Computer Generated Art
Shown above is a piece by the early 20th century Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. Mondrian is one of the founders of abstract art as well as cubism. His inspiring paintings, like the one above, continue to be studied by students of art and historians to this day, as his minimalist paintings marked the beginning of a new era in the field of art. Many art enthusiasts began to ask, "How much can we express with very little details?" Instead of asking, "How many details can be expressed?" Mondrian probably spent hours making sure he used the right shades of blue, red, and yellow and that he selected the appropriate squares to fill with the given colors so that gallery visitors would be overwhelmed with wonder and amazement as they perceived the emotions that he had portrayed on that canvas. The painting proves that Mondrian was an absolute master of his craft.
The image above isn't part of an iconic Mondrian work. It was created by computers in less than a second using an application I wrote for fun an hour and a quarter ago. Here are a few other examples:
In fact, here's 100 more, and here's a bunch more set to some music by Bach in an original video I created in the absence of any reason other than the fact that I could, heck I could write a program to completely automate making videos like that too. I would only require just ten lines of code.
Computer Generated Art
It wouldn't be difficult to find someone who believes these paintings are genuine Mondrian paintings. All you need is someone who can claim they have an Ph.D. that speaks authoritatively and uses big vocabulary. In fact you'd probably find it harder to find skeptical people these days than those who believe. In fact, you might be able to find people with actual PHDs to participate. I remember watching videos or reading article. He explained that he would show an image onto the projector on the first day of class and tell students that it was a painting by Mondrian. After giving his students the opportunity to think about the painting, he'd let them speak about the emotions and ideas they felt the artist was trying convey. After giving the students time to think and allowing a few of them to speak, he would pull out his smock to explain to them that the painting that he was attempting to study was not an actual painting. It was actually a photo of his dirty socks.
Although I don't recall the exact message the professor was trying to convey I do remember that it taught me that anyone can be convinced that nearly everything is art. Artists are becoming obsolete, this is something I've spoken in the past. I wrote a program that could produce more Mondrian imitations in less than two hours than Mondrian could have accomplished in his entire life. And while nobody has invented an oil painting robot yet but it's only an issue of time before some professor decides to spend the taxpayer dollars he was given to build one.
Computer-generated art isn't the future, it is already here. Minecraft is the most popular video game, and while it is still developing, it barely employs artists since the bulk of Minecraft's beautification of it is done with an algorithm. There exist whole Reddit threads dedicated to showing the beautiful "naturally generated landscapes" of Minecraft. They are viewing art created by computers rather than a person. Minecraft isn't the only one like this. Many video game developers have abandoned the idea of map-making and level design and instead have computers create a distinct world for each player, typically procedurally. Just another wordpress site
This is not something that the fine art community is yet to accept. A lot of them think of Mondrian's work and the png files my program produces as sacred. (I wonder what Mondrian would think about my program). Their culture, indeed their entire system, isn't equipped to handle the future that is already now here. Computer generated images, worlds and characters are already here and it's only a matter of time until we have good computer generated music and films. The idea that the world's entire entertainment industry could fall into hands of some AI supreme rulers doesn't sound too far-fetched. And most people won't even be concerned since they don't know the difference between the real Mondrian painting and random collage of shapes a computer creates.
