Art and AI: A History of Collaboration and Rivalry
This article explores the connection between art and artificial intelligence dating back to 1953, beginning with Gordon Pask's Musicolour, an interactive system designed for pianists. Harold Cohen's AI, known as Aaron, was recognized as a creative partner. With the evolution of AI, worries about its potential to replace human artists surfaced, especially with innovations like DALL·E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, and Google Bard, igniting discussions on authorship. The author contends that AI poses no real threat, as art has transcended mere technique and individual brilliance. Nonetheless, technology reshapes perceptions and social frameworks, as highlighted by Melvin Kranzberg. Modern artists such as Trevor Paglen, Hito Steyerl, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Holly Herndon, and Roberto Fassone delve into these issues, indicating that AI's impact on future art remains unpredictable.
Key facts
- Gordon Pask designed Musicolour in 1953, a system that produced light shows in response to sound and learned from performers.
- Harold Cohen worked with his AI Aaron from the 1970s to the 2010s, viewing creativity as a dialogue between program and programmer.
- Recent AI tools include DALL·E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, and Google Bard.
- Trevor Paglen highlights biases in neural network training datasets.
- Hito Steyerl questions AI's intelligence through narratives blending journalism and science fiction.
- Lauren Lee McCarthy's 'Lauren' replaces a smart speaker with a human pretending to be AI.
- McCarthy and Kyle McDonald's 'Unlearning Language' uses AI to help participants hide from surveillance by finding non-machine-readable communication.
- Holly Herndon's Holly+ is an open-source vocal deepfake managed by a DAO.
- Roberto Fassone trained a language model on psychedelic trip reports to generate hallucinations.
- Melvin Kranzberg stated 'technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.'
Entities
Artists
- Gordon Pask
- Harold Cohen
- Trevor Paglen
- Hito Steyerl
- Lauren Lee McCarthy
- Kyle McDonald
- Holly Herndon
- Roberto Fassone
- Carola Bonfili
- Matteo Nasini
- Francesco Fonassi
Institutions
- Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media
- Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain, Genève
- Fondazione smART
- Politecnico di Milano
- Naba – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti
- Artribune
- Lunchmeat
- DAO
Locations
- Prague
- Czech Republic
- Japan
- Yamaguchi
- Geneva
- Switzerland
- Johnson City
- United States
- Savigliano
- Italy
- Monaco di Baviera
- Germany