGenerator, art? Is true computer-created material possible, and if it is, is IT art? Does anyone know of other candidates for computer-created art?"
Congratulations, you just took a question (what is art) that has been debated and unresolved for millenium and thrust it on slashdot. I predict this to be more pointless than another triplicate article. Let's just leave it as art is subjective, ok?
Well, if an unmade bed and a pile of oranges (can't find link, but someone dumped a pile of oranges somewhere in London and said it was art) are art, then I'd say this is art too.
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... that art is in the eye of the observer.
If you think it is art, then it is art.
Do not expect me to share your deviant artistic tastes though.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If the music created by the likes of Brian Eno using procedural techniques counts as art (and I'd certainly suggest it does), I fail to see why other programmers generating visual art by procedural techniques wouldn't.
This also reminds me of the early days of computer animation, before the likes of Pixar made it abundantly clear that computers are just Tools to be used by artists like any other, and not somehow magically creating the art themselves.
You might as well argue that Shakespeare wasn't an artist, because he just wrote the instructions to control the actors, and didn't perform the plays himself.
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Of course there are a lot of crap/unoriginal games. But just when you think of it, what kinds and ways of expression you have available in computer games, you will be overwhelmed. Merely thinking about once being able to master it all will make you a whimping heap of desolation...and even make you more willing to learn it all.
In a computer game you can do anything a writer can do, you can do everything a movie maker can do, you can o everything a composer can do. In a way you can do anything any painter or sculptor can do. And you can do so much more that nooe else can do. Like creating interactions between people scattered all over the world, making them all to contribute to it, interpretating your piece of art.
It just hurts to see where this is headed though. To become a dull, dumbing vehicle to exploit those artists and to make publishers rich. But well, we live in a world of humans, so this is just the normal development.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
If the question isn't being asked disingenuously then it's being asked ignorantly in my opinion. Art is deliberately created in every aspect. The intricacies of a Pollock only appear random to those who choose not to really see. The randomly generated pictures created by typogenerator are just that - random. There is no engagment of artist and/or observer, there is no attempt to generate an emotional response, there is no meaning, no soul. 99.99% of the time the question "Is it art?" is simply a statement by the asker of the question that they have no concept of what art is. The only question that ever makes any sense at all is "is it good art or bad art?", a question that is patently inapplicable to typogenerator.
"Art is deliberately created in every aspect."
Even James Joyce couldn't state a definition of art this altruistic. From Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man...
"-If a man hacking in fury at a block of wood, Stephen continued, make there an image of a cow, is that image a work of art? If not, why not?"
"-That's a lovely one, said Lynch, laughing again. That has the true scholastic stink."
I look at it this way, from the submission:
Inevitably, it comes down to humans really being the origin of what TypoGenerator makes.
More so than this, it comes down to humans being the interpreters of what TypoGenerator makes.
Throw a dozen disparate objects on the floor, and we as humans will be able to interpret a meaning from their positions. We might know it's a random occurence, but we might also laugh at the 'meaning' behind a plush tux doll ending up sitting on top of an XP box, for example.
It looks like art partly because it's humans looking at it, and interpreting it. It might be art if it weren't created by humans and humans are looking at it, and it might not be art if humans created it but there are none left to gaze upon it.
This is just a definition problem - like defining God. There are probably as many opinions/personal definitions to art as it is to God. Is it really neccessary to discuss the words? It has been said many times: If it's art to you - it's art.
What a crass thing to do. Take something creative and interesting, point the seething hordes of Slashdot at it so it breaks horribly and causes the creator lots of stress as her system administrators and bandwidth providers come down on her like a ton of bricks. Probable outcome? Yet another genuinely interesting project will disappear from the net for ever, trampled under the hooves of a flash mob with no real interest in the project.
Of course computers can produce interesting and stimulating images. Consider the Mandelbrot set, for example, or a whole host of other functions which are highly sensitive to their inputs. Did Benoit Mandelbrot 'draw' or 'create' the Mandelbrot set image? Of course not. It is intrinsic in the concept of number, even though it required powerful computers to render it in any detail. Is it art? Human beings respond to it as if it was art.
If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck it's a duck. The Mandelbrot set is art (and so are pictures automatically taken by the Hubble Telescope) because we respond to them as art. So is the output of Katharina Nussbaumer's program which you have been so thoughtless as to destroy.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
This reminds me about a quote from a finnish magazine article about modern art:
"One places stones into a circle and another pays a million for it. Genius sells and moron buys."
The story about the Emperor's new clothes also comes to mind. No one dared to say that a bunch of urinals are not (good) art, for fear of appearing uncivilized.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
That is the stuff which my dad meant when he said "sometimes the only real art in the work of an artist was to make people think that what he made was art". :-)
If an artist is nothing more than the means by which information is transformed into a new medium (thought->paper, emotion->sound, random data->JPG) then why should anyone or anything be rewarded for what is essentially performing the function of a tool?
Why should the work of Michaelangelo be "Priceless", yet the sketchings of an NYC street artist fixed at $15? Surely the provenance is different, but beyond the origins there should be no discernable difference in importance.
So then why should we pay "Artists" for producing their art? If the expression "Writers Write. Painters Paint. Singers Sing" holds true, then these tools are simply performing their function and thus shouldn't be singled out for deserving praise or reward above any other.
So what if a particular tool is adept at producing a result you find either pleasing or revolting? Is your subjective taste, or the taste of a majority, enough to qualify Art as Art? If I am the only person who sees the beauty in an object, am I all the more rich for holding a truly unique perspective? Is my perspective then, itself an art?
But aesthetics are not all about pretty pictures or even being "visually appealing".
Which of Goya's works is more significant; The Colossus or Family of Charles IV. The rendering of the people in the family portrait is very representational and one could argue "visually appealing"...but one does not have an emotional response as one would have with the dark representation of war and bloodshed in The Colossus.
So, coming to Duchamp's ugly urinal...it still evokes a response the artist intended...a spirited debate into the nature of art.
Is an object a work of art if a person toiled over it with great skill?
Does it have to be beautiful?
Does it have to express anything?
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