I am shocked and appalled at the Slashdot crowd in general's response to this article. I think this is a perfectly valid question and one that is interesting to debate, yet because it doesn't involve some obscure flavour of Unix or offer any potential for Microsoft bashing the topic is flung aside for less "fluffy" subjects. Bashing aside, here is my opinion.
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.
Well, I am certainly surprised that they are selling essentially a clone. I work as a researcher at HP Labs, which is the biggest computer research labs in Europe. I definitely know of a couple of ideas they were considering adding which would have been very cool. As to innovation, HP Labs research products with a release date of 3-20+ years in the future, so there is still a bit of innovation left!
He would certainly be under intense scrutiny. In fact, when reading his book (The Universe in a Nutshell) I spotted a mistake that I've never seen mentioned. Unfortunately it was just a missing space between two words. I was still quite proud though...
Slashdot Mirror
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.
Well, I am certainly surprised that they are selling essentially a clone. I work as a researcher at HP Labs, which is the biggest computer research labs in Europe. I definitely know of a couple of ideas they were considering adding which would have been very cool. As to innovation, HP Labs research products with a release date of 3-20+ years in the future, so there is still a bit of innovation left!
He would certainly be under intense scrutiny. In fact, when reading his book (The Universe in a Nutshell) I spotted a mistake that I've never seen mentioned. Unfortunately it was just a missing space between two words. I was still quite proud though...