Neural Nets Make Art While High

brilanon writes "Telepathic-critterdrug is a controversial fork of the open source artificial-life sim Critterding, a physics sandbox where blocky creatures evolve neural nets in a survival contest. What we've done is to give these animals an extra retina which is shared with the whole population. It's extended through time like a movie and they can write to it for communication or pleasure. Since this introduces the possibility of the creation of art, we decided to give them a selection of narcotics, stimulants and psychedelics. This is not in Critterding. The end result is a high-color cellular automaton running on a substrate that thinks and evolves, and may actually produce hallucinations in the user."

Comments

design geekery

[girlintraining]

Two words: Jackson Pollock.

Also known as "the guy who vomits paint on extra large canvases while drunk and stoned." Glad to see neural nets getting high... they'll make an excellent contribution to modern american art (which imho is an oxymoron).

Re:design geekery

[Psyborgue]

Before you criticize the positive influences of drugs on art and culture, take a look at what you might have missed in Pollock's work:

In Jackson Pollock's drip paintings, as in nature, certain patterns are repeated again and again at various levels of magnification. Such fractals have varying degrees of complexity (or fractal dimension, called D), ranked by mathematicians on a series of scales of 0 to 3. A straight line (fig. D=1) or a flat horizon, rank at the bottom of a scale, whereas densely interwoven drips (fig. D=1.8) or tree branches rank higher up. Fractal patterns may account for some of the lasting appeal of Pollock's work. They also enable physicist Richard Taylor to separate true Pollocks from the drip paintings created by imitators and forgers. Early last year, for instance, an art collector in Texas asked Taylor to look at an unsigned, undated canvas suspected to be by Pollock. When Taylor analyzed the painting, he found that it had no fractal dimension and thus must have been by another artist.

If you don't get something, it doesn't mean there is nothing there. Sometimes it takes time, examination, and a willingness to have an open mind. Whether that was because of Pollock's natural ability or the psychedelics is up to debate but in my view there is definite relationship between high quality art and artists who use or have used psychadelics. Think about the music you listen to if you don't believe me.

Re:design geekery

[Ethanol-fueled]

Have you ever painted a picture with your menstrual blood? You should try it.

It fades to a silvery-crimson sheen, like metallic paint does, due to the iron content of the blood. I still get all misty-eyed when I think about her giving me that painting. I framed it and put it on my desk at work. They thought I was a weirdo. Fuck them. She even kept my semen in a test tube, stored in her freezer next to the Hot Pockets.

Giving a menstrual blood painting is the ultimate expression of love -- short of cannibalism, at least :)

Re:design geekery

[girlintraining]

If you don't get something, it doesn't mean there is nothing there. Sometimes it takes time, examination, and a willingness to have an open mind.

A willingness to have an open mind doesn't mean I have to abandon my sense of aesthetics or personal tastes. Maybe these neural networks can mimick Pollock's work convincingly. We already have computer programs that can synthesize music passably-well. Just because I sarcastically dismiss his work doesn't mean I don't understand it; There was this guy who decided to serve in the military. He got sick, and was discharged because his girlfriend called his commanding officer. He then married her, banged a few times and popped out a couple kids and lived in a friend's basement. Unfortunately, the kids killed her, quite literally. He was so broken up about it that when his friend died, he moved out of the basement by marrying his newly single wife and raised their six kids together. Oh, I forgot to add -- his name was Monet and he also painted once in awhile. -_-

Re:Leave something for humans!

[mysidia]

Don't worry... Robots will be soon relegated to the role they belong in.

Re:One or the other

[blackcoot]

the latter. the former would require, amongst other things, access to the source code (as required by the original critterdings license) and a lot of noise coming from the biological disciplines re: computationally tractable, useful models for the various signaling pathways involved in hallucinogen use.

Re:terrible

[brilanon]

http://ansistego.sf.net/critter-art.png
http://ansistego.sf.net/critter-art-2.png
http://ansistego.sf.net/critter-art-3.png

Not much I know but, well, I can do my own thing in my own way if I want...

piss off!

art ability != drug use

[circletimessquare]

drug use in artists coincides with a loss of abilities, not an increase of them

artists certainly have excesses in their lifestyles, of which drug use certainly is a common factor. but this is all secondary to being an artist, not some sort of gateway. if you dressed up like a race car driver, does that make you a race car driver? likewise, if you use drugs, you don't increase any artistic abilities, you just get stupid

anyone who actually believes that drug use increases artistic ability is certainly no artist

art creation is a heightening of the senses

[circletimessquare]

drug use degrades and confuses the senses

both result in an alteration of what someone would consider "normal", thus the source of your confusion

but you don't create art when you are on lsd, nor do you find any inspiration

of course, when you are on lsd, you are speaking to god, you see both ends of the world, the words you write are of the highest genius, etc. then you come off of your trip, and you find you wrote "the dog, hollow beer"

drugs are a degradation, not a heightening. this is true aesthetically, and biologically. when you are in the degraded state of being under the influence of drugs, your perception of what art is becomes degraded as well

drug use is orthogonal to the lives of artists and the art they create. it is never intrinsic

the best art is done sober, and always has been done sober, and always will be done sober

i've been on psilocybin

[circletimessquare]

i can attest to the illusion you believe in

my thoughts and the images i saw on my trip were simply outstanding, the depths my mind was probing was simply awesome. i know what you speak of

but i was not actually feeling, seeing, hearing, and thinking great things. because while on that trip, what "i" was was modified: my mind had become incredibly small. what does a drug actually do psychopharmacologically? it doesn't open up some unknown portal in your mind. it simply shuts things down. its simple biochemistry, look it up

if you could take the processing power of a cat's brain, and temporarily put it in the context of the mental abilities of a human brain, the cat's brain would be utterly awestruck. this is the source of your impressions while on a trip. your executive functions, your highest faculties, are degraded and reduced and shrunk in powers to that of a small mammal like a cat. so of course normal human perceptions seem awesome: your executive functions are reduced

put it this way: if you measure the experience of sober reality as 1 foot in length, and your experience while on a trip as 1 mile in length, it is not because you actually experience a greater thing while on a trip, but because the yardstick you are using to measure your experience has been warped. what you experience while on a trip is no greater than reailty, simply your organs of perception have been shrunk and degraded. your entire yardstick is off

it is not that your mind is expanded while on a trip, but the actual organs of perception and interpretation in your mind are corrupted. such that common or cheaply altered thoughts and feelings and senses are seen as intricate, deep, and striking. when the truth is simply that the actual organ of thought is shrunken and broken while on a trip

what you believe of "great thoughts" and drug use is an illusion