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It is apparently not crass, philistine, obscene . . . to declare that all the first-order products of
the tree of life—the birds and bees and the spiders and the beavers—are designed and cre-
ated by such algorithmic processes, but outrageous to consider the hypothesis that creations
of human genius might themselves be products of such algorithmic processes. (Dennett
2001 , p. 284)
Prior to the 19th century, it was obvious to zoologists that the natural world could
only exhibit its fantastic, interlocking adaptations by the hand of a designer. That
a proposition is obvious, however, does not imply that it is true. The belief that
the works of nature exceed the capacity of algorithmic processes is a failure of
reasoning by analogy: nature appears to demonstrate the complexity of humankind's
designership, and we have no better explanation, so we posit the existence of a
superhuman designer. This kind of fuzzy reasoning may be useful as a rule of thumb,
in the absence of a greater body of evidence, but is highly susceptible to the failings
of human intuition.
However, we do not believe that this is critical to the proposition that there can be
valuable creative partnerships with computational agents. Insofar as the creative acts
are a result of both computer and human behaviours, the fundamentally important
point is that the two together should exhibit some enhanced creativity. Rather than
asking the question, “Can technology be creative?”, the question can be formulated
as “Can we be more creative with technology?” Surely, the history of human cre-
ativity with technology would suggest we can be optimistic about further extensions
to this.
7.3.8 Value
During the early stages of an emergent media or technology, artworks often focus on
the materiality of the medium itself. Take, for example, video art, sound sampling,
and computer art. Over the embryonic years of each of these movements, many
of the seminal works are those which place their medium at the forefront: Nam
June Paik's distorted video signals highlighted the invisible ether of broadcast TV
transmission; Christian Marclay's turntablism sonified the physical substrate of the
wax record; Manfred Mohr's algorithmic drawings demonstrated the systematic,
infinitely reproducible nature of computation.
These nascent experiments are undoubtedly a consequence of the exploratory and
critical roles that art can play, acting as a speculum into the technology's intrinsic
qualities. Subsequently, when a technology has been fully assimilated into society,
it becomes a channel to convey other messages or perform other functions.
We see the same thing happening with computer-aided composition. Early prac-
titioners such as Hiller and Isaacson ( 1958 ) and Xenakis ( 2001 ) foregrounded the
formalised, computational nature of their compositions, explicitly presenting the
work as being the result of automated systems. In doing so, this awareness became
a part of the compositions' wider conceptual makeup: not just a piece of music, but
a product of formal structures and mechanisms.
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