My old college buddy and former NYC room mate recently sent me an email that got all my computer science, philosophy juices boiling. I figure this blog is a good place to document such thoughts. Here's what he wrote:
----- Original Message ----
From: Patrick Coston
To: Cedrick Chan
Sent: Saturday, September 6, 2008 6:17:55 AM
Subject: is it art?
I'm having an argument with my co-workers that maybe you can help shed
some light on.
If I write a program that generates some pretty pictures, can I call it art?
They so no, because a human didn't create it. The program did.
Can computers make art? Can we say that it is computer art?
If a computer composes music, is it art?
If a robot pains a beautiful abstract painting, is it art?
----- End Original Message ----
Here's what I wrote in response:
Interesting debate. Here's my take:
I think this eventually brings upon the classic Computer Science and
philosophical debate of sentience. First of all, we need to define
terms to make sure we're on the same page as to what we're debating.
IMHO, the most important terms in this discussion are art and
sentience. We could debate and define these terms forever, but here's
my personal definition:
Art: An attempt at expressing a thought, idea or emotion through
metaphor, imagery, sound or other non-literal means. Often the intent
of this thought or emotion is to define or understand an aspect of the
world, universe or truth while trying to evoke new emotions or thoughts
in an individual or others.
Sentience: A being or creature who is self-aware.
I remember computer science classes in which we debated sentience. I
don't recall there being any way to truly prove a program is sentient,
because under certain circumstances you can program a computer to act
and fool human beings into thinking it is sentient.
So given the above parameters, I think that art is generated by
sentient beings with the intent to express the almost literally
inexpressible in an attempt to understand truth. It is not entirely
impossible for a computer program to generate art, but it must have the
intent of doing so in order to express an original thought or idea.
Therefore, I don't think your program is directly generating art in
it's current form. Indirectly, you are generating the artwork because
it is you who has the intention and your program is a tool for that
expression. If however, one day your program becomes sentient and is
independently generating these images in an attempt to express an
abstract idea or concept like 'freedom' or 'spiritual enlightenment'
then I would say your program is generating art.
The above is of course merely my opinion and I'm sure you and your
office mates will continue to debate this without reaching a conclusion.
Here's another tangential, somewhat related question that could blow my above thoughts away: Are music visualizers (like iTunes'
visualizer) generating art?
