ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF COMPUTING TO THE ARTS AND CULTURE - AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

Our increasing knowledge of human evolution and of cognitive science combine to provide new insights into the function and roles of that wide variety of skills and products which are gathered under the heading “art”. Since all homo sapiens cultures produce it, art is on a par with language and tool making as a fundamental characteristic of what it means to be human. Why do we do it? What is its survival value? Historically it seems that, about the time humans evolved language, tool making skills were diverted into decoration and symbolic representation and thereafter cultural evolution was rapid – from shell shawls to a diamond encrusted skull, from flint axes to the Large Hadron Collider in only 80000 years! Just what is the relationship of computing to the arts and culture in our modern world of externalised, accessible knowledge and rapidly evolving technologies? This paper addresses that question.