Is Thomas Jourdan the artist? He wrote Kandid, the open-source genetic art program that I used to generate this image. He's never even seen the image. On the other hand, many people have contributed to the math behind fractals, genetic algorithms and evolutionary art. Do they deserve some credit?
Is Kandid, the program, the artist? Or is a program just a tool, much like Leonardo's paintbrush was a tool?
Am I, the user, the artist? All I did was click a few buttons and see what happened.
Am I, the editor, the artist? I generated a few dozen images and picked out the one I liked best. That act of selection seems something like art, the same way I take a hundred pictures with my digital camera and delete 99 of them. However, if we call that art, we have to call what art critics do art as well.
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In 4-H we have a stills exhibit and this last year had a mix of photos and computer downloads. It was very difficult to judge and one of the best photos was not the winner because the judges thought it had to be computer generated, but the kid had used a throw-away camera and just has a great eye. So, next fair, we are splitting photos into computer generated or downloaded and original art.
And as always there is another layer of questions: should someone with the latest in digital camera's compete with someone using grandma's old brownie?
How does technology alter art? Oil paints really were a step up from egg whites and colors plastered on the wall. But is it art as seen by those using the earlier technology?
Art and poetry express the ineffable - that which humans respond to but which cannot be named-yet. Or perhaps never.
Is the naming of things (computers have given us many new nouns and verbs) part of the magic of bringing those things into existence? Is the visual representation of something an emotional response to what exists, or does it create something out of an emotional state?
I seem to have painted myself into a conundrum.
CET/BB
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