Harold Cohen at the A-Eye Exhibition, Goldsmiths
Wed, 02 Apr 2014
I went to the opening of the "A-Eye" exhibition at Goldsmiths College in London on Monday. It organised as part of the 50th Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) convention that is running all this week at Goldsmiths.
The theme of the exhibition was "art and nature inspired computation" and featured 35 artworks from a broad selection of national and international artists. The work was a mixture of prints, screen-based, multimedia and some interactive pieces.
It was opened by Californian-based British artist Harold Cohen, true pioneer who has been active in computation-based arts since the 1960s. Harold is particularly known for his work with Aaron - a computer system that he has been developing for many years. He uses Aaron to generate drawings, many of which form part of his paintings. A large such piece, entitled Another Spring (for A.C.) was on display in the exhibition.
Although I had seen Harold speak before, we had not met. This time, however, I had been introduced to him by email prior to the event and we managed to have some time together talking about his work. This provided me with some great insight into his process. I was particularly taken by his shift from seeing Aaron as an autonomous "artist" to more of a "collaborator" who helps him access creative deas than might otherwise be unavailable to him.
I completely agree with this. I have seen quite a bit of artwork "created" by computer, and even met people who claim that their computer systems are making some sort of creative decisions in the production of such work. While I agree that the computer's role in the creation or realisation of an artwork can certainly go beyond that of simply being a tool (like, maybe, a camera or a brush), at present (and maybe forever) art made for humans needs to involve humans. I don't think computers can make art for humans that has any meaning beyond simple aesthetics. Basically, I don't think computers can be artists. However, the computer as collaborator is a much nicer aspiration. It's also one that Harold - with 40 years of experience with Aaron - is pretty well-placed to argue he has achieved.
The A-Eye exhibition at Goldsmiths runs until the end of Thursday, so if you are in the area I'd recommend a visit. There is plenty of other interesting work to see and I may write a bit more about it here. I have uploaded pictures of some more of the pieces to my Flickr page.
