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?"

AARON

There's AARON [kurzweilcyberart.com], which paints interesting pictures.

Congratulations

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?

Re:Congratulations

Not pointless at all, no. He won't get a meaningful answer out of this mess, but he got to advertise his little article on Slashdot for free.

Re:Congratulations

It's not the computer that came up with the program to generate these images, but the programmer. At the risk of going too philosophical, the purpose of creating art is for it to be seen. Unlike the programmer who created the image generator program, the computer has no feeling of purpose to what it calculated. Over here, the artist is clearly the programmer. In light cooperation, possibly, with the person typing 'Apple-X'.

Then who benefits from 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?

Well...

Well, if an unmade bed [wikipedia.org] 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.

Re:Well...

True, Emin's bed is one form of art - I call it 'celeb art' but then if I got paid to do that kinda stuff I'd be happy to do it.

With celeb art (like beds and piles of bananas), you can get away with anything provided that there's someone so smitten with you that they will fund your folly so you receive enough income that you can afford the time and tools to do things that others would not aspire to because:

1) they are a waste of time
2) they cannot afford the raw materials
3) they do not have the workspace
4) they are unlikely to be taken seriously

By my definition, art should include a degree of artistic talent to create a work that has uniqueness in its design or inception - making a messy bed is on the fringes of this because no talent has gone into making the bed, the 'talent' is in finding someone gullible enough to consider it art and the uniqueness is that no one has got away with it before.

Try this test:

Would someone show the fictitious work 'Pile of newspapers with hammer' by Tracy Emin - probably.
Would someone show 'Pile of newspapers with hammer' by Ann Nonymous - less likely.

At the end of the day it's not the quality of that type of art that demands it be viewed but simply the creator's name and once the creator has had a few works exhibited the 'establishment' goes into 'Emperor's new clothes' mode where no one holding the purse strings even thinks to question the merit in the work.

The donkey and the paintbrush..

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.

I think a better metaphor would be...

...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?

Re:I think a better metaphor would be...

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.

TFA Slashdotted, here it is:

" 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.

The XXth century showed us ....

... 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.

Is Computer-Created Art, Art?

In some instances, yes, but certainly not those Christmas "songs" composed by that computer at MIT.

My ears are still ringing from that.

Is human-created "art" art?

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.

Someone still has to program the computer

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.

Computer Games...Ultimate Art

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.

Don't see why not

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 [wikipedia.org] is often considered art.

Really, it's more of a question of whether or not it's good art, than art.

Of course it's not 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.

hogwash

"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."

But is it art?

In the city where I live (which is in Europe), a new museum opened. The museum paid a famous American artist (forgot the name, sorry) a million bucks to create a new piece for the grand opening. The artist couldn't come, but he sent them a fax that described what the piece should look like. Basically, it consisted of a pile of bricks. The museum hired a couple of construction workers to build the pile of bricks. Unfortunately, the room where the pile should be constructed, didn't have the right dimensions. So the construction workers decided to build a completely different pile of bricks. The museum staff took pictures of the new pile, and faxed them to the artist, asking if this was OK. The artist sent a fax back that is was fine; evidently, the purpose of his artwork was not that a specific pile of bricks was to be built, but just that there was a pile of bricks. The museum paid his bill.

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.

Computer-generated Chopin

Douglas Hofstadter describes [ibiblio.org] how a computer program by David Cope generates fake "Chopin" and "Bach" good enough to fool music students.

My art as an example

my computer generated art [fulcrumgallery.com] 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. :)

STOP!!!

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.

Shocked and appalled

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.

Oh, for heaven's sake

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.

The Fractal Art Manifesto

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

Well...

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-

Interactive Vs Uninteractive art?

I've had this conflict with a lot of so-called professionals before.

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 [blender3d.org]. 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:

• An acceptable resulting impact of the piece onobservers
• A demonstratable amount of skill implemented as to the design of the product
• Originality of the final product
• Time and effort given to the product (just because you're a known artist does not mean what you product is art, a lot of them run on reputation or sheer arrogance after a time)

There are artists, entertainers, and people that are both. One is not always the other, but those who are both are truely gifted individuals.

Is it art? Who cares. Is it copyrightable? Hmmm...

Is it art? Who really cares. The interesting question is, is the output copyrightable?

I have a fuller discussion of the theory here [jerf.org], 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 [random-art.org] 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:

1. Is this creative enough to qualify for copyright? There are two conflicting answers here:
   1. 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!)
   2. 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?
2. 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.

(If this interests you, I encourage you to check out the full section [jerf.org] on this issue.)