On Jun 19, 2015, at 2:59 PM, Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 7:15 AM, João Ferreira <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> I stumbled upon some research by google. I think this might be interesting
>> to anyone interested in artificial intelligence, visual communication and
>> art.
[snip]
> I found the blog post to be an exciting demonstration of the reversal of
> a deep-layer of hidden layers in a standard connectionist (neural)
> network, showing that although the networks were designed for
> pattern recognition, they could be reversed to do pattern production.
>
> Pattern production? Fantastic!
[snip]
> this blog has nothing whatsoever to do with art. Or design.
Discussions about art and the value of making art often swerve into distinctions between creation, invention, discovery, and curation. The distinctions are interesting but most arguments get pretty tedious as people try to argue that sampling is or isn’t musicianship or composition, appropriation is or isn’t art, etc.
For both art and design, the question of doing what might be described as curation rather than creation has interesting possibilities. If a machine can produce enough choices, why not let it do so and then choose what you might have "created" if the machine did not exist? Sometimes the input for the machine might involve a large degree of something at someone would call "creation" or at least direction (Donald Knuth’s metafont comes to mind.) But there seems to be room for smaller degrees of initial intent on the part of the artist/designer/curator.
Data visualization can be used to look at specific questions but it can also be used to discover questions. What’s that green spot? Oh. That’s not very interesting. What’s that orange stripe? By the same token, pattern production can allow enough choices that someone can find something worthwhile. So pattern production has a great potential in art and design.
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
[log in to unmask]
Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
[log in to unmask]
+1 252 258-7006
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|