Re: [-empyre-] transparency+digidos

[John Klima <klima@echonyc.com>]

Damien +,

first just a mail issue, can you check your reader's formating? messages
and replys don't seem to be line breaking in the normal fashion, making
them difficult to read and reply to. 

Damien Everett wrote:

> Inspiration need not be human generated, look at a sunrise, or 
> listen to a bird song, or transform the output of a chaotic 
> algorithm into a minor pentatonic scale.

to be precise, "inspiration" *is* human generated, it only exists in our
minds. but of course things other than human can be inspirational *to*
us.

> Personally I believe originality to be essential to Art, all else is
> craft... but it is just one quality... being offered new possibilities
> with the work is a liberating thing, I don't see it as negative, 
> though it does threaten the sense of definite ownership... do I 
> own the work, or does the computer... or is the program a kind of 
> newborn child?

what you suggest here is perhaps that we are playing midwife to a new
species. i suppose i'll agree that this is a possibility. presently, the
computer is not the thing that is making the art, regardless of how
"generative" that art is. we are still completely fabricating the
environment, it is all our construct.  the computer will not be making
the art until we are out of the picture, we are no longer involved in
the process. in my mind, this cant happen until the computer is
completely responsible for its own reproduction.

> Hmmm, have you heard much atonal music? ;) Sure, Shakespeare is likely
> more interesting to the average audience, although you are being 
> unfair... humans have had millenia to evolve their aesthetic 
> sensibilities, computers have only had decades.

again you are assuming that the computer does things for itself, rather
than just what we tell it to do.  we are still the creators here, and a
computer is still an inanimate object.

> computers offer another means of breaking free from older modes of
> thinking.

or perhaps they simply reiterate our existing modes of thinking. again
they only do what we tell them to do. they represent, and are the
encapsulation of, our current mode of thinking.

j