Ray wrote: > Actually Selma, > > I agree with Harry on this if humans were manipulating the machine. Is a > player piano performing? Is a CD player performing or is it an archive > of a performance being played in the present. Instruments change all the > time. Synthesizers are used to imitate instruments but they are really > their own instrument itself with various "stops" like an organ, that can be > added to the basic synth process that creates a tone. It's amazing how > even composers forget such things. A second side effect to this is that > the poor imitation that synthesizers are for other instruments often makes > people who know better forget what is lost or lose care in it while others > who have never experienced are simply more insensitive. Sythesizers also > give you certain things that are difficult to achieve in the instrument that > they are imitating like snare drum chords for example which are a legitimate > new sound for composers to play with. In short if you understand that > humans are behind the machine then it is just a matter of whether a single > human brain can fight an inhanced one and win. While in the case of art > it is important to remember that a bad version of an instrument is no > substitite while the uniqueness of that new instrument is something to be > treasured. > > REH
I don't disagree. I think we are pointing to the fact that humans are using a tool in order to produce something. The issue of whether the use of a new tool tends to make people forget the values that were inherent in the older tools or instruments is, I think, a very different issue, but certainly related and certainly well worth discussing sometime. So, do we agree that computers are tools used by humans and that the product of that use is a human product and therefore the product may very well be labeled (sp?) art if it meets some other criteria of art that we may set? My question about fractals came out of the fact that fractals cannot possibly be produced by humans-or, I should say, the kind of fractals I am thinking about cannot be produced by humans and so is the human that feeds the information into the computer to create these gorgeous products the artist or is it the computer that is the artist? Of course, a violinist cannot produce that heavenly sound without the violin, either. Is that the same thing? It doesn't seem to me that the fact that the computer uses math to do its work should enter into the question of whether the computer is an artist. My reason for saying that is that, although humans have an enormous variety of capabilities that computers may not have, e.g., the ability to see patterns on a chess board, no humans have all human capabilities; some humans are geniuses in math and can do few other things; some wonderful musicians aren't capable of balancing a check book, etc. So to say that the computer can only do certain things and not others does not do enough, in my mind, to distinguish it on those grounds, from human effort. I suppose at this point we would have to get back into the discussion of just what makes us human? Obviously, I'm just ruminating here. Selma : [Futurework] Re: Chess (was If a Machine Creates Something > Beautiful, Is It an Artist?) > > > > Hi Harry, > > > > I think I understand that you're saying that even when the chess players > are > > playing the computer, they're playing a human. > > > > So, Harry, do you think that if a machine produces something beautiful, > that > > product is art? Is the machine an artist? > > > > Perhaps you would say that, since the machine is being manipulated by a > > human, the product is really being produced by a human? > > > > What comes to my mind is fractals which could not be produced by a human. > > Granted, the human has to put in the information that will make it > possible > > for the computer to produce the fractal, but is that the same thing as > > composing a beautiful piece of music or a painting or a poem or delivering > > an opera aria that makes one tremble and cry? > > > > Selma > > > > I've been moved to tears by some fractals I've seen. > > > > S. > > > > _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
