Art, Creativity, and the Potential of Artificial Intelligence - MDPI
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arts Essay Art, Creativity, and the Potential of Artificial Intelligence Marian Mazzone 1, * and Ahmed Elgammal 2, * 1 Department of Art & Architectural History, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC 29424, USA 2 Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8554, USA * Correspondence: mazzonem@cofc.edu (M.M.); elgammal@cs.rutgers.edu (A.E.) Received: 2 January 2019; Accepted: 14 February 2019; Published: 21 February 2019 Abstract: Our essay discusses an AI process developed for making art (AICAN), and the issues AI creativity raises for understanding art and artists in the 21st century. Backed by our training in computer science (Elgammal) and art history (Mazzone), we argue for the consideration of AICAN’s works as art, relate AICAN works to the contemporary art context, and urge a reconsideration of how we might define human and machine creativity. Our work in developing AI processes for art making, style analysis, and detecting large-scale style patterns in art history has led us to carefully consider the history and dynamics of human art-making and to examine how those patterns can be modeled and taught to the machine. We advocate for a connection between machine creativity and art broadly defined as parallel to but not in conflict with human artists and their emotional and social intentions of art making. Rather, we urge a partnership between human and machine creativity when called for, seeing in this collaboration a means to maximize both partners’ creative strengths. Keywords: artificial intelligence; art; creativity; computational creativity; deep learning; adversarial learning 1. AI-Art: GAN, a New Wave of Generative Art Over the last 50 years, several artists and scientists have been exploring writing computer programs that can generate art. Some programs are written for other purposes and are adopted for art making, such as generative adversarial networks (GANs). Alternatively, programs can be written that intend to make creative outputs. Algorithmic art is a broad term that points to any art that cannot be created without the use of programming. If we look at the Merriam-Webster definition of art, we find “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; the works so produced”. Throughout the 20th century, that understanding of art has been expanded to include objects that are not necessarily aesthetic in their purpose (for example, conceptual art), and not created physical objects (performance art). Since the challenges of Marcel Duchamp’s practice, the art world has also relied on the determination of the artist’s intention, institutional display, and audience acceptance as critical defining steps to decide whether something is “art”. The most prominent early example of algorithmic art work is by Harold Cohen and his program AARON (aaronshome.com). American artist Lillian Schwartz, a pioneer in using computer graphics in art, also experimented with AI (Lillian.com). However, in the last few years, the development of GANs has inspired a wave of algorithmic art that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) in new ways to make art (Schneider and Rea 2018). In contrast to traditional algorithmic art, in which the artist had to write detailed code that already specified the rules for the desired aesthetics, in this new wave, the algorithms are set up by the artists to “learn” the aesthetics by looking at many images using machine learning technology. The algorithm only then generates new images that follow the aesthetics it has learned. Arts 2019, 8, 26; doi:10.3390/arts8010026 www.mdpi.com/journal/arts
Arts 2019, 8, 26 2 of 9 Arts 2019, 8, x FOR PEER REVIEW 2 of 9 Figure 11 explains Figure explains thethe creative creative process process that that is is involved involved in in making making thisthis kind kind of of AI AI art. art. The The artist artist chooses a collection of images to feed the algorithm (pre-curation), for example, chooses a collection of images to feed the algorithm (pre-curation), for example, traditional arttraditional art portraits. These images portraits. Theseare then fed images areinto thena fed generative AI algorithm into a generative that tries to AI algorithm imitate that these tries to inputs. imitate The these most inputs. widely used tool for this is generative adversarial networks (GANs), introduced The most widely used tool for this is generative adversarial networks (GANs), introduced by by Goodfellow in 2014 (Goodfellow et al. 2014), which have been successful in many applications Goodfellow in 2014 (Goodfellow et al. 2014), which have been successful in many applications in thein the AI community. It iscommunity. AI the development of GANs It is the that likely development sparked of GANs thislikely that new wave sparkedof AI thisArt. new In wave the final step, of AI theInartist Art. the sifts through many output images to curate a final collection (post-curation). final step, the artist sifts through many output images to curate a final collection (post-curation). Figure Figure 1. AA block block diagram diagram showing showing the the artist’s artist’s role role using using the the AI AI generative generative model model in in making making art. art. Diagram Diagram created created by author A. Elgammal. In this In this kind kindofofprocedure, procedure, AIAI is used as a as is used toola in thein tool creation of art. The the creation creative of art. process isprocess The creative primarilyis done by the artist in the pre- and post-curatorial actions, as well as in primarily done by the artist in the pre- and post-curatorial actions, as well as in tweaking the tweaking the algorithm. There have been many algorithm. Theregreat haveartbeenworks many that haveart great been workscreated thatusing have this beenpipeline. createdThe usinggenerative algorithm this pipeline. The always produces generative images algorithm that surprise always produces theimages viewerthatand surprise even the the artistviewer who presides and even overthetheartist process. who Figure presides over2 the is an example of what a typical GAN trained on portrait paintings would produce. process. WhyFigure might 2we like is an or hateof example these whatimages, a typicaland GAN should we on trained callportrait them art? We will paintings try toproduce. would answer these Why questions might we from like ora perception and a psychology hate these images, and shouldpoint of view. we call them Experimental art? We will try psychologist to answerDanielthese E. Berlynefrom questions (1924–1976) studied a perception andthe basics of the a psychology psychology point of view. of aesthetics for Experimental several decades psychologist Danieland E. Berlyne out that novelty, pointed (1924–1976) studiedsurprisingness, the basics of complexity, ambiguity, the psychology and puzzlingness of aesthetics for several aredecades the most significant and pointed properties out in stimulus that novelty, relevance tocomplexity, surprisingness, studying aesthetic ambiguity, phenomena (Berlyne are and puzzlingness 1971).theAlthough there are most significant several alternative properties newer in stimulus theories relevance tothan Berlyne’s, studying we use aesthetic it in our explanation phenomena (Berlyne 1971). for Although its simplicity as are there the explanation several does not alternative contradict newer theoriesother thantheories. Berlyne’s,Indeed, we use theit resulting images with in our explanation forall its the deformations simplicity as the in the faces are explanation doesnovel, surprising,other not contradict and theories. puzzlingIndeed, to us. Inthefact, they might resulting images remind withus alloftheFrancis Bacon’s deformations famous in deformed the faces portraits are novel, such as surprising, Three and Studiestofor puzzling us.a Portrait of Henrietta In fact, they Moraes (1963). might remind However, us of Francis this Bacon’s comparison famous highlights deformed a major portraits suchdifference, that of as Three Studies forintent. a PortraitIt was Bacon’sMoraes of Henrietta intention (1963). to make the faces However, this deformed inhighlights comparison his portrait, but thedifference, a major deformation thatwe ofsee in the intent. It AI was artBacon’s is not the intention intention to of the artist make nor the faces of the machine. deformed Simply put, in his portrait, but the machine deformation failsweto see imitate in thetheAIhuman art is notfacethecompletely intention of and, theasartist a result, nor generates surprising deformations. Therefore, what we are looking at are of the machine. Simply put, the machine fails to imitate the human face completely and, as a result, failure cases by the machine that mightsurprising generates be appealing to us perceptually deformations. Therefore,because what weofare their novelty looking as failure at are visual cases stimuli bycompared the machine to naturalistic that might be faces. However, appealing these to us “failure cases” perceptually haveof because a positive their noveltyvisualas impact visualonstimuli us as viewers compared of art; to only in thesefaces. naturalistic examples, However,the artist’s intentioncases” these “failure is absent. have a positive visual impact on us as viewers of art; only in these examples, the artist’s intention is absent.
Arts 2019, 8, 26 3 of 9 Arts 2019, 8, x FOR PEER REVIEW 3 of 9 Figure 2. Examples Examples of images generated by training a generative adversarial network (GAN) with portraits from the last 500 years of Western art. art. The distorted faces are the algorithm’s attempts to imitate those inputs. Images generated at Art & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Laboratory, Rutgers. Rutgers. So far, So far, most most art art critics critics have have been been skeptical skeptical and usually evaluate and usually evaluate only only the the resulting resulting images images while while ignoring the ignoring the creative creative process process that that generates generates them. They might them. They might be be right right that that images images created created using using this this type of AI pipeline are not that interesting. After all, this process just imitates the pre-curated type of AI pipeline are not that interesting. After all, this process just imitates the pre-curated inputsinputs with with aa slight slight twist. twist. However, if we look look at at the the creative creative process process overall overall and and not not simply simply the the resulting resulting images, this activity falls clearly in the category of conceptual art because the artist has the option to act in the choice-making roles of curation and tweaking. More sophisticated conceptual work will be coming in the future as more artists explore AI tools and learn how to better manipulate the AI art creative process. 2. Pushing 2. Pushing the the Creativity Creativity of of the the Machine: Machine: Creative, Creative, Not Not Just Just Generative Generative At Rutgers’ At Rutgers’ ArtArt & & AI AI Lab, Lab,we wecreated createdAICAN, AICAN,an analmost almostautonomous autonomousartist. artist.Our Our goalgoal was was to to study the artistic creative process and how art evolves from a perceptual study the artistic creative process and how art evolves from a perceptual and cognitive point of view. and cognitive point of view. The model The wemodel built iswe builtonisabased based theoryon a theory from from psychology psychology proposed byproposed by Colin(Martindale Colin Martindale Martindale (Martindale 1990). simulates 1990). The process The process how simulates how artists artists digest prior artdigest works prior art at until, works someuntil, at they point, somebreak point,out they of break out of established styles and create new styles. The process is realized established styles and create new styles. The process is realized through a “creative adversarial through a “creative adversarial network network (CAN)” (CAN)”2017), (Elgammal (Elgammal a variant et of al.GAN 2017),thata variant of GAN we proposed that that we“stylistic uses proposed that uses ambiguity” “stylistic ambiguity” to achieve novelty. The machine is trained between to achieve novelty. The machine is trained between two opposing forces—one that urges the machine two opposing forces—one that to urgesthe follow theaesthetics machine of to follow the art the it isaesthetics of the art itdeviation shown (minimizing is shownfrom (minimizing deviationwhile art distribution), from the art distribution), other while thethe force penalizes other force penalizes machine the machine if it emulates an already if it emulates established an already established style style (maximizing style (maximizing ambiguity). These two opposing forces ensure that the art generated will be novel butwill style ambiguity). These two opposing forces ensure that the art generated be novel at the same but atwill time the not same time will depart not depart too much fromtoo much from acceptable acceptable aesthetic aesthetic standards. Thisstandards. This“least is called the is called the effort” “least effort” principle principle in theory, in Martindale’s Martindale’s and it is theory, andin essential it art is essential generation in art generation because too muchbecause toowould novelty much novelty would result in rejection by viewers. Figure 3 illustrates a block diagram result in rejection by viewers. Figure 3 illustrates a block diagram of the CAN network where the of the CAN network where the receives generator generatortwo receives twoone signals, signals, one measuring measuring the deviationsthe deviations from art from art distribution distribution and the and secondthe second measuring style ambiguity. The generator tries to minimize the measuring style ambiguity. The generator tries to minimize the first to follow aesthetics and first to follow aesthetics and maximize the maximize the second second to to deviate deviate from from established established styles. styles.
x FOR PEER REVIEW Arts 2019, 8, 26 44 of of 9 Arts 2019, 8, x FOR PEER REVIEW 4 of 9 Figure 3. A block diagram of a creative adversarial network. The generator explores the creative space Figure Figure 3.3.A A by trying to block block diagram generate diagram of aofcreative images a creative that adversarial maximize style adversarial network. ambiguity network. The generator The while minimizing generator explores explores the from deviation the creativecreative art space space by trying distribution. by trying to generate Diagram to generate images by author images that maximize thatA.maximize Elgammal.stylestyle ambiguity ambiguity while while minimizing minimizing deviationfrom deviation fromart art distribution.Diagram distribution. Diagramby byauthor authorA. A.Elgammal. Elgammal. Unlike the generative AI art discussed earlier, this process is inherently creative. There is no Unlike curation Unlike onthethegenerative the generative dataset; AIart instead, AI art we discussed earlier,this fed the algorithm discussed earlier, this process 80Kprocess images is is inherently inherently5creative. representing creative. centuries There isisno of Western There no curation art history, curation onthe on the dataset;instead, simulating dataset; instead, the wefed process we fed thealgorithm of the how algorithm an artist 80K80Kimages images digests representing art history, 5centuries with 5no representing centuries special of ofWestern Western selection of art history, genres art simulating or styles. history, the process The generative simulating of the processprocess how an of howusing artist digests CANdigests an artist art is seeking history, innovation. art history, with withTheno special selection outputsselection no special of surprise of us genres all the or genres or styles. timestyles. withTheThe generative of artprocess the generative range AICANusing process CAN CANisFigure generates. using isseeking innovation. 4 shows seeking The Theoutputs the variety innovation. of surprise AICAN-generated outputs surpriseususall the art. all time the timewith withthethe range rangeof of artart AICAN AICAN generates. generates.Figure Figure 4 shows 4 shows thethe variety of of variety AICAN-generated AICAN-generated art. art. Figure 4. Figure 4. Examples Examples ofof images images generated generated by by AICAN AICAN after after training training with with images images from all styles from all styles and and Figure genres4.from Examples the past 500 of 500 years images years of Western of Western generated art. Images by art. AICAN after trainingofwith courtesy images the Art Artificial Intelligence from all Intelligence & Artificial styles and Laboratory, genres Rutgers. from Rutgers. Laboratory, the past 500 years of Western art. Images courtesy of the Art & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Rutgers. We We devised devised a visual Turing Turing test test to to register register how how people people would would react react to the generated images and whether whether they could tell the difference between AICAN- or human-created would react to art. they a visual Turing test to register how peoplehuman-created We devised To make the the generated test timely images and and of high whether high quality, theyquality, we we could tell themixed mixed images images difference fromAICAN from between AICAN AICAN- with with works works from from or human-created ArtArt Basel Basel art. 2016 To 2016 make the(the (the testflagship flagship art timely and of high quality, we mixed images from AICAN with works from Art Basel 2016 (the flagship arta art fairfair in in contemporary contemporary art). art). We We also also used used a a set set ofof images images from from abstract abstract expressionist expressionist masters masters as baseline. fair Our study showed in contemporary art). Wethat human also usedsubjects a set ofcould imagesnotfrom tell whether abstractthe art was made expressionist by a human masters as a artist or Our baseline. by the machine. machine. study showed Seventy-five that humanpercent the time, subjectsofcould people not tell in our whether the study art wasthought made by the AICAN a human artist or by the machine. Seventy-five percent of the time, people in our study thought the AICAN
Arts 2019, 8, 26 5 of 9 Arts 2019, 8, x FOR PEER REVIEW 5 of 9 generated generated images images were were created created byby aa human human artist. artist. In In the the case case of of the the baseline baseline abstract abstract expressionist expressionist set, set, 85% of the time subjects thought the art was by human artists. Our subjects even 85% of the time subjects thought the art was by human artists. Our subjects even described described the the AICAN-generated AICAN-generated images images using using words words suchsuch as “intentional”, “having as “intentional”, “having visual visual structure”, structure”, “inspiring”, “inspiring”, and and “communicative” “communicative” at at the the same same levels levels as as the the human-created human-created art.art. Beginning Beginning in October 2017, we started exhibiting AICAN’s in October 2017, we started exhibiting AICAN’s workwork at at venues venues in in Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Los Los Angles, New York City, and San Francisco, with a different set of images for Angles, New York City, and San Francisco, with a different set of images for each show (Figure 5). each show (Figure 5). Recently, in December 2018, AICAN was exhibited in the SCOPE Miami Recently, in December 2018, AICAN was exhibited in the SCOPE Miami Beach Art Fair. At these Beach Art Fair. At these exhibitions, exhibitions, the the reception reception of of works works was was overwhelmingly overwhelmingly positive positive on on the the part part of of viewers viewers who who had had nono prior knowledge that the art shown was generated using AI. People genuinely prior knowledge that the art shown was generated using AI. People genuinely liked the artworks liked the artworks and engaged in various and engaged conversations in various conversationsaboutabout the process. We heard the process. one question We heard time and one question timeagain: Who is and again: the Who artist? Here, we is the artist? positwe Here, that the person(s) posit setting upsetting that the person(s) the process up the designs processa conceptual designs a and algorithmic conceptual and framework, but the algorithm is fully at the creative helm when it comes to algorithmic framework, but the algorithm is fully at the creative helm when it comes to the elements the elements and the principles of the art it creates. For each image it generates, the machine chooses the and the principles of the art it creates. For each image it generates, the machine chooses the style, the style, the subject, the forms, subject, theand composition, forms, including and composition, the textures including and colors. the textures and colors. Figure 5. Photographs from AICAN exhibition held in Los Angeles in October 2017. Photographs by author A. Elgammal. 3. AI in 3. AI in Art Art and and Art Art History History The The CAN CAN study study provoked provoked a a number number of of concerns about AI concerns about AI as as aa threat threat oror rival rival toto art art made made by by human human beings. Yes, the study is interested in the process of art creation, and the more problem beings. Yes, the study is interested in the process of art creation, and the more abstract abstract of what creativity problem is and does. of what creativity is and However, AI focuses does. However, AIon developing focuses a machinea process on developing machine andprocessmachine and creativity, not merely machine creativity, aping not and aping merely trying and to pass as human-made. trying Our work is focused to pass as human-made. Our work on understanding is focused on the process of creativity understanding such that the process a means can of creativity such be that found a to modelcan means thatbeprocess foundtotogenerate model athatcreative result. process to One way to do this, and what this study has chosen, is to model the process generate a creative result. One way to do this, and what this study has chosen, is to model the process by which art is taught and then stimulate by which art is taughtAICAN to synthesize and then stimulatethatAICAN styletoinformation synthesize and that next stylecreate something information and new. To do next create this, the machine was trained on many thousands of human-created something new. To do this, the machine was trained on many thousands of human-created paintingspaintings in a process parallel to in aa human processartists’ parallelexperience to a human of looking at other artists’ artists’ experience works,atlearning of looking by example. other artists’ works,The AICAN learning by system was then designed to encourage choices that deviate example. The AICAN system was then designed to encourage choices that deviate fromfrom copying/repeating what had been seen (the GAN function) copying/repeating what to hadencouraging been seen new (the combinations GAN function) andtonew choices based encouraging new on a knowledge combinations of and art newstyles (thebased choices CANon function). a knowledgeIf theof creation art stylesprocess is modeled (the CAN successfully, function). art may If the creation result. process is modeled One barometer of successfully, art may result.whether art has been successfully created through the chosen process is whether human Onebeings appreciate barometer it as artart of whether andhasdobeen not necessarily successfullyrecognize it as AI-derived. created through the chosen AICAN process wasis tasked with creating works that did not default into the familiar psychedelic whether human beings appreciate it as art and do not necessarily recognize it as AI-derived. AICAN patterning of most GAN-generated was tasked with imagescreatingasworks a testthat of itsdid creativity not defaultfunction. into the Our inclusion familiar of viewerpatterning psychedelic surveys toofgaugemost peoples’ responses did not aim to prove that the AICAN artifacts were better GAN-generated images as a test of its creativity function. Our inclusion of viewer surveys to gauge than human creations, but ratherresponses peoples’ to gaugedid whether not aim thetoAICAN works prove that thewere AICAN aesthetically recognizable artifacts were better than as human art, andcreations, whether human viewers liked the AI-generated works of art. It seemed most pertinent but rather to gauge whether the AICAN works were aesthetically recognizable as art, and whether to have viewers assess the humanAICAN images viewers in the liked a group with other AI-generated contemporary works imagesmost of art. It seemed rather than historical pertinent to haveones, viewershence the assess the AICAN images in a group with other contemporary images rather than historical ones, hence the
Arts 2019, 8, 26 6 of 9 choice to select these from Art Basel. The objective was to learn whether AICAN can produce work that is able to qualify or count as art, and if it exhibits qualities that make it desirable or pleasurable to look at. In other words, could AICAN artifacts be recognized as quality aesthetic objects by human beings? Because we used Berlyne’s theory of arousal potential, the response of human beings to the images was a necessary check to evaluate the quality level of AICAN creativity. There may always be a number of artists and art lovers who resist the idea of AI in art because of technophobia. For them, the machine simply has no place in art. In addition, many lack understanding of what AI actually is, how it works, and what it can and cannot be made to do. There is also an element of fear at work, resulting in an imagined future in which AI will commandeer art making and crank out masses of soulless abstract paintings. However, as we discuss throughout this article, AI is really very limited and specific in what it can do in terms of art creation, and it was never our goal is to supplant the role of the human artist. There is simply and profoundly no need to do that. It is an interesting problem in machine learning to model the process of image creation and to explore what creativity might mean within the confines of computation, but these are issues separate and apart from how a human being makes art, and they are not mutually exclusive in any way. The very best outcome we can imagine is a fruitful partnership between an artist and a creative AI system. However, we are in the very early days of developing algorithms for such AI systems. A comparison with photography is useful because both forms of technology first encountered resistance in the art world based on the use of a machine in the art-making process. This comparison has been discussed widely, including in this issue of Arts (Hertzmann 2018) (Agüera y Arcas 2017), so we will not elaborate on it here. A hopeful sign for AI art is that eventually, some photography was fully accepted as art. A key path towards its acceptance was the dialogue that developed between two mediums: Photographers worked to incorporate some of the formal and aesthetic characteristics of painting, while painters were closely looking at photography and shifting painting in response. Painters were inspired by the compositional flatness, capture of movement, and summary edges of the photographic viewfinder. Photographers shifted their approach to lighting, focus, and subject matter as inspired by the aesthetic criteria of painting. Thus, a feedback loop was established between the practices of painting and photography. In both cases, creators began to see differently based on their experiences with the other medium. Perhaps this can happen between AI and painting in turn. Currently, most AI systems are trained on thousands of paintings made by Western European and American artists over the last several hundred years. In turn, the AIs create images that speak the language of painting (color choices, form elements, arrangement of forms on a 2-D surface) and depose their elements before the eyes of viewers in a way similar to how we look at paintings. Already, we have contemporary practitioners such as Jason Salavon or Petra Cortright, whose practice demonstrates a lively exchange between the processes of painting and those of computation. Photography did threaten to supplant some of the functions of painting, particularly in those instances when a high degree of naturalistic representation was desirable, such as in portraiture or in topographical representations. Consequently, photography largely did replace painted portraits and most forms of topographical imagery, for example. We imagine that AI-produced art could usefully replace some mass-produced imagery such as decorative art or tourist scenes where repetition of a few pleasing characteristics is desirable. Consumers would be the drivers of this market, electing for the machine-derived images or preferring those created by a human. Another sound point of comparison is the replicative process of image production employed by both the camera and the computer. Like the camera, the computer provides its user with a range of repetitive and reproductive means to generate multiple images. As noted by Walter Benjamin in the early 20th century (Benjamin [1936] 1969), the impact of the mass production and reproduction of imagery has changed how we think about the originality and the legitimacy of reproductions of works of art, and our viewing experience of art. Most people’s experience of art is now soundly in the realm of reproductions, and we ascribe meaningfulness to the experience of the reproduction. Although the singular, original work of art is a paradigm still operational in painting, it is markedly less so in
Arts 2019, 8, 26 7 of 9 print making or photography, and completely absent in computational art. Computers can produce many more and varied versions of an image through parameterization, randomizing tools, and other generative processes than can nondigital photography or prints, but the theoretical principle of the multiple still applies. The contemporary art world is well able to theorize and accept multiples or reproductions as legitimate works of art, we believe even at the rate and level of complexity produced by generative computational systems. There is, however, one profound difference between AI computer-based creativity versus other machine-based image making technologies. Photography, and the similar media of film and video, are predicated on a reference to something outside of the machine, something in the natural world. They are technologies to capture elements of the world outside themselves as natural light on a plate or film, fixed with a chemical process to freeze light patterns in time and space. Computational imagery has no such referent in nature or to anything outside of itself. This is a profound difference that we believe should be given more attention. The lack of reference in nature has historical implications for how we understand something as art. Almost all human art creation has been inspired by something seen in the natural world. There, of course, may be many steps between the inspiration and the resulting work, such that the visual referent can be changed, abstracted or even erased by the final version. However, the process was always first instigated by the artist looking at something in the world, and photography, film, and video retained that first step of the art-making process through light encoding. The computer does not follow this primal pattern. It requires absolutely nothing from the natural world; instead, its “brain” and “eyes” (its internal apparatus for encoding imagery of any kind) consist only of receptors for numerical data. There are two preliminary points to elaborate here: The first relates to issues in contemporary art, the second to the distinction from human creativity. First, the lack of referent in the natural world and the resulting freedom and range to create or not create any object as a result of the artistic inspiration aligns AI and all computational methods with conceptual art. Like with photography, the comparison with conceptual art has frequently been made for AI and computational methods in general. In conceptual art, the act of the creation of the art work is located in the mind of the artist, and its instantiation in any material form(s) in the world is, as Sol Lewitt (Lewitt 1967) famously declared, “a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” Thus, the making of an art object becomes simply optional. And although contemporary artists in the main have not stopped making objects, the principle that object making is optional and variable in relation to the art concept still remains. We believe this is at the heart of the usefulness of the comparison with conceptual art: The idea or concept is untethered from nature, being primarily located in the synapses of the brain and secondly disassociated from the dictates of the material world. Most AI systems use some form of a neural network, which is modeled on the neural complexity of the human brain. Therefore, AI and conceptual art coincide in locating the art act in the system network of the brain, rather than in the physical output. The physical act of an artist, either applying paint or carving marble, becomes optional. This removes the necessity of a human body (the artist) to make things and allows us to imagine that there could be more than one kind of artist, including other than human. 4. AI Art: Blurring the Lines between the Artist and the Tool Many artists and art historians resist seeing work created with AI as art because their definition of art is based on the modern artist figure as the sole locus of art creation and creativity. Therefore, the figure of the artist is necessary to their definition of art. But understanding art as a vehicle for the personal expression of the individual artist is a relatively recent and culturally-specific conception. For many centuries, across many cultures and belief systems, art has been made for a variety of reasons under a wide range of conditions. More often created by groups of people rather than an individual artist (think medieval cathedrals or guild workshops), art is often made to the specifications of patrons and donors large and small, made to order, funded by a wide variety of groups, civic organizations, or religious institutions, and made to function in an extraordinary range of situations. The notion
Arts 2019, 8, 26 8 of 9 of a work of art being the coherent expression of the individual’s psyche, emotional condition, or expressive point of view begins in the Romantic era and became the prevailing norm in the 19th and 20th centuries in Western Europe and its colonies. Although this remains a common motivation for many artists working today, it does not mean it is the only and correct definition of art. And certainly, it is not a role that any AI system will ever be able to fulfill. Clearly, machine learning and AI cannot replicate the lived experience of a human being; therefore, AI is not able to create art in the same way that human artists do. Thankfully, we are not proposing that it can in our work. Humans and AI do not share all of the same sources of inspiration or intentions for art making. Why the machine makes art is intrinsically different; its motivation is that of being tasked with the problem of making art, and its intention is to fulfill that task. However, we are asking everyone to consider that a different process of creation does not disqualify the results of the process as a viable work of art. Instead consider that without the necessity of the individual expressive artist in our definition of art, how we conceptualize art and art making is greatly expanded. AI is a set of algorithms designed to function as parallel to human intelligence actions such as decision-making, image recognition, language translation/comprehension, or creativity. Elsewhere in this issue of Arts, Hertzmann (Hertzmann 2018) makes a point about art algorithms being tools, not artists. As we have argued, we would agree that the algorithms in AI are not artists like human artists. But AI (art generating algorithm in this case) is more than a tool, like a brush with oil paint on it, which is an inanimate and unchanging object. Certainly, artists learn over time and with experience how to better use their tools, and their tools have a role in the physical actions by which they make work in paint. However, the paintbrush does not have the capacity to change, it does not make decisions based on past painting experiences, and it is not trained to learn from data. Algorithms contain all of those possibilities. Perhaps we can conceptualize AI algorithms as more than tools and closer to a medium. The word medium in the art world indicates far more than a tool, a medium includes not only the tools used (brush, oil paint, turpentine, canvas, etc.) but also the range of possibilities and limitations inherent to the conditions of creation in that area of art. Thus, the medium of painting also includes a history of painting styles, the physical and conceptual restraints of the 2-D surface, the limits of what can be recognized as a painting, a critical language that has been developed to describe and critique paintings, and so on. Admittedly, we are in the very early days of the medium of AI in art creation, but this medium might encompass tools such as code, mathematics, hardware and software, printing choices, etc., with medium conditions including algorithmic structuring, data collection and application, and the critical theory needed to detect and judge computational creativity and artistic intention within the much larger field of computer science. At this time, a problem is the relatively small number of people able to work creatively in this field or judge the role of the machine in the exercise of creative processes. This will change over time as artists, computer scientists, and historians/critics all become more knowledgeable. For human artists who are interested in the possibilities (and limitations) of AI in creativity and the arts, using AI as a creative partner is already happening now and will happen in the future. In a partnership, both halves bring skill sets to the process of creation. As Hertzmann notes in his article and Cohen discovered in his work with the AARON program, human artists bring capacity for high-quality work, artistic intent, creativity, and growth/change over time. Art is a social interaction. Actually, we think we can argue that AI does a fair amount of this, and it can certainly all be accomplished in a creative partnership between and artist and his or her AI system. Author Contributions: Conceptualization, M.M. and A.E.; methodology A.E. and M.M.; data curation A.E.; software A.E.; validation A.E.; writing—original draft preparation M.M. (abstract, introduction, Sections 3 and 4) and A.E. (Sections 1 and 2); writing—reviewing and editing, M.M. Funding: This research received no external funding. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Arts 2019, 8, 26 9 of 9 References Agüera y Arcas, Blaise. 2017. Art in the Age of Machine Intelligence. Arts 6: 18. [CrossRef] Benjamin, Walter. 1969. The Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken, pp. 217–51. First published 1936. Berlyne, Daniel E. 1971. Aesthetics and Psychobiology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts of Meredith Corporation, p. 336. Elgammal, Ahmed, Bingchen Liu, Mohamed Elhoseiny, and Marian Mazzone. 2017. CAN: Creative adversarial networks, generating “art” by learning about styles and deviating from style norms. arXiv, arXiv:1706.07068. Goodfellow, Ian, Jean Pouget-Abadie, Mehdi Mirza, Bing Xu, David Warde-Farley, Sherjil Ozair, Aaron Courville, and Yoshua Bengio. 2014. Generative adversarial nets. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 2672–80. Hertzmann, Aaron. 2018. Can Computers Create Art? Arts 7: 18. [CrossRef] Lewitt, Sol. 1967. Paragraphs on conceptual Art. Artforum 5: 79–84. Martindale, Colin. 1990. The Clockwork Muse: The Predictability of Artistic Change. New York: Basic Books. Schneider, Tim, and Naomi Rea. 2018. Has artificial intelligence given us the next great art movement? Experts say slow down, the ‘field is in its infancy. Artnetnews. September 25. Available online: https://news.artnet. com/art-world/ai-art-comes-to-market-is-it-worth-the-hype-1352011 (accessed on 3 February 2019). © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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