Is Computer-Created Art, Art? 441
eobanb writes "While playing with an interesting site called TypoGenerator I became compelled to write an article about how much of TypoGenerator's intriguing and seemingly original creations were actually art. Inevitably, it comes down to humans really being the origin of what TypoGenerator makes. Is such a unwitting collaboration between myself, Google (which TypoGenerator uses to create the images), and the programmers of TypoGenerator, art? Is true computer-created material possible, and if it is, is IT art? Does anyone know of other candidates for computer-created art?"
AARON (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:AARON (Score:2)
Re:AARON (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:AARON (Score:3, Interesting)
Just my two cents:
There's also:
(webGobbler is my own creation - Comments are welcome...)
Still, I would not pretend this is art.
Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Congratulations (Score:2)
Comma usage [purdue.edu].
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Then who benefits from Art? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should the work of Michaelangelo be "Priceless", yet the sketchings of an NYC street artist fixed at $15? Surely the provenance is different, but beyond the origins there should be no discernable difference in importance.
So then why should we pay "Artists" for producing their art? If the expression "Writers Write. Painters Paint. Singers Sing" holds true, then these tools are simply performing their function and thus shouldn't be singled out for deserving praise or reward above any other.
So what if a particular tool is adept at producing a result you find either pleasing or revolting? Is your subjective taste, or the taste of a majority, enough to qualify Art as Art? If I am the only person who sees the beauty in an object, am I all the more rich for holding a truly unique perspective? Is my perspective then, itself an art?
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3717650
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Don't know about the bananas, but My Bed is square in the realm of objects which are created with mundane means, but whose arrangement evokes an emotional response because of their meaning and what they communicate of the artist's soul. Yep, Art.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
With celeb art (like beds and piles of bananas), you can get away with anything provided that there's someone so smitten with you that they will fund your folly so you receive enough income that you can afford the time and tools to do things that others would not aspire to because:
1) they are a waste of time
2) they cannot afford the raw materials
3) they do not have the workspace
4) they are unlikely to be taken seriously
By my definition, art should include a degree of artistic talent to create a work that has uniqueness in its design or inception - making a messy bed is on the fringes of this because no talent has gone into making the bed, the 'talent' is in finding someone gullible enough to consider it art and the uniqueness is that no one has got away with it before.
Try this test:
Would someone show the fictitious work 'Pile of newspapers with hammer' by Tracy Emin - probably.
Would someone show 'Pile of newspapers with hammer' by Ann Nonymous - less likely.
At the end of the day it's not the quality of that type of art that demands it be viewed but simply the creator's name and once the creator has had a few works exhibited the 'establishment' goes into 'Emperor's new clothes' mode where no one holding the purse strings even thinks to question the merit in the work.
Talking about 'modern' art (Score:2)
I remember when the Saatchi fire [google.co.uk] happened, and with all the damaged caused... I wondered if the firefighters had put out the fire, walked around to inspect the mess and for one of them to say "But is it art?". That thought makes me chuckle everytime.
The donkey and the paintbrush.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I once had a similar experience myself when I went to an art exhibition where an artist had bolted several multicolored urinals to a wall, no frills just standard issue urinals fromt he hardware store bolted to a wall, that's it. No paint no sculpting just urinals on a wall. The thing had a six figure price tag and a 'SOLD" sign on it. I drew the conclusion that art is what people say it is and if people think splashes from a donkeys tail and porcelain urinals bolted to a wall is art then well it is art.
Re:The donkey and the paintbrush.. (Score:3, Insightful)
This reminds me about a quote from a finnish magazine article about modern art:
"One places stones into a circle and another pays a million for it. Genius sells and moron buys."
The story about the Emperor's new clothes also comes to mind. No one dared to say that a bunch of urinals are not (good) art, for fear of appearing uncivilized.
Re:The donkey and the paintbrush.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Stuckism (Score:2)
From one of their manifestos: [stuckism.com] "Declaring a dead horse hung from the ceiling of a gallery not to be art is not racism or hatred of dead horses. It is a value judgement, and here on earth value judgements are of value."
Re:The last laugh (Score:2)
Having seen the urinal in question, I tend to go with Duchamp (the artist), in that - especially at the time - a urinal sat in the middle of a posh gallery, and being called art.. Is rather brain-jarring, sufficiently so to give good reason to call it art. The very fact that you've called it art, makes it so.
How's that? Art defined recursively.
I think a better metaphor would be... (Score:3, Interesting)
...TypoGenerator's programmers created the brushes and the canvas, Google creates the paint, and you are still the artist that bring those tools together.
...in a completely new and awsome way, however, but as long as you're thinking along those lines, that seems to make more sense to me. Thoughts?
Re:I think a better metaphor would be... (Score:5, Insightful)
Inevitably, it comes down to humans really being the origin of what TypoGenerator makes.
More so than this, it comes down to humans being the interpreters of what TypoGenerator makes.
Throw a dozen disparate objects on the floor, and we as humans will be able to interpret a meaning from their positions. We might know it's a random occurence, but we might also laugh at the 'meaning' behind a plush tux doll ending up sitting on top of an XP box, for example.
It looks like art partly because it's humans looking at it, and interpreting it. It might be art if it weren't created by humans and humans are looking at it, and it might not be art if humans created it but there are none left to gaze upon it.
TFA Slashdotted, here it is: (Score:4, Funny)
There you go, don't say I never do anything for you guys.
The XXth century showed us .... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think it is art, then it is art.
Do not expect me to share your deviant artistic tastes though.
Re:The XXth century showed us .... (Score:3, Informative)
Right.
That's why photography can be art.
And here is a nice piece of unintentional computer-generated art: I call it bugart [9hells.org].
Re:The XXth century showed us .... (Score:2)
Is Computer-Created Art, Art? (Score:3, Funny)
My ears are still ringing from that.
The History of Art (Score:2)
See Duchamp, his urinal, etc etc. Honestly, almost 100 years after these questions were comprehensively answered, and in the age where the internet can effortlessly point you to the text of all the answers....really.
Re:The History of Art (Score:2)
People still asks these questions because there isn't a good consensus about what, exactly is art.
Now, there may be a consensus amongst art critics, but that is something else. Lots of people shown Duchamp's would not consider it art. I've seen some of it, and I'm not sure I consider it art (although I'm more inclined to think it is if he turned out to have made the supposedly found objects himself).
In areas like science it doesn't matter what people in general believe, you can usually prove something.
Re:The History of Art (Score:2)
yes but the grandparent's point was that "is it art?" is just no longer an interesting question. Just because we haven't conclusively answered it does not mean we need to keep asking the question. Who really cares? If you're the artist, and you can get some museum to put it up, does it really matter if some slashdotter (or some critic in ArtForum for that matter) thinks it's truly "art"? Isn't it more inter
Re:The History of Art (Score:2)
1) People don't really get any decent (if any at all) art history education in grade/high school. With only cursory ed at University unless you pursue it on your own.
2) The art world can at many times actively strive to keep the 'pleebs' out. Galleries do this in order to raise the perceived value of any give piece of art in order to make more money. Ah, art and capitalism.
Re:The History of Art (Score:2)
The funny thing about Duchamp was that he possessed such surpassing skill--he could paint or sculpt basically anything, any way he wanted, and yet he chose to pull stunts like the urinal, just to see what kind of reaction he would get, which made the whole process of pre
Is human-created "art" art? (Score:3, Interesting)
This post is art. A computer created it, every pixel lovingly placed at exactly the right point on your screen.
Presumably someone programmed the computer that "made" the art.
Computers are just tools. When you programme a tool you're not doing anything fundamentally different from lifting your arm. "But does your arm have blinking lights?" Sigh.
Re:Is human-created "art" art? (Score:2)
What does it mean? (Score:2)
But if you can create something that has meaning - even if that meaning is not immediately obvious) -, or that grabs the audience's attention (and you intended doing that), you create art.
Now this is not necessarily the only definition of art, but I believe it is the most useful one. But by this definition, art can only be produced by a human (or a very advanced AI, one that we con
Art is in the eye of the beholder (Score:2)
Well, your monkey with a brush may grab an audience's attention as well. I don't see how the intention matters. Even some stuff that wasn't created with the intention of capturing an audience, instill meaning, or even just be art, is still considered art.
If you think something's art, it is. That's as good a definit
Re:What does it mean? (Score:2)
That would seem to include a baby wailing to me :-P
Offhand, a siren (not the seamen luress) an exploding bomb and fireworks all would fall into this definition
An illustration of a flower, e.g
Re:What does it mean? (Score:2)
In my definition, art needs an artist and an artist is the person who creates stuff that he believes it is art. Art is something that someone made with the intention of being observed, experienced and judged by others, wheather it has some meaning or not.
Is this post art? I woul
Re:What does it mean? (Score:2)
That's actually the example somebody used to define art in a talk I saw once. He defined an artist as somebody who wants to change the world, and has the means to do so. So that's what the baby does: to get fed (change the world), it screams (use his/her means of communication). So the baby's an artist - why not?
As my "brother post" points out, intention is very important here. Otherwise you would of course be right, that almost anything (including a
Someone still has to program the computer (Score:5, Insightful)
This also reminds me of the early days of computer animation, before the likes of Pixar made it abundantly clear that computers are just Tools to be used by artists like any other, and not somehow magically creating the art themselves.
You might as well argue that Shakespeare wasn't an artist, because he just wrote the instructions to control the actors, and didn't perform the plays himself.
Re:Someone still has to program the computer (Score:2)
Ahem (Score:2, Informative)
Shakespeare _did_ perform the plays himself -- at least early on.
Nothing new. Mozart had it. (Score:2)
Computer Games...Ultimate Art (Score:4, Insightful)
In a computer game you can do anything a writer can do, you can do everything a movie maker can do, you can o everything a composer can do. In a way you can do anything any painter or sculptor can do. And you can do so much more that nooe else can do. Like creating interactions between people scattered all over the world, making them all to contribute to it, interpretating your piece of art.
It just hurts to see where this is headed though. To become a dull, dumbing vehicle to exploit those artists and to make publishers rich. But well, we live in a world of humans, so this is just the normal development.
The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed (Score:2)
The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed [amazon.com] is a book that was "written" by an artificial intelligence program back in 1984. Supposedly the selections were not tweaked by humans but were certainly were selected by humans - this book of prose poetry was created by a program called "Racter". You can read Racter's work online. [ubu.com]
The software for Racter was available for various 8 bit computers. A DOS version can be downloaded from the Home of the Underdogs [the-underdogs.org].
Is it art? Well, if a large canvas paint
Don't see why not (Score:4, Interesting)
Really, it's more of a question of whether or not it's good art, than art.
Of course it's not art. (Score:3, Insightful)
hogwash (Score:4, Insightful)
Even James Joyce couldn't state a definition of art this altruistic. From Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man...
"-If a man hacking in fury at a block of wood, Stephen continued, make there an image of a cow, is that image a work of art? If not, why not?"
"-That's a lovely one, said Lynch, laughing again. That has the true scholastic stink."
Of course it's art. (Score:2)
Using tools to assist a human generating art doesn't disqualify the product as art in itself. Adding randomness doesn't disqualify it either, as at least one famous piece shows (in 'qualified' opinion, anyway).
The line is more blurred than you suggest, I think.
Re:Of course it's not fart. (Score:2)
Re:Of course it's not art. (Score:2)
With the computer generated, random works, one can still be emotionally moved by some of the pieces. Then it's art, isn't it?
Have you ever stopped to think if the intricacies of a Pollock are not in fact random, but some people see more in it? Do I have to agree with your interpretation of a work for it to be art? Oh for
hmm (Score:2, Funny)
Is some human generated art, art?
Trying to define art by defining its boundaries is a waste of time.
The poster has wasted his time, unless of course he finds posting to be an artistic endeavour... in which case, cheers!
Sure. (Score:2)
Or maybe modern art is a big joke, like some recent literary criticism [nyu.edu].
Re:Sure. (Score:2)
But is it art? (Score:5, Interesting)
Getting back to the subject, I think that most people would reject the notion that a computer can create art. The point is that art should be created with a purpose. A computer has no purpose (of itself). Of course, it can be argued that the human who created the program is the artist, and the computer is just one of his tools, just as in the case above the fax machine and the construction workers were tools of said artist.
Personally, I think neither is art, since in my opinion art is not only about ideas, but also about execution. I don't think randomness is execution. But that's just me. You can call this art if you want to, but then I can argue that anything is art.
Where does art live... (Score:2)
Art, and the underlying nature of self expression by definition requires a self, a sentient entity with whom to express. It is the human element that designs the engine that creates images, then it is the human observer who chooses a particular image that evokes some emotional reaction, or expresses some deeper meaning. The computer in this sense is little more than a paintbrush albeit, a sophisticate
It's art because I say it is... (Score:2)
This is a species-ist attitude. There's actually a continuum. Autistic people can (and do) produce art, people otherwise denoted as 'vegetables' produce art. But elephants, apes, chimps, donkeys and ravens have created paintings. Birds can actually recognise a gen [guardian.co.uk]
Re:Where does art live... (Score:2)
I can only speak concretely of that which I can seem and taste and hold in my hand at this moment. If you want to conjecture, and dream, there are many possibilities that lay before us... the ability to dream in of itself may be a uniquely artistic aspect to being human.
Genda
How do you define art? (Score:2)
So, can we define art? Can we draw the line somewhere? Hitler tried doing that.
Anyway, art is art if you consider it art. It is subjective, it is not universal, and so on and so forth.
Art conveys emotion from artits to beholder (Score:2)
If you accept this definition then computer generated "art" might well be art, but the artist is the programmer rather than the computer, since it is from the programmer
So is it art? (Score:2)
But I prefer to think that art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder (or the ear of the listener). On any criterion like that, it would all depend what the computer-created work looks like, or what it sounds like, to
Computer-generated Chopin (Score:4, Interesting)
Side-step-boring-discussion-HOWTO (Score:2)
I live a new and better life since I switched to "What do I Like?". It's much more relevant to me, and if people disagree enough to care about it, at least the discussion is unlikely to bore.
My art as an example (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My art as an example (Score:2)
STOP!!! (Score:5, Funny)
1. Even if somebody will agree with you on the answer, it'll probably be for different reasons.
2. Nobody cares. Really. It's just an excuse to say things that *sound* clever.
Re:STOP!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
But tcdk, you should take into account that *sounding* clever goes a long way. A rose by any other name would still smell the same, but nobody will buy roses from you if you call them hoarts.
Remember, words have power.
What is beauty? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference. At the Smithsonian museum of natural history, there is a large roc
It depends (Score:2, Interesting)
Is true computer-created material possible, and if it is, is IT art?
This question has two interpretations:
1) Human organizing the "paint".
2) No human intervention.
In 1 you have just replaced the paint and canvas with something else, and obviously it must be art according to logics, but this does not guarantee it to be considered as art by any human, as little as any other art.
In 2 you need a computer which is intentionally creating art or programmed good enough to mimic the creative proce
The acid test for art. (Score:2)
Re:The invalid acid test for art. (Score:2)
So M$ products are art? Hmm, hard to accept indeed.
CC.
Re:The invalid acid test for art. (Score:2)
So M$ products are art? Hmm, hard to accept indeed.
I consider MS a work of art - don't you? If you don't consider their software worthy of the label, surely you consider that their business practises are?
In any case I think you intended to question the "if" part and not the "only if" - Doah!
More Compter Generated Art (Score:2, Informative)
The funny part is, whenever anyone sees this stuff, they do not question whether it is art or not.
Actually, before he ever found Photoshop on the computer I built for him a dozen years ago, he never considered himself an artist at all. He was a programmer and into desktop publishing.
Little did I know just how good an artist he was, until I first saw some of his 'creations' ru
Re:More Compter Generated Art (Score:2)
So where's the torrent with the archive of the full-size images so we can print them out ourselves, please?
Off topic question… (Score:2)
Does anyone know the name of the artist?
Art? (Score:2)
Good art is something that you can appreciate just by looking at it - be it skillful brush strokes, choice of colours or whatever. You look at it and say "What an artist!"
"Art" that need to be explained to you, usually by a condescending curator in waffling hyperbole, isn't art. You look at it and say "What a BS artist!"
True art should reflect the artist creating it, not the medium w
Well ... (Score:2)
It's certainly bad enough to be. It does remind me of that little story in Stephen Fry's "The Hippopotamus", where Ted Wallace goes to an exhibit of paintings by schoolchildren. "Call these children's paintings? Why, a modern artist could have done them!"
I suspect... (Score:2)
Not... working... real... well.. at... the... moment...
LOOK AT MY ART (Score:2, Interesting)
Definition problem (Score:2, Insightful)
How about beautiful sunset? (Score:2)
Naked tree branches against evening sky?
Ripples on a surface of a lake?
Patterns on a weathered rock?
Animal trail on a smooth snow-covered field?
All these things are beautiful but are not art, as there is no purpose, no execution, no communication, no human factor. They just happen to be beautiful - or they don't.
It is the same with these pictures. Some of them are nice, some are beautiful, but beautiful != art.
Raf
Shocked and appalled (Score:4, Interesting)
I recently created an interesting program for an interactive art display that used a webacam to monitor movement in a reception area and generate pictures from that (trails of colour where people had been, Mondrian rectangles created on the fly where people had walked etc). The pictures generated were fairly basic but they had a certain aesthetic appeal and on the whole were interesting. The fact they represented something real was even more interesting and the project was a big success, and FUN as well. I don't see why a computer can't make art, any more than why elephants can't sell paintings for £10000 (which they do!).
So, while I agree the computer probably can't understand the motivation a human has for painting a particular picture, there can be some sort of basic knowledge that is behind a picture generated by a computer and that to me is art.
Simple test... (Score:2)
Oh, for heaven's sake (Score:5, Insightful)
What a crass thing to do. Take something creative and interesting, point the seething hordes of Slashdot at it so it breaks horribly and causes the creator lots of stress as her system administrators and bandwidth providers come down on her like a ton of bricks. Probable outcome? Yet another genuinely interesting project will disappear from the net for ever, trampled under the hooves of a flash mob with no real interest in the project.
Of course computers can produce interesting and stimulating images. Consider the Mandelbrot set, for example, or a whole host of other functions which are highly sensitive to their inputs. Did Benoit Mandelbrot 'draw' or 'create' the Mandelbrot set image? Of course not. It is intrinsic in the concept of number, even though it required powerful computers to render it in any detail. Is it art? Human beings respond to it as if it was art.
If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck it's a duck. The Mandelbrot set is art (and so are pictures automatically taken by the Hubble Telescope) because we respond to them as art. So is the output of Katharina Nussbaumer's program which you have been so thoughtless as to destroy.
Re:Oh, for heaven's sake (Score:3, Interesting)
So if you have an artefact (e.g. a photograph) in your hand, how do tell whether it's 'art' or the output of a random process? To be concrete about this, seeing you're a photographer, suppose I took a camera, linked its shutter release to an atom of something with a half-life of a week or two so that when the atom decayed the shutter was released, and strapped the camera to the back of a blind man who was instructed to w
The Fractal Art Manifesto (Score:4, Interesting)
Marcel
Probably not ... (Score:2)
Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
A better question would be:
Is it inspirational art?
Is it decorative art?
Is it bad art?
And then those who subjectively think it's art can discuss this...
-shrug-
Yes. And no. (Score:2)
To my mind the question "Is computer generated art art?" is entirely the wrong way of looking at it. Why? Because you don't *make* art, you percieve it. Anything can be art. My dog can make art. How it's made isn't important.
Sure, you can make art with the specific intent of making it. You can also intend to make art and fail.. and you can make art when you didn't intend to. The critical aspe
Stop calling me "Art" (Score:2)
It's not really "computer-created". (Score:2)
What is creativity? (Score:2)
Consider the Bower Bird. During the mating season the male bower birds "create" a bower of pretty petals , butterfly wings, other shiny things and arranges them in an beautiful display. Experiments have been done for example where an observer moved items in the display while the male was out collecting other bits and pieces. Upon return the birds noticed the display had changed and replaced the
Short answer: (Score:2)
Subjective indeed. (Score:2)
I also found this interesting as it applies directly to a personal experience I had many years ago. My Freshman year in highschool (1986 I believe) I had to take art class. Being none to excited about it, I did the only thing a true nerd could do; I convinced my art teacher to let me create computer genereated art. She bought off on the idea and was del
The energy of art (Score:2)
Through art we relive the energy of the subject of the art form vicariously and that energy, according to all thinkers on art, from Goethe to Berenson, is the primary source of aesthetic pleasure.
Can a computer randomly generate art? Of course not. Beauty? Maybe. But not art. Beauty can be found in nat
Interactive Vs Uninteractive art? (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the boundries seems to be the amount of human interaction. The pros think that only humans can create art.
But even that they tend to poo-poo at. Is a 3d rendered image art? How about these [blender3d.org]. From my perspective, some of these are extremely visually appealing, and no less art than a painting on the wall. A painter might disagree.
Music is also an artform. I've had musicians who state that the industry is going to hell, because nobody makes "real" music anymore. Computers add enhancements to an artist's voice, intruments, etc. A lot of the instruments are synth.
Certainly if they don't agree that electronic-assisted music is real, they wouldn't agree on something wholly computer generated.
In my opinion though, art is a result of both the care that has going into its creation, and the visual/audible/etc impact of the final presentation. "Canned" music artists that can't sing without enhancement nor play an instrument are posers. The machines are just making a lack of real skill more entertaining.
A band that gets on the stage, puts love and skill into their work, they're artists. But then, an electronica band that puts heart-and-soul into a real show are to me also artists.
A machine that does a painting on its own... it's not an artist, it's not art. The code behind a machine that renders realistic original paintings... that code to me is the art. The machine is just running through instructions and choices to produce a piece of visual output falling within certain parameters. The actual code put into the piece is a result of skill, passion, and in the end is truely a work of intellectual art.
The guys that do 3d renderings. Maybe they can't draw worth a damn with a pencil. But while I'm decent with a 3d program many put me to shame. The end result is still a product of skill and passion.
I think that to qualify as art you much have all or most of these requirements:
There are artists, entertainers, and people that are both. One is not always the other, but those who are both are truely gifted individuals.
Is it art? Who cares. Is it copyrightable? Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a fuller discussion of the theory here [jerf.org], as part of a larger discussion demonstrating why the entire idea of "expression" in copyright theory has been destroyed. But for this post, and in summary, I will try to use the current copyright system, instead of destroying it.
First, this is still on topic, because while we don't agree what art is and we never will, most definitions contain a creativity requirement. Copyright also contains a creativity requirement, and it is at least a little more concrete to discuss creativity in a copyright context than an art context.
To make the issue even starker, I refer you to the Random Art [random-art.org] page, where random art is created from scratch. (This also avoids one legal answer for TypoGenerator, that it has no copyright because it is infringing on the source images. That kind of ducks the issue.) Random Art is a program that generates an image purely from a random number generator; once the program is written, there is no additional input.
Thus, there are two questions, which I believe do fairly directly pertain to the "is it art?" issue:
- Is this creative enough to qualify for copyright? There are two conflicting answers here:
- If this qualifies for copyright, who gets it? This sharpens the previous question all the more... there is really only one candidate in the Random Art case, the program owner. Yet, if creativity is a process, not a result, for any given image he applied no creativity at all; in fact the site periodically cycles images and I'd imagine it is a fully automated process by now. So by copyright criteria, he probably doesn't hold the copyright; he applied all his creativity in the creation of the generation program, which of course he fully owns. On the other hand, if creativity is an adjective applied to a final work, clearly the output itself is copyrightable; many things of lesser visual creativity are as well.
This sort of thing doesn't just raise questions about art, it strikes to the heart of our hundreds-of-years-old way of conceptualizing "works" in general; it is one step beyond the usual meaning of the venerable "what is art" question. Our definition of work is too intimately tied with the physical world and breaks down completely in the modern computer era. This is just one such issue, but it is one of the rather sharp examples.- No, a computer can not be creative, at least in the legal sense. (Forget AI for the moment, it's not on the table right now anyhow and the problem is hard enough as it is!)
- Yes, on the grounds that if a human produced the exact same image, it would fully and unquestionably qualify for copyright.
How to resolve it? Is calling some creative merely a description of the process, not the result as we would normally think of it? My full answer is in the essay above, but given the ground rules for this post of staying in the current system instead of my own ethical system, I don't have an answer for this. We'd have to wait for a judge.As an interesting side note, I note the Random Art program owner is now offering his prints for sale, so there is a commercial component at play here too. It technically doesn't affect the copyrightability or art question either way, but it would get a judge's attention, don't you thing?
(If this interests you, I encourage you to check out the full section [jerf.org] on this issue.)
Re:Already taken down (Score:2)
I suppose that makes my post incorrect inmy assumptions, partially.
Re:Slashdotting by proxy? (Score:2)
I was using the site, but it got rapidly slashdotted. I may be hazarding a guess here, but I would think the person who created this is using http://www.google.com/apis/ [google.com]. In that case, I don't think the 1000 query limit will be enough now =p.
Re:Firefox? (Score:2)