RE: [-empyre-] transparency+digidos



Hi yep sorry about the mail formating.. tis this stupid groupwise webmail system, I'll see what I can do...

>but 
> the computer is not making the art here, the artist is, or 
> should be, constantly making aesthetic decisions and 
> modifying their structure accordingly. *All an artist ever 
> really does is make decisions.

Well I believe the computer is making art... though this perhaps is more of a sematic issue... if you teach someone to paint like degas, how is this different from teaching a computer to do the same? And then tell the computer to design architecture in this style? I want the computer to make some decisions / do some processes for me, and then I assess the output and make any desired changes, so I do value the human element in this process. The advantage is I can suggest an idea to it and then it can create millions of variations in the same time as it might take me to make one. "take this building design and mutate it X% then show it to me"


>> 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.

Hmmm yep sematics... was the first monkey to learn how to peel a banana inspired, or the octopus who learns how to open a jar with a treat inside, or a whale who creates a new song? 

>> 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.

It does do things for itself, it does do things I don't tell it to do (and I'm not just talking about bugs;) It does suprise me, and please me and frustrate me... as a stocastic process I define the parameter space and let it run wild (or tamed) like in a garden where I tell the AI gardener to "plant" a handful of random seeds and then I watch how it grows... I can step in and weed/edit or replant the whole lot if I desire. The "me" is just one component in the "process of nature".

>i also appreciate repetitive tasks, and get value from them -- the
boredom allows the mind to wander. is a computer ever bored? is there
value for the computer itself, in what it's processing? does it enjoy
being a computer? certainly not. 
>you cant have art without boredom.
Macs always have more fun than PC's... its a well known fact! I'd much rather do creative art than wash dishes, i know when my computer is happy and when I've done something to really piss it off, but mind you I often sleep with my laptop so perhaps we are on more intimate terms than yourself ;)

>That's a good example. Atonal music has had nearly one century to grow
in our collective sensibility. But yet when I play Schoenberg to some
friends they beg me to change the CD for some easier stuff (Salsa
anyone?). So how long will it take for it to become as mainstream as
Mozart. Or is it just that it'll never get ther simply because, beside
the mathematical complexity and sharpness, it's crap to the ear?

Well appreciation is often learned, a lot of people can only deal with "the two kinds of music, country AND western", a sublime indian raga might just be noise to them as might be a intense death metal symphony. A conceptual handle on a work can augment our enjoyment of the work immeasurably.

There is a tendency to make work easily accessable eye/ear candy, art for the sake of beauty, although this may not help the evolution of the medium, and the evolution of global human consciousness. Personally I do like Schoenberg, its a great way of pissing off other people in the house and getting some space, although there is beauty in it, so its not crap to my ear :) I have to admire artists that have "let go of what is generally accepted and works" and have choosen to be true their artistic process, even if it does alienate those that do not understand.

>For me the humans, whether performers or audience are an essential `part of the show', otherwise no matter how non linear you try and make it it will always have a fixed relationship to the past - to the creator at a particular time, and it is the completely unpredictable synthesis of any given moment which truely enjoys the gifts that 3 and 4D have to offer.

I agree that the human element adds a new dimension to digital art, although it need not be essential.. I while back I designed a sound generation system based on Keplers laws of planetary harmony... the only real human element is the translation of the raw data of the universe into a formula.. and created hours of enjoyable listening.. i'd argue that this is not really a human process, just a human perspective of a universal process. 

>have been following your interesting conversations !
i definitively agree with the idea of creation through repetition, but i
think it is more in a process of repetition + appropriation + exhaustion
that you go 'beyond' and create/do something unexpected. boredom makes me quit before i get there.

Yep tho perhaps iteration is more appropriate than repetition, repetition implying an endless cycle, while iteration implying a spiraling expansion and evolution, that if we feel we are not making progress we might get bored.

cheers,
Damien





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