Good Places to Start

the further exploits of AARON, Painter. By Harold Cohen. In Stanford Humanities Review , volume 4, issue 2 (1995) - Constructions of the Mind: Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities. " AARON began its existence some time in the mid-seventies, in my attempt to answer what seemed then, but turned out not to be, a simple question: What are the minimum conditions under which a set of marks functions as an image?"
Here are some places where you can find more information about Aaron:

• A collection of papers by Harold Cohen including: Colouring Without Seeing: A Problem in Machine Creativity (1999); Brother Giorgio's Kangaroo (1990); and The Material of Symbols (1976). From CRCA.
• Ask the Scientists: Harold Cohen's Q & A. From Scientific American Frontiers
• Aaron the Artist: A Teaching Guide, also from Scientific American Frontiers
• The Kurzweil CyberArt Technologies site offers a glimpse of Aaron at work, a video clip of Harold Cohen and Ray Kurzweil discussing Aaron's work, and lots more.
• Harold Cohen's Aaron. Copyrighted photographs of Aaron's paintings by science photographer Hank Morgan.
• Painting By Number. An article by Steven R. Holtzman in Technology Review, May 1995.
• Making Art Visible with Computers: Harold Cohen and AARON. "I find Cohen's work absolutely fascinating and his theories about art-making challenging. ... I am very glad that I have 'discovered for myself' Cohen and his work. I think more people should discover him too, which is why I've made these web pages. Enjoy! " - Val Wiebe"
• Can computers be creative? By Ben Silburn. BBC (November 11, 2001). "Harold Cohen has spent his whole career designing a program called Aaron which creates original works of art."
• He, robot - 'Untouched by Hands' is an intriguing idea carried to fruition -- it's artistic, but is it art? By Robert L. Pincus. The San-Diego Union-Tribune & SignOnSanDiego.com (September 9, 2004). "The images are by AARON. The signature on them reads Harold Cohen. That would be highly unusual in most circumstances, but these pictures are by a program rather than a person. AARON is Cohen's creation, a project that has preoccupied him for 30-plus years."
• Did you see Aaron's painting at the top of this page?

ACE - Building a World Between Arts and Sciences. By Genevieve Ernst. New University Newspaper (November 1, 2005). "Arts Computation Engineering is an interdisciplinary graduate program at UC Irvine that incorporates those three fields -- the arts, computer science and engineering. Student projects from the first graduating class included a robot controlled by a Madagascar cockroach by Garnet Hertz -- a commentary on artificial intelligence and robotics – and 'Infinicity,' Adrien Herbertz's application that allows for the algorithmic generation of an infinite three-dimensional digital space by gradual variation of objects that are loaded into a computerized world navigated by a user on a 'Dance Dance Revolution'-style foot pad with a large screen in front of them. 'Part of the idea is that there’s value to be gained from an interdisciplinary approach, to knowledge in a general sense,' said Robert Nideffer, co-director of ACE and an associate professor in studio art and informatics. '[ACE] trains students to think about a lot of issues not only central to the arts, but central to engineering and computer science to really allow people to be competent in these fields. The goal is to be working at a deep level in the media arts.'"

• Visit the ACE web site.

"Chickens are Us" and other observations of robotic art. By Patricia Donovan. University at Buffalo Reporter (December 4, 2003; Volume 35, Number 14). "Hundreds of artists in all corners of the world -- a number of them at UB -- use emerging technologies as a tool for material and cultural analysis. One of them is conceptual artist Marc Böhlen, assistant professor in the Department of Media Study. His medium is not oil or bronze, but robotics and site-specific data, and his practice combines the structured approach of scientific investigation with artistic intuition, spiced with a deliberate and effective dash of good or bad taste. ... Böhlen considers the media arts in the context of the history of automation technologies. They were invented with the hope of improving everyday life, he notes, and in some ways they have. 'Our unquestioned pursuit of efficiency, however, has made us slaves of automation,' he says, a point made by artists from the mid-19th century on. 'Through our very inventiveness and persistence, we have separated ourselves from the constraints of our natural surroundings. In my work, I attempt to contradict preconceptions of what technical mediation is by a practice that is poetically inspired, radical and technically competent.' To this end, Böhlen builds machines whose functions contradict their assumed utilitarian purpose. ... He says 'the Keeper' is designed to re-imagine -- beyond issues of security and repression -- how machines that use biometric technology are able to control our identities and validate our right to gain access to any space. "

• Visit Marc Böhlen's website and see "the open biometrics project and its keeper" and other projects.

True bliss with art that can be undone. By Dave Horrigan. South China Morning Post (August 17, 2004; subscription req'd.). "Studio Artist was created by legendary programmer John Dalton as an intelligent, art-generating machine. In the early days of Macintosh, Mr Dalton created groundbreaking software, some of which remain the industry standard, such as Deck multi-track recording software. Mr Dalton's vision was to apply state-of-the-art, artificial intelligence algorithms to the creation of art. Studio Artist is the result of that experiment. The application looks at a photo or drawing and interprets it with an artistic effect. But do not get Studio Artist confused with a simple Photoshop filter. The application interprets the patterns, shadows, textures and/or coloured forms, and renders them as an artist might."

• Visit Synthetik Software and be sure to check out the Studio Artist galleries.

Organic robot creates art in Australia - Artists, scientists and computer programmers have embedded rat neurons in a robot to create a 'hybrot' artist. By James Pearce. ZDNet Australia (July 10, 2003). "The resulting robot is called 'Meart,' which stands for multi-electrode array art. [Oron] Catts said there was a feedback loop so the neurons could 'see' what they were drawing. 'The culture is fed with the original image, the portrait that they are trying to produce, and what they have drawn already, so they can subtract the image,' he said."

The Artist's Angst is All in Your Head. By George Johnson. Week in Review, New York Times on the Web, Nov. 16, 1997. A marvelous article about Aaron and EMI, a music-writing computer program.

Tate jumps on art carousel - New search facility brings catalogue to masses. By Miya Knights. Computing (September 29, 2005). "The Tate Gallery has launched a new search facility on its web site to attract visitors and grow sales for its art-on-demand service. The new 'carousel' feature scrolls through 2,000 catalogued pieces of art from the Tate's collection automatically, to help make them more accessible to a broader audience. Launched at the end of August, the tool uses BT-developed artificial intelligence software to display works of art in the same or similar genre to those that users have already clicked on."

• Check out Carousel at The Tate.
• Also see:
  • Art with intelligence. The Guardian (January 26, 2005). "The Tate is working on a website allowing people who know little about art to browse a personal collection online. The ArtGarden system, developed by artificial intelligence experts at BT, collects information about users' personal tastes by showing a selection of works and offers views of pictures it thinks the user will like."
  • Smart search lets art fans browse. BBC News (January 28, 2005). "ArtGarden, developed by BT's research unit, is being tested by the Tate as a new way of browsing its online collection of paintings. ... The technology uses a system dubbed smart serendipity, which is a combination of artificial intelligence and random selection."

Readings Online

Pardon Me, but the Art Is Mouthing Off. By Jori Finkel. The New York Times (November 27, 2005; subscription req'd.). "It was late in the day, rain was streaking the windows of a converted warehouse in San Francisco and the robot was not behaving. Represented by a talking head on a flat-screen monitor, and equipped with voice-recognition software, the artificial intelligence computer -- known as DiNA -- was designed to chat with visitors about current affairs. She is supposed to be a political animal, or more precisely, machine. ... The next day, relaxing on a brown couch in her studio, Ms. [Lynn] Hershman Leeson talked about what it was like to be an artist forever bumping up against the limits of technology. 'I'm always trying to do something that doesn't exist yet,' she said. "Voice recognition for DiNA, for example - everyone said that we couldn't do it, that the technology wasn't far enough along. But I've learned over the years that you can never stop at the first no.' ... For more than 30 years, she has made artwork across many platforms - from painting, photography and performance art to video, laserdisc, DVD, Web-based work and interactive sculpture. She has also made two feature-length films: 'Conceiving Ada,' in 1997, and 'Teknolust,' in 2002. Like the rest of her work, they explore mind-bending questions about reality and identity. How can we tell in an age of digital and genetic sampling what is real? Can another mode of existence become more real or powerful than ours? Does a robot have its own personality? ... Both of her movies, which won awards on the film festival circuit, are feminist sci-fi adventures. 'Conceiving Ada' is a fantasy about bringing Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's brilliant daughter, back to life through computer programming - the language she helped to invent. 'Teknolust' tells the story of a geeky female biogeneticist who uses her own DNA to create three computer-bred clones...."

• Visit The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson web site.

A Computer That Has an Eye for Van Gogh. By Douglas Heingartner. The New York Times (June 13, 2004). "Who can say for sure that a great artwork is the real deal? ... Now a team of researchers at the University of Maastricht, here in the Netherlands, are taking a stab at rationalizing connoisseurship, a word that in its art-historical context refers to the formal process of determining who created a work of art. They have developed a computer system that quickly examines hundreds of paintings for telltale patterns. The results, they say, can lend credence to existing attributions or help dismiss them. Members of the team make modest claims for their system. 'The computer will come up with data that show some patterns, but we cannot decide whether these patterns are meaningful or not,' said Dr. Eric Postma, the leader of the project, known as Authentic, which is currently analyzing all paintings attributed to Vincent van Gogh. 'For that purpose we need experts. We can provide them with numbers, and they can interpret the numbers. And this interaction is where the real value of the project is.' ... Dr. Postma compares this pattern-seeking technique to chess. ... This is not the first time artificial intelligence has been used in authentication. In Germany in 1998, a team at the University of Bremen's Center for Computing Technologies trained their computer to identify the drawings of Delacroix, which it managed to do with 87 percent accuracy. ... In a more recent project at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, a computer distinguished between 23 paintings made by the popular Brazilian painter Candido Portinari and five by his contemporary Enrico Bianco."

The Science of Art. By Raymond Kurzweil. Chapter 9 of his book, The Age of Intelligent Machines (1990). "The computer can be a powerful partner in exploring our thoughts and emotions and finding new ways of expressing them."

Rat-brained robot does distant art. By Lakshmi Sandhana. BBC (July 28, 2003). "The 'brain' lives at Dr Steve Potter's lab at Georgia's Institute of Technology, Atlanta, while the 'body' is located at Guy Ben-Ary's lab at the University of Western Australia, Perth. The two ends communicate with each other in real-time through the internet. The project represents the team's effort to create a semi-living entity that learns like the living brains in people and animals do, adapting and expressing itself through art."

Robotics As Art - Expand your artistic creativity... build a robot! By Sharon Silvia. About.com. "Though we do not yet know where robotics will take us as artists, ongoing projects, offer artists and scientists a riveting ride into the evolving world of robotic art."

artificial intelligence research as art. By Stephen Wilson. Stanford Humanities Review 4:2 (1995) - Constructions of the Mind: Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities. "Artificial intelligence is one of these fields of inquiry that reaches beyond its technical boundaries. At its root it is an investigation into the nature of being human, the nature of intelligence, the limits of machines, and our limits as artifact makers. I felt that, in spite of falling in and out of public favor, it was one of the grand intellectual undertakings of our times and that the arts ought to address the questions, challenges, and opportunities it generated."

Related Web Sites

Alife, from the artists at TPR/Fusebox. "Artificial Life is a field of scientific study that attempts to model living biological systems through complex algorithms. Scientists use these models to test and experiment with a multitude of factors on the behavior of the systems. We artists here at TPR/fusebox see these algorithms as a starting point for a new artistic exploration where the interactivity is not only between the user and the computer program but within the computer system itself. We are just beginning to explore. Enjoy."

• For more info about Artificial Life, click here.

"Amorphic Robot Works was formed in 1992. ARW is a New York based group of artists, engineers and technicians working together to create robotic performances and installations."

An Artificial Artist. By Matthew Brand. "The Artificial Artist project seeks to endow computers with artistic vision--the ability to see something striking in a scene and express it in a new medium. Unlike most computational art, an artificial artist is not an image-altering filter nor a blind generator of pretty pictures, but a quasi-intelligent agent that has some understanding of its subjects and that makes aesthetic decisions about how to express that understanding."

"ArtBots is an international art exhibition for robotic art and art-making robots. Each year we publish an open call for submissions, inviting artists from around the world to send us information about their work. No firm rules exist on the types of work that can participate; if you think it's a robot and you think it's art, we encourage you to submit."

• For some images from the 2004 show, see: Nothing Robotic About Robo-Art.  By Cyrus Fariva. Wired News (September 21, 2004).

Center for Research in Computing and the Arts. "CRCA is an Organized Research Unit of UCSD whose mission is to foster advanced research and production at the crossroads between digital technology and new art forms. Current areas of interest include interactive networked multimedia, virtual reality, computer spatialized audio, and live performance techniques for computer music and graphics."

Evolutionary Computation and its application to art and design. By Craig Reynolds. An exciting collection of links where you'll find topics such as Online Interactive Evolution ("Here are some participatory, Web-based art projects which use evolutionary computation. Web users vote on the comparative esthetic value of several choices (images or sounds). These votes determine the fitness of the individuals which drives the composition of subsequent generation.), Evolution of Visual Art, and more.

High Performance Computing in the Arts. By the Scientific Computing and Visualization Group, Boston University.

Related Pages:

• Creativity
• General Index of News by Topic: Applications
• Music

More Readings

Holtzman, Steven R. 1995. Painting By Number. Technology Review 98: 60-68.

Lebowitz, Michael. 1992. All Work and No Play Makes HAL a Dull program. In The Age of Intelligent Machines, 2nd edition, ed. Kurzweil, Raymond, 351-379. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

McCorduck, Pamela. 1990. Aaron's Code: Meta-Art, Artificial Intelligence, and the Work of Harold Cohen. New York: Freeman.

Schank, Roger, and Christopher Owens. 1992. The Mechanics of Creativity. In The Age of Intelligent Machines, 2nd edition, ed. Kurzweil, Raymond, 351-379. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.