[Synapse elist] Impact against art

[Tatsuo Unemi]

Hello all,

Thank you Vicky, and I'm expecting this list will provide fruitful  
inspirations for all.

In the posts of members, interesting points concerning the impacts of  
AI and Cognitive science for academia and human society, especially on  
the question what human is, or what living system is. All of points in  
the questions by Reva are interesting.

As my first post to this list, I want to add another theme for  
discussion, that is, the impact of AI/A-Life/Cog.Sci. against the art  
as an activity of human individuals and societies. So called "STRONG"  
AI is intending to propose methods to design an "autonomous"  
artificial system. This is an important point on the relationship  
between a product and its producer. Usually, we think that a product  
is under the control of producer, persons (or company) who design and  
produce it. We usually think the effect of products is under  
responsibility of producer. However, as you know, the theory of  
complex system proved some artificial systems are uncontrollable, and  
AI and A-life are providing us design methods to build up an  
uncontrollable system.

One questionable point when I distributed my software, SBART, a  
breeding system of abstract graphics based on the idea of Karl Sims,  
was who should be the author. In this type of tool based on  
Interactive Evolutionary Computation, the user doesn't need to design  
a product itself, but needs only to select which candidates proposed  
by the computer are preferable. I think we should say the product was  
made though cooperation between human user and the computer.

I think one suitable way for thinking of this point is to leave from  
the standing point of artist and scientist and to observe the  
cognitive and social phenomena happening in our mind and society.

To avoid scattering the theme of discussion, it might be better to  
postpone the discussion about the point I mentioned above.

Best regards.

Tatsuo UNEMI, Associate Prof. at Dept. of Info. Sys. Sci., Soka Univ.
1-236 Tangi-machi, Hachioji, Tokyo, 192-8577 JAPAN
phone: +81-426-91-9429, fax: +81-426-91-9312
unemi at iss.soka.ac.jp http://www.intlab.soka.ac.jp/~unemi/