Computer Art

My old college buddy and former NYC room mate recently sent me an email that got all my computer science, philosophy juices boiling.  I figure this blog is a good place to document such thoughts.  Here's what he wrote:

----- Original Message ----

From: Patrick Coston

To: Cedrick Chan

Sent: Saturday, September 6, 2008 6:17:55 AM

Subject: is it art?

I'm having an argument with my co-workers that maybe you can help shed

some light on.

If I write a program that generates some pretty pictures, can I call it art?

They so no, because a human didn't create it.  The program did.

Can computers make art?  Can we say that it is computer art?

If a computer composes music, is it art?

If a robot pains a beautiful abstract painting, is it art?

----- End Original Message ----

Here's what I wrote in response:

Interesting debate.  Here's my take:

I think this eventually brings upon the classic Computer Science and philosophical debate of sentience.  First of all, we need to define terms to make sure we're on the same page as to what we're debating.  IMHO, the most important terms in this discussion are art and sentience.  We could debate and define these terms forever, but here's my personal definition:

  Art:  An attempt at expressing a thought, idea or emotion through metaphor, imagery, sound or other non-literal means.  Often the intent of this thought or emotion is to define or understand an aspect of the world, universe or truth while trying to evoke new emotions or thoughts in an individual or others.

  Sentience:  A being or creature who is self-aware.

I remember computer science classes in which we debated sentience.  I don't recall there being any way to truly prove a program is sentient, because under certain circumstances you can program a computer to act and fool human beings into thinking it is sentient.

So given the above parameters, I think that art is generated by sentient beings with the intent to express the almost literally inexpressible in an attempt to understand truth. It is not entirely impossible for a computer program to generate art, but it must have the intent of doing so in order to express an original thought or idea.

Therefore, I don't think your program is directly generating art in it's current form.  Indirectly, you are generating the artwork because it is you who has the intention and your program is a tool for that expression.  If however, one day your program becomes sentient and is independently generating these images in an attempt to express an abstract idea or concept like 'freedom' or 'spiritual enlightenment' then I would say your program is generating art.

The above is of course merely my opinion and I'm sure you and your office mates will continue to debate this without reaching a conclusion.Here's another tangential, somewhat related question that could blow my above thoughts away:  Are music visualizers (like iTunes' visualizer) generating art?