Delete ‘Persons’, Insert ‘Information Processing Systems’: Art and the machinistic discourse of computationalism.

This paper focuses on explicit attempts at developing artificial intelligence in the production of art that generate outcomes similar to, or even technically superseding, the works of human artists. We aim at revealing the underlying discourses that equate art production with transformation of information, artists with input/output systems, and artistic creativity with an unlimited and autonomous generation of art-like outcomes. As a point of departure, we begin from an exposition of Margaret Boden’s account of creativity and proceed by examining different arguments to the effect that computers can be truly creative, primarily those offered by Boden (2004, 2010). We question what the assumptions, operative in the discourse on artificial or computational creativity, entail. AI-agents can produce creative outcomes because they implement our best models of creativity. By implementing these models, however, AI-agents evidence a particular understanding of what art is and what constitutes artistic production. This understanding does not fully conform to how contemporary artistic practices are perceived and valued. As a result, we argue, better models to frame artistic AI and computational creativity are needed to fully appreciate the developments in this field and their articulation within the existing art world.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Katsiaryna Suryna

Rodrigo Guzman Serrano

Conference

Publication date: May 2018

Publication date (Print): May 2018

Pages: 1-6

Affiliations

[1 ] Central European University

Nádor u. 9, Budapest,

1051 Hungary

[2 ] Danube University Krems

Dr.-Karl-Dorrek-Straße 30, 3500 Krems an der Donau, Austria

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/EVAC18.36

SO-VID: bc2faa28-dec7-46fc-8824-7d5064dda336

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Politics of the Machines - Art and After

Conference acronym: EVA Copenhagen

Conference number: 7

Conference location: Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark

Conference date: 15 - 17 May 2018

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Digital arts and culture

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/EVAC18.36

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

References

M BennettP. Hacker 2014 Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience Malden Blackwell Publishing
M. A. Boden 2010 Creativity and Art: Three Roads to Surprise Oxford University Press Oxford, UK
M. A. Boden 2004 The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms Second edition Routledge London; New York
A Broeckmann 2018 The Machine as Myth Presented at the Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2018) symposium, Copenhagen Denmark 15 May 2018
T. De Duve 1999 Kant after Duchamp The MIT Press Cambridge, MA
H Dreyfus 1972 What Computers Can’t Do: A Critique Harper & Row New York
A ElgammalLiuBingchenM. ElhoseinyM. Mazzone 2017 CAN: Creative Adversarial Networks Generating “Art” by Learning About Styles and Deviating from Style Norms Presented at the Eighth International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC) Atlanta, Georgia 20 22 June 2017
G. Kappala-Ramsamy 2012 Robot painter draws on abstract thought The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/ 01/robot-painter-software-painting-fool 15 June 2018
K Kelly 2017 The Myth of Superhuman AI. WIRED magazine https://www.wired.com/2017/04/the-myth-of-a-superhuman-ai/ 15 June 2018
MindtGarettCarlos Montemayor (msc.) The Interface Problem of Intelligence and Knowledge
A. Noë 2010 Out of Our Heads : Why You Are Not Your Brain and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness Hill & Wang New York
A. O’Hear 1995 Art and Technology: An Old Tension R. Fellows Philosophy and Technology Cambridge University Press Cambridge, UK
GW Smith 2014 Art and Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence Blog http://artent.net/2015/03/27/art-and-artificial-intelligence-by-g-w-smith/ 15 June 2018
GW SmithF. Leymarie 2017 The Machine as Artist: An Introduction Arts 6 2 5
P TressetO. Deussen 2014 Artistically Skilled Embodied Agents Presented at the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation for Behaviour (AISB) London, UK 1-4 April 2014
VICE News https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/ywqw8j/how-does-ai-art-stack-up-against-human-art 15 June 2018
S Wilson 2002 Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology The MIT Press Cambridge, MA
S Wilson 1995 “Artificial Intelligence Research as Art.” Stanford Electronic Humanities Review 4

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] M BennettP. Hacker 2014 Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience Malden Blackwell Publishing

[2] M. A. Boden 2010 Creativity and Art: Three Roads to Surprise Oxford University Press Oxford, UK

[3] M. A. Boden 2004 The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms Second edition Routledge London; New York

[4] A Broeckmann 2018 The Machine as Myth Presented at the Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2018) symposium, Copenhagen Denmark 15 May 2018

[5] T. De Duve 1999 Kant after Duchamp The MIT Press Cambridge, MA

[6] H Dreyfus 1972 What Computers Can’t Do: A Critique Harper & Row New York

[7] A ElgammalLiuBingchenM. ElhoseinyM. Mazzone 2017 CAN: Creative Adversarial Networks Generating “Art” by Learning About Styles and Deviating from Style Norms Presented at the Eighth International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC) Atlanta, Georgia 20 22 June 2017

[8] G. Kappala-Ramsamy 2012 Robot painter draws on abstract thought The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/ 01/robot-painter-software-painting-fool 15 June 2018

[9] K Kelly 2017 The Myth of Superhuman AI. WIRED magazine https://www.wired.com/2017/04/the-myth-of-a-superhuman-ai/ 15 June 2018

[10] MindtGarettCarlos Montemayor (msc.) The Interface Problem of Intelligence and Knowledge

[11] A. Noë 2010 Out of Our Heads : Why You Are Not Your Brain and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness Hill & Wang New York

[12] A. O’Hear 1995 Art and Technology: An Old Tension R. Fellows Philosophy and Technology Cambridge University Press Cambridge, UK

[13] GW Smith 2014 Art and Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence Blog http://artent.net/2015/03/27/art-and-artificial-intelligence-by-g-w-smith/ 15 June 2018

[14] GW SmithF. Leymarie 2017 The Machine as Artist: An Introduction Arts 6 2 5

[15] P TressetO. Deussen 2014 Artistically Skilled Embodied Agents Presented at the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation for Behaviour (AISB) London, UK 1-4 April 2014

[16] VICE News https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/ywqw8j/how-does-ai-art-stack-up-against-human-art 15 June 2018

[17] S Wilson 2002 Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology The MIT Press Cambridge, MA

[18] S Wilson 1995 “Artificial Intelligence Research as Art.” Stanford Electronic Humanities Review 4

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