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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?"
There's AARON, which paints interesting pictures.
Make your computer ten thousand times larger--try Frink
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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...TypoGenerator's programmers created the brushes and the canvas, Google creates the paint, and you are still the artist that bring those tools together.
...in a completely new and awsome way, however, but as long as you're thinking along those lines, that seems to make more sense to me. Thoughts?
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
" just type some text or see the help if you dont know what to do here..."
There you go, don't say I never do anything for you guys.
... 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.
My ears are still ringing from that.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
Stupid non-question.
This post is art. A computer created it, every pixel lovingly placed at exactly the right point on your screen.
Presumably someone programmed the computer that "made" the art.
Computers are just tools. When you programme a tool you're not doing anything fundamentally different from lifting your arm. "But does your arm have blinking lights?" Sigh.
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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.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
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.
A computer is a tool, like a paintbrush, or a camera. Even if the computer is helping you get the content, remember that found art is often considered art.
Really, it's more of a question of whether or not it's good art, than art.
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.
Is Computer-Created Art, Art?
Is some human generated art, art?
Trying to define art by defining its boundaries is a waste of time.
The poster has wasted his time, unless of course he finds posting to be an artistic endeavour... in which case, cheers!
"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."
Getting back to the subject, I think that most people would reject the notion that a computer can create art. The point is that art should be created with a purpose. A computer has no purpose (of itself). Of course, it can be argued that the human who created the program is the artist, and the computer is just one of his tools, just as in the case above the fax machine and the construction workers were tools of said artist.
Personally, I think neither is art, since in my opinion art is not only about ideas, but also about execution. I don't think randomness is execution. But that's just me. You can call this art if you want to, but then I can argue that anything is art.
Shakespeare _did_ perform the plays himself -- at least early on.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Douglas Hofstadter describes how a computer program by David Cope generates fake "Chopin" and "Bach" good enough to fool music students.
my computer generated art is good because I use my artistic ability as an MFA candidate to 1) create the design, 2) refine the output and 2) ultimately decide if the final product "looks right". Even if all of that was automatic, the audience would ultimately decide if the final product "looked right", and so humans are still deciding if the work is "art" or not. It doesn't really matter how it's created. That's why some fractal pictures are boring... because the audience thinks they are, based on the pattern, colors, whatever. Not all computer-generated art is equal, in the same way that not everyone likes the same things. :)
stuff |
Roland Dorgeles was an eccentric Frenchman and arch nemesis of the Cubists. To poke fun at them he tied a paint-brush to a donkey's tail, placed a canvas with pots of paint behind it. The donkey faithfully conjured up an abstract painting. The work was then exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants. The funny bit is that both the the public and the critics who commented on the painting did not seem to value it any less than the work of Van Dongen, Matisse and Roualt, who all exhibited at the same Salon. The matter caused a small scandal when it was leaked to the press.
I once had a similar experience myself when I went to an art exhibition where an artist had bolted several multicolored urinals to a wall, no frills just standard issue urinals fromt he hardware store bolted to a wall, that's it. No paint no sculpting just urinals on a wall. The thing had a six figure price tag and a 'SOLD" sign on it. I drew the conclusion that art is what people say it is and if people think splashes from a donkeys tail and porcelain urinals bolted to a wall is art then well it is art.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The question of whether something is art or not is probably one of the most, uninteresting questions ever.
1. Even if somebody will agree with you on the answer, it'll probably be for different reasons.
2. Nobody cares. Really. It's just an excuse to say things that *sound* clever.
TC - My Photos..
Is true computer-created material possible, and if it is, is IT art?
This question has two interpretations:
1) Human organizing the "paint".
2) No human intervention.
In 1 you have just replaced the paint and canvas with something else, and obviously it must be art according to logics, but this does not guarantee it to be considered as art by any human, as little as any other art.
In 2 you need a computer which is intentionally creating art or programmed good enough to mimic the creative process. The question whether this will be percieved as art by the observer is up to the observer, human or machine.
Does anyone know of other candidates for computer-created art?Toivo Kohonen at Helsinki university made some software for composing music in early 90ies. I considered it sounded interresting, but a friend of mine who is a good musician said that it was lacking structures.
aimHere is a link to some excellent, world-class computer generated art, given the light of day by Ed Bergmann, a good friend of mine.
The funny part is, whenever anyone sees this stuff, they do not question whether it is art or not.
Actually, before he ever found Photoshop on the computer I built for him a dozen years ago, he never considered himself an artist at all. He was a programmer and into desktop publishing.
Little did I know just how good an artist he was, until I first saw some of his 'creations' running as a screen saver on his expensive new Mac IIfx.
Enjoy these. They are very rare indeed. Here is the link:
warpspeedimages.com
Regards,
Roger Born
ps
of course these images are fully copyrighted, and many of them have graced the covers of publications, been incorporated into transitions for videos, or been used to animate backgrounds for rock concerts. If you really want a copy, perhaps framed or backlit, contact Ed yourself.
http://fleen.org My take is this: Cramming one's energies through the pinhole of language (english, java or whatever) leave's little, but what's left is powerful. I suppose it's an old story.
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.
I recently created an interesting program for an interactive art display that used a webacam to monitor movement in a reception area and generate pictures from that (trails of colour where people had been, Mondrian rectangles created on the fly where people had walked etc). The pictures generated were fairly basic but they had a certain aesthetic appeal and on the whole were interesting. The fact they represented something real was even more interesting and the project was a big success, and FUN as well. I don't see why a computer can't make art, any more than why elephants can't sell paintings for £10000 (which they do!).
So, while I agree the computer probably can't understand the motivation a human has for painting a particular picture, there can be some sort of basic knowledge that is behind a picture generated by a computer and that to me is 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.
I think the "Fractal Art Manifesto" http://www.fractalus.com/info/manifesto.htm is a good reference and could easily be extended to other instances of computer generated art.
Marcel
Everything and nothing is art... this doubly so!
A better question would be:
Is it inspirational art?
Is it decorative art?
Is it bad art?
And then those who subjectively think it's art can discuss this...
-shrug-
as previously reviewed on /., paul graham's book hackers & painters covers this topic.
i'm a coder and my wife is an artist, so we wage this debate on a semi-constant basis... i say code can be poetry.
Slightly OT, but this guy is brilliant.
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?
One of the boundries seems to be the amount of human interaction. The pros think that only humans can create art.
But even that they tend to poo-poo at. Is a 3d rendered image art? How about these. From my perspective, some of these are extremely visually appealing, and no less art than a painting on the wall. A painter might disagree.
Music is also an artform. I've had musicians who state that the industry is going to hell, because nobody makes "real" music anymore. Computers add enhancements to an artist's voice, intruments, etc. A lot of the instruments are synth.
Certainly if they don't agree that electronic-assisted music is real, they wouldn't agree on something wholly computer generated.
In my opinion though, art is a result of both the care that has going into its creation, and the visual/audible/etc impact of the final presentation. "Canned" music artists that can't sing without enhancement nor play an instrument are posers. The machines are just making a lack of real skill more entertaining.
A band that gets on the stage, puts love and skill into their work, they're artists. But then, an electronica band that puts heart-and-soul into a real show are to me also artists.
A machine that does a painting on its own... it's not an artist, it's not art. The code behind a machine that renders realistic original paintings... that code to me is the art. The machine is just running through instructions and choices to produce a piece of visual output falling within certain parameters. The actual code put into the piece is a result of skill, passion, and in the end is truely a work of intellectual art.
The guys that do 3d renderings. Maybe they can't draw worth a damn with a pencil. But while I'm decent with a 3d program many put me to shame. The end result is still a product of skill and passion.
I think that to qualify as art you much have all or most of these requirements:
There are artists, entertainers, and people that are both. One is not always the other, but those who are both are truely gifted individuals.
I have a fuller discussion of the theory here, as part of a larger discussion demonstrating why the entire idea of "expression" in copyright theory has been destroyed. But for this post, and in summary, I will try to use the current copyright system, instead of destroying it.
First, this is still on topic, because while we don't agree what art is and we never will, most definitions contain a creativity requirement. Copyright also contains a creativity requirement, and it is at least a little more concrete to discuss creativity in a copyright context than an art context.
To make the issue even starker, I refer you to the Random Art page, where random art is created from scratch. (This also avoids one legal answer for TypoGenerator, that it has no copyright because it is infringing on the source images. That kind of ducks the issue.) Random Art is a program that generates an image purely from a random number generator; once the program is written, there is no additional input.
Thus, there are two questions, which I believe do fairly directly pertain to the "is it art?" issue:
- Is this creative enough to qualify for copyright? There are two conflicting answers here:
- If this qualifies for copyright, who gets it? This sharpens the previous question all the more... there is really only one candidate in the Random Art case, the program owner. Yet, if creativity is a process, not a result, for any given image he applied no creativity at all; in fact the site periodically cycles images and I'd imagine it is a fully automated process by now. So by copyright criteria, he probably doesn't hold the copyright; he applied all his creativity in the creation of the generation program, which of course he fully owns. On the other hand, if creativity is an adjective applied to a final work, clearly the output itself is copyrightable; many things of lesser visual creativity are as well.
This sort of thing doesn't just raise questions about art, it strikes to the heart of our hundreds-of-years-old way of conceptualizing "works" in general; it is one step beyond the usual meaning of the venerable "what is art" question. Our definition of work is too intimately tied with the physical world and breaks down completely in the modern computer era. This is just one such issue, but it is one of the rather sharp examples.- No, a computer can not be creative, at least in the legal sense. (Forget AI for the moment, it's not on the table right now anyhow and the problem is hard enough as it is!)
- Yes, on the grounds that if a human produced the exact same image, it would fully and unquestionably qualify for copyright.
How to resolve it? Is calling some creative merely a description of the process, not the result as we would normally think of it? My full answer is in the essay above, but given the ground rules for this post of staying in the current system instead of my own ethical system, I don't have an answer for this. We'd have to wait for a judge.As an interesting side note, I note the Random Art program owner is now offering his prints for sale, so there is a commercial component at play here too. It technically doesn't affect the copyrightability or art question either way, but it would get a judge's attention, don't you thing?
(If this interests you, I encourage you to check out the full section on this issue.)
Gallery of Computation is also very interesting way of generating "art" of a different kind.
Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference. At the Smithsonian museum of natural history, there is a large rock intricately carved by water channels that could just as easily be displayed at the Hirshorn. Nevertheless, this is a question that can be objectively answered (in the case of the rock, it was not designed), and is answered every day as courts consider whether a death is really accidental and archaeologists consider whether a flat pointy rock is really an arrowhead.
Of course, if you are a philosophical naturalist, you believe that this universe is all there is, and every event is purely the outworking of the laws of physics. In you take that position, then nothing is art, and there is no true intelligence - just the appearance of it. For the word "intelligence" means to choose between - which can't happen when every action is determined by physical law (whether deterministic or stochastic).
While recognizing intelligent design is difficult for many, an even more difficult problem is recognizing beauty. After all, art can portray both beauty and ugliness: Tolkiens epic involves both Elves and Orcs. But is beauty subjective, as Voltaire proclaimed? Or is true beauty an objective reality, and differences in its perception due to variations in the loss of our faculties for perceiving it?
In case it isn't clear, based on my definitions, the typogenerator is obviously artificial, and hence it is objectively art. Perhaps what people are really unsure about is whether the pictures it generates are beautiful, ugly, or just random? I would give my opinion, but the site has been slashdotted.
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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