Frances to list... Several newsletters of the aesthetics society as reported on its website will have some articles based in part around the upcoming book by Dominic Lopes entitled "A Philosophy of Computer Art" which is due to be published soon. For those members who have not yet seen the society website for the first article on "computer art" go to: <http://www.aesthetics-online.org/articles/index.php?articles_id= 41>.
It is claimed by this author that the influence of computers on art has probably lead to the birth of a new art form, whereby computer art forms make possible computer art works. As the author further states, an object with a computer art form would be a computer art work because: (1) it may just be art by virtue of this form or event alone, and (2) it would be made by a computer, and (3) it would be interactive, and (4) it would be interactive due to its being made by a computer. The result of these new forms and works together he claims would thus yield a new class of art to be named computer art. To explore the ramifications and implications of this definition, such objects and forms and works found or deemed to be this kind of art are examined by the author as to whether they indeed have any value and content and worth and power that may be relevant to this sort of artistic status. The initial task for the author thus is to determine if any kind of art has this sort of relevance. The traditional objects of art after all it seems to him have formal facts given to sense that are material and technical and mechanical and structural and so on, which subsequently can lend or lead themselves to becoming vehicles of further meaning. The issue here is whether such a meaningful subsequence is caused either intrinsically and inherently by the objects due merely to these formal facts, or is caused deliberately due to human habitat or habit or history. For the author, the sheer qualities and properties of some art forms as a fit means do seem to be more suitable at carrying and acquiring meaning easily, such as those durable forms that appeal to the higher senses of sight and sound and touch. In other words, it is assumed by him that some vehicles intuitively found or deemed artistic may bear or yield meaning more easily or more suitably than others, as to the specific kind of art they are. One reason which may make this fact so is that those kinds of artistic vehicles can usually be placed in a context with similar art forms previously made, so that there is some prior paradigm belief and collateral experience on the part of the percipient, and hence an expectation of a certain kind of art. The formal style of an artist or school that is familiar may of course help reveal this. The very genre of computers may also reveal its artistic effect, assuming that computer forms and works can be meaningful as art. The criteria in the definition may point to this as a truth, especially the interactive criterion. It is claimed by the author that a computer form and work is interactive because it emerges from a historical context of interactivity and computation. If the interaction consists in an attempt on the part of the computer expert to move outside the normal context, then it is held by the author that a creative artistic action occurs. It seems to me that the problem with computers as a vehicular means of art however is that there is no historical context or boundary for which computers can be related to. Furthermore, this thesis implies that the forms and objects and works of art in any genre or class are determined subjectively by humans in social situations. This is an antirealist stance, and denies that art can in any way whatsoever be an objective phenomenal construct, or even an objectively relative construct. It denies to art any realist support. My initial problem with this whole approach actually is just what might be a work of computer art. If a computer is merely the ways and means or tools of making an artistic form and an artistic work, then the object put out by the contraption is the form and the work, and not the contraption or its inner workings. There may of course be a good definition and exemplification of what a computer artwork itself might be, but it escapes me. In the absence of any historical context, which the author seemingly requires of art as a tone or token or type, then interactivity alone may not be a sufficient condition for the computer to yield art. Any hyperimage or hypertext that is interactive on a computer or on the internet may yield an object that exists only in cyberspace, but this ephemeral digital effect could not possibly be a form and object that constitutes any kind of art, let alone a new kind of art.
