Can Computers Create Art?

This essay discusses whether computers, using Artificial Intelligence (AI), could create art. First, the history of technologies that automated aspects of art is surveyed, including photography and animation. In each case, there were initial fears and denial of the technology, followed by a blossoming of new creative and professional opportunities for artists. The current hype and reality of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools for art making is then discussed, together with predictions about how AI tools will be used. It is then speculated about whether it could ever happen that AI systems could be credited with authorship of artwork. It is theorized that art is something created by social agents, and so computers cannot be credited with authorship of art in our current understanding. A few ways that this could change are also hypothesized.Comment: to appear in Arts, special issue on Machine as Artist (21st Century

Cyborg Art: An Explorative and Critical Inquiry into Corporeal Human-Technology Convergence

This thesis introduces and examines the undervalued concept of corporeal human-technology interface art, or 'cyborg art', which describes literal, figural and metaphorical representations of increasing body and technology integration. The transforming (post)human being is therefore the focus; who we are today, and who or what we may become as humanity increasingly interfaces with technology. Theoretical analysis of cyborg imagery centres on the science fiction domain, in particular film and television, as opposed to art. Yet a profusion of cyborg art and art practices abound within contemporary society; each differing art form (for example, performance, interactive, digital, sculpture or painting), offering possible 'symbolic function' and 'critical potential' concerning increasing cyborgisation. I therefore argue in this thesis that cyborg art has social value, and reveal throughout the way this artistic focus depicts key ontological and sociological themes of body-technology merger. Seventy-two artworks are examined in total, each demonstrating relevant concerns and aspirations regarding present and envisioned impacts of technoscience. The cyborg-inspired artworks included in this study are primarily situated within four fundamental dimensions of humanity: birth, death, gender and ethnicity; and within three main spheres of corporeal-technological developments: prosthetics, telematics and genetics. Key concepts and themes explored within these realms include ectogenesis, post-genderism, necrotic and ethno-cyborgs, augmentation and reconstruction, tele-erotics and tele-puppets, and transgenics. In addition, three new cyborgian concepts are introduced: the udopian cyborg, which is an aesthetic representing technology's paradoxical dimension - technology as evoking fear and yearning, and having the potential to benefit and harm humanity; the permeative gaze of technoscience, which is a new technologised gaze focusing on how human skin no longer serves as a boundary and barrier to the inner corporeal realm; and lastly, triadic convergence, which denotes the way artists are increasingly creating entities which are a melding of animal, technological and human components. Multimethod research serves as the methodological base for this thesis, as both qualitative and quantitative methods are incorporated into the research design. Hermeneutics is adopted as the analytical/interpretive perspective and approach. The empirical research includes semi-structured in-depth interviews, qualitative (artists') email questionnaires, and structured quantitative questionnaires. Triangulation is employed in order to obtain varied responses to, and perspectives on, technology and the technological epoch, art and cyborg art, and the cyborg. A theory of cyborg art is constructed by interweaving the collated findings with interview participants' responses to a selection of cyborg artworks, and theorists' perspectives on the aforementioned concepts, derived from visual culture, cyborg theory, and critical postmodern theory. The ultimate goal of this thesis is to present the underlying theoretical breadth and creative depth of cyborg art, and to demonstrate that cyborg art can act as a catalyst for increasing societal awareness of, and interest in, corporeal human-technology merger. I analyse the critical relevance of this under-examined artistic focus, and address why cyborg art should be recognised as a new postmodern art genre, and complementary to theoretical discussions of cyborgisation. I argue overall that cyborg art is a valid and critical sphere of inquiry into the increasing integration which exists between humanity and technology

Dataremix: Aesthetic Experiences of Big Data and Data Abstraction

This PhD by published work expands on the contribution to knowledge in two recent large-scale transdisciplinary artistic research projects: ATLAS in silico and INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night and their exhibited and published outputs. The thesis reflects upon this practice-based artistic research that interrogates data abstraction: the digitization, datafication and abstraction of culture and nature, as vast and abstract digital data. The research is situated in digital arts practices that engage a combination of big (scientific) data as artistic material, embodied interaction in virtual environments, and poetic recombination. A transdisciplinary and collaborative artistic practice, x-resonance, provides a framework for the hybrid processes, outcomes, and contributions to knowledge from the research. These are purposefully and productively situated at the objective | subjective interface, have potential to convey multiple meanings simultaneously to a variety of audiences and resist disciplinary definition. In the course of the research, a novel methodology emerges, dataremix, which is employed and iteratively evolved through artistic practice to address the research questions: 1) How can a visceral and poetic experience of data abstraction be created? and 2) How would one go about generating an artistically-informed (scientific) discovery? Several interconnected contributions to knowledge arise through the first research question: creation of representational elements for artistic visualization of big (scientific) data that includes four new forms (genomic calligraphy, algorithmic objects as natural specimens, scalable auditory data signatures, and signal objects); an aesthetic of slowness that contributes an extension to the operative forces in Jevbratt’s inverted sublime of looking down and in to also include looking fast and slow; an extension of Corby’s objective and subjective image consisting of “informational and aesthetic components” to novel virtual environments created from big 3 (scientific) data that extend Davies’ poetic virtual spatiality to poetic objective | subjective generative virtual spaces; and an extension of Seaman’s embodied interactive recombinant poetics through embodied interaction in virtual environments as a recapitulation of scientific (objective) and algorithmic processes through aesthetic (subjective) physical gestures. These contributions holistically combine in the artworks ATLAS in silico and INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night to create visceral poetic experiences of big data abstraction. Contributions to knowledge from the first research question develop artworks that are visceral and poetic experiences of data abstraction, and which manifest the objective | subjective through art. Contributions to knowledge from the second research question occur through the process of the artworks functioning as experimental systems in which experiments using analytical tools from the scientific domain are enacted within the process of creation of the artwork. The results are “returned” into the artwork. These contributions are: elucidating differences in DNA helix bending and curvature along regions of gene sequences specified as either introns or exons, revealing nuanced differences in BLAST results in relation to genomics sequence metadata, and cross-correlation of astronomical data to identify putative variable signals from astronomical objects for further scientific evaluation

Grain & Noise - Artists in Synthetic Biology Labs: Constructive Disturbances of Art in Science

The collaboration between scientists and artists in the form of Artist-in-Lab residencies may not only cause a productive disturbance for a day's work in the laboratory, but also reveal new ways of understanding. Research and science communication company Biofaction has brought together artists and synthetic biologists throughout Europe in a residence program that spans four truly cross-disciplinary collaborations. The contributors to this volume share their reflections of the dynamic frictions that occurred when their artistic and scientific worlds met. These stories, where chemistry labs, tobacco plants, genetically edited bacteria, and new-to-nature enzymes collide with music, photography, film, and visual arts, infuse the ongoing dialogue between art and sciences with grain, noise, and synergies

PERICLES Deliverable 4.3:Content Semantics and Use Context Analysis Techniques

The current deliverable summarises the work conducted within task T4.3 of WP4, focusing on the extraction and the subsequent analysis of semantic information from digital content, which is imperative for its preservability. More specifically, the deliverable defines content semantic information from a visual and textual perspective, explains how this information can be exploited in long-term digital preservation and proposes novel approaches for extracting this information in a scalable manner. Additionally, the deliverable discusses novel techniques for retrieving and analysing the context of use of digital objects. Although this topic has not been extensively studied by existing literature, we believe use context is vital in augmenting the semantic information and maintaining the usability and preservability of the digital objects, as well as their ability to be accurately interpreted as initially intended.PERICLE