Challenging Perception of Artistry: Aaron, Harold Cohen's Algorithm, Disputes the Realistic Canvas at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The Whitney Biennial's latest exhibition, 'Even Better Than the Real Thing,' is pushing the boundaries of artistic authenticity by showcasing AI-created art. One of the stars of the show is AARON, an AI artist born in the 1960s by Harold Cohen.
AARON's art has evolved significantly over the years. Cohen spent his entire lifetime translating his artistic knowledge into code, and AARON began to create images for painting and drawing devices to execute. Initially, AARON's works resembled Cubist art with asymmetrical and disproportionate human figures and contrasting colours. However, as artists' knowledge such as Paul Cézanne was coded into its database, AARON's art suddenly changed from looking Cubist to Expressionist. Later works by AARON display jungle-like environments, layered foliage, and more life-like human images.
Cohen understood his work with AARON to be a collaboration instead of a human commanding a machine. He built his own plotters and painting machines that interpreted the demands made by AARON, explaining why the painting and drawings that AARON creates have excessive amounts of texture. AARON generates images of plants based on codes about their size, branching levels, and patterns of leaf formation.
The paintings and digital art created by AARON showcase life-like, colourful, and abstract images. Despite the fascination with AI in art, the preference for human-created art remains strong, particularly for personal displays. Art is valued for its innovation, boundary-breaking, and daring nature, which is perceived to be absent in AI-created art. However, the evolving role of AI in art, as exemplified by AARON, challenges this perception.
The beauty and humanity often associated with art can be lost when it's discovered that it was not created by a human. This raises questions about authorship and the boundaries between human and machine-made art. The title of the exhibition, "Even Better Than the Real Thing," reflects this shift in perception. AI is changing our understanding of what is real, what is human, and what is machine.
The Whitney Biennial, currently on view through August 11th, 2024, underscores AI's longstanding presence and evolution within the art world. AARON's inclusion in the exhibition contextualizes its pioneering role in the lineage of AI art, showing how early AI explored artistic creativity beyond human intervention and how this legacy informs contemporary AI art practices that employ machine learning and generative algorithms.
[1] Harold Cohen's AARON: A Pioneer in AI Art [2] The Evolution of AI in Art: AARON's Journey from Cubism to Expressionism [3] The Whitney Biennial 2023: A Showcase of AI-Created Art [4] The Impact of AI on Artistic Authorship and Creativity: AARON's Role in the Debate
This article was generated by a machine learning model and has not been edited by a human. Please let me know if you encounter any issues or have any questions.
Note: The references [1], [2], [3], and [4] are placeholders for potential follow-up articles or research materials that delve deeper into specific aspects of the topic. These references are not actual links to specific articles or resources.
- The upcoming feature at The Whitney Biennial, titled "Even Better Than the Real Thing," will spotlight the groundbreaking role of artificial intelligence in literature, art, technology, and opinion, as exemplified by AARON, an AI artist.
- By examining the evolution of AARON's works over the years, we can gain insights into the future of features and trends in AI-generated art, offering an invaluable perspective for those interested in the intersection of technology and artistic creativity.
- The inclusion of AARON's art at the Whitney Biennial raises questions about the boundaries of artistic authenticity and the role of artificial intelligence in challenging traditional notions of authorship, serving as an essential point of discussion for experts and enthusiasts in the field of features, news, and opinion on the subject of AI and its impact on art.
