Artist Post 2: Harold Cohen

Digital print with varnish

Who would have thought that robots are unleashing their own creative spirit and creating original artwork? Harold Cohen, an English abstract painter, became interested in computing and artificial intelligence after a visit to UCSD in 1968. Harold then began his 23 years of research that delved into the development of a rather “different” computer controlled robot that ventured in the world of artificial intelligence. The program is named AARON and the robotic mind is specialized to create art. Aaron, the name of the robot, comes up with several new images during the night. Harold then chooses one of the images Aaron had thought up. For the next couple of hours Aaron gets to work and draws lines, mixes colors, and begins to physically paint abstract imaginary (mind you, not in the same form you might expect to see a human painting in). The robot even cleans the brushes! "AARON can make paintings of anything it knows about, but it actually knows about very little -- people, potted plants and trees, simple objects like boxes and tables, decoration” says Harold regarding the artworks of Aaron.

Harold Cohen quotes, "I wrote it to discover what independent (machine) intelligence might do, given some knowledge of the world and some rudimentary physical capabilities. And, in the process, to have IT teach ME about possibilities I hadn't imagined. I'd be happier if AARON's work in the future were LESS like human work, not MORE like human work."

Aaron is the first robot ever to create an original piece of artwork. The idea came from investigations regarding the natural representations of how human being’s see marks on a paper as a recognizable image (like a shoe) or other known objects from the tangible world. I find it fascinating that a robotic mind can create something new. It almost seems to violate the idea that people are special because we are innovators. If Aaron is able to create the images as seen in this post, I can’t imagine the other possibilities. It’s refreshing when creativity can be made from robotics rather than just scientific output. I am curious, however, as to why Aaron has such a specific style of art. I realize that Harold was the creator, and thus must have the largest influence on Aaron- but, it would be interesting if information from past artists were to flow through the robotic mind. What mixture of art would Aaron come up with then? I do believe that creativity is not as creative as we all may think. It has to come from somewhere in my opinion, much as the same way that Aaron thinks up artwork.

Digital print with varnish


(Screen Print)



Digital print with varnish






References:
http://crca.ucsd.edu/~hcohen/
http://www.kurzweilcyberart.com/aaron/hi_cohenbio.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARON

Artist Post: Aaron Koblin

I stumbled upon Aaron Koblin's body of work on Google images as I tried to search for ideas that corresponded to my own for Project 1. Not surprisingly, he is also the Creative Director of Data Arts of Google. Koblin is known for his incorporation of data and crowd-sourcing into visual schematics. This, in particular, was fascinating to me as he was able to visually introduce another creative point of view on something that relates to most everyone. Koblin quotes: “An interface can be a powerful narrative device. And as we collect more and more personally and socially relevant data, we have an opportunity, and maybe even an obligation, to maintain [our] humanity and tell some amazing stories.” To branch from off of this idea, I think it would be interesting to present statistical data in an aesthetically pleasing and conceptually significant way. For the project, I certainly hope that I am able to execute something of the sort. Equally important to me, I want the viewer to be able to connect my concept to the visual presentation without dissecting the visual information for a conceivably long time. Koblin's artwork is presented in such a way. Immediately you recognize a hint of what's going on in the image; however, there is still explanation required in order to acquire a full sense of satisfaction conceptually. In Koblins body of work appropriately titled "Flight Patterns," I understood what was going on- but, there was still ambiguity left for me to uncover. Above is the digital piece that I had found during my artist search.

I immediately too notice that this was the shape of America as I'm sure most people have. Next, I noticed the brighter regions of the shape that represent the highly populated cities. The lines, as the title gives away, represents airplane routes over the United States. It truly shows just how connected every person is to one another in the world. When I first saw this image, I thought that this represented the flow of digital information among North America. However, this artwork was more physically derived in my opinion- as the image tracks people literally moving their bodies from various different points on the globe. In today's era we are not only connected by physical means (as Flight Patterns implies), but we are also connected by a web of digital information that flows relatively freely in a matter or milliseconds. The ides is further illustrated by the fact that you can travel around planet Earth in a mere 24- hours.

This image is a bit less identifiable than the last. But, if you look closely you may or may not see a peninsula that lies between the Atlantic and the Gulf. I like this zoomed in version of the above image of North America because it really shows you the minuscule details that might otherwise be overlooked.  This honestly reminds me of a circulatory system in a human body. The cities representing the places of importance in the body and the more heavily traveled routes would be the major arteries or veins and  are thus larger in order to carry more blood and nutrients (aka people and supplies). Pretty interesting how seemingly different processes such as flight routes in the world might functionally overlap with blood routes in the body. I hope to build off of this idea for project one- the idea of global oneness, the way individual molecules work together to make up the entirety of the human body. Regardless Koblin has provided the world with artwork that is both conceptually and aesthetically interesting. He has also worked on other bodies of work such as "sheep market." "TheSheepMarket.com is a collection of 10,000 sheep made by workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Workers were paid 0.02 ($USD) to "draw a sheep facing to the left."" (http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work/thesheepmarket/)

^^"Northeast"

http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work/flightpatterns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Koblin

http://www.ted.com/speakers/aaron_koblin.html

Color/Value Corrections

I felt the figures of the first photograph were somewhat silhouetted... My corrected version is the second photo. 

BEFORE

AFTER

Collage

The collage project:

First- I built this image like I was building a human face from a skeleton. I tried to incorporate the superficial human muscles groups of the face first. From there, it evolved into an image that portrays aesthetic unity through the compositional elements of space and color. Although the individual photographs used to create this artwork are somewhat ambiguous- they synchronize to achieve a common purpose-- one discernible shape. Must of the way individuals cells and muscle groups function to construct the human form.

Scans for 9-6-12

Experimentation scans: Patterns & Nature- my two favorite things.