[Synapse elist] Art that "makes itself"

[Paul Brown]

I was very influenced by the international system's movement in the  
1960's and 70's and the idea of moving away from art as an act of  
self expression and towards an art that was part of a rational  
process of investigating the universe.

Back then I proposed that writing code in FORTRAN would distance me  
from the process/artwork enough for it not to bear a significant  
signature.  By the 1990's it was apparent this was a very naive  
assumption (but had been a valuable one in terms of the work I had  
achieved over those three decades).

So in 2000, as a New Media Arts Fellow of the Australia Council, I  
spent a year as artist-in-residence at the Centre for Computational  
Neuroscience and Robotics at the University of Sussex where I learned  
about evolutionary and adaptive systems, genetics algorithms, neural  
networks, etc...

So I reframed the question:  "if it's not possible to design a  
process that can achieve autonomy then can such a process be  
evolved?"  One aspect of my current practice is the DrawBots project  
which is investigating this question in a larger framework:  "Is it  
possible to apply evolutionary and adaptive systems to non- 
quantitative processes?"  If the process can be quantified then it is  
(relatively) easy to determine some kind of Darwinian fitness  
criteria as attractors for the evolutionary process.  However for non- 
quantitative - or qualitative - processes this is more difficult.  If  
i choose to say it's fit then clearly I'm effecting the evolution and  
undermining it's potential autonomy.

Also worth a look "CAN A MECHANICAL CHESS-PLAYER OUTPLAY ITS  
DESIGNER?" by Ross Ashby, British Journal of the Philosophy of  
Science, 1952 - and the subsequent dialogue.  Those in academia can  
get online access to this.  Anyone else can email me and I'll send  
them a copy (how many million people are on this list :)

Paul

On 4 Apr 2008, at 07:18, wade marynowsky wrote:
> Hello list
>
> I am interested in discussing the two points in inverted comers by
> Leonel and Paul
>
> taking the "human out of the loop". and art that can "make itself".
>
> to what extent has this ever happened? as it is always the creators
> rules within the system which governs the work
>
> maybe complex systems like CA etc can express this ..........
>
> my robotic art blog is available at
> http://marynowsky.wordpress.com/
>
> regards
> wade

====
Paul Brown - based in OZ Dec 07 - Apr 08
mailto:paul at paul-brown.com == http://www.paul-brown.com
OZ Landline +61 (0)7 5443 3491 == USA fax +1 309 216 9900
OZ Mobile +61 (0)419 72 74 85 == Skype paul-g-brown
====
Visiting Professor - Sussex University
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/ccnr/research/creativity.html
====