Visual Indeterminacy in Generative Neural Art

Abstract

Why are GANs such powerful tools for making art? This essay argues that GAN art often exhibits visual indeterminacy, a term coined by Pepperrell. GANs cause visual indeterminacy by creating plausible compositions and textures that nonetheless defy coherent explanation, and these are the GAN images often used in recent artworks. Because visual indeterminacy can be understood as a perceptual process, GANs provide a potential tool for both art and for neuroscience experiments based on perceptual uncertainty modeling.