Editorial: Art in the Time of the Artificial

Author(s): Frieder Nake

Source: Leonardo, Vol. 31, No. 3 (1998), pp. 163-164
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576563
Accessed: 15-01-2018 14:53 UTC

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? 1998 ISAST

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 semiotic engineering. The concept of sign is central to informatics, to aesthetics and to post-
modernism. Postmodernism is the times of enhanced artificiality.
Any formalistic approach to aesthetics is capable of addressing only the lower levels of aesthetics.
In particular, if computers are to play a role, only computable aspects of aesthetics may be addressed.
Treatment of any real process by computer presupposes three reductionistic steps: a semiotic trans-
formation of things to signs, a syntactic transformation of signs to "representamens" (Peirce's con-
cept [6]) and an algorithmic transformation of representamens to computable structures.
On the other hand, this very process of reductions opens up the field of aesthetic semioses for new
algorithmic works and, thus, for a new kind of aesthetic experience. The field of algorithmic
semioses is still to be explored aesthetically, on both the analytic and generative levels. An aesthetics
of algorithmic semioses is more likely to produce interesting results for sequences of objects than for
individual objects. Its genuine realm is the small difference between two pictures, and thus, it is
more appropriate to the animated film sequence than to the single great painting on the wall.
In an oversimplification of computer art, we may identify two transformations occupying the art-
ist. The first type of transformation takes the world as it is given and produces an aesthetic sign by
abstraction. The second type of transformation takes the world as it is imagined and produces an
aesthetic sign by concretization. The first transformation takes our bodily experience of moving in
time and space as its starting point. The second transformation starts out from our experience of
dreaming and thinking. The first type, the abstract one, is exemplified by Harold Cohen, the Briton
living in the West of America [7]. The second type, the concrete one, is exemplified by Manfred
Mohr, the German living in the East of America [8].
Virtuality is not the opposite of reality. It is part of reality! Virtual reality is the semiotic domain of
reality. Actual reality is the corporeal domain of reality. We now encounter signs in the state of algo-
rithmic semioses. This is a new aspect of art and of the sciences as well. It is a fascinating-yet
grossly overrated-aspect. It causes rather stupid speculation about the self-determination of the
machine. It is wise to remain relaxed. We tend to interpret the world by projecting our currently
most beloved artifact onto it, and then we interpret the artifacts by projecting ourselves onto them.
This turns things and relations upside down. I prefer to identify signs on the computer as signs of a
new type: calculated and calculating. Signs on the computer themselves become sources and sinks
of signs. This makes us wonder what they really are-agents?
FRIEDER NAKE
Editorial Advisor

Informatik, University of Bremen

PO. Box 330
440 D-28334 Bremen
Germany
E-mail: <nake@informatik. uni-bremen.de

References and Notes

1. Georg Nees, a mathematician and engineer, was at the time of the exhibition working for Siemens. He was the first to write a doctoral thesis
on computer art, which he submitted to the philosophy department of the University of Stuttgart. It was published as a book (in German):
Georg Nees, Generative Computergraphik (Berlin, Munich: Siemens, 1969).

2. Max Bense was one of the founders of information aesthetics, i.e. the attempt to apply information theory to the analysis of aesthetic ob-
jects. The art exhibition of February 1965 is documented in a small booklet (in German): Max Bense, Georg Nees: Projekte Generativer Aesthetik
(Stuttgart: Rot 19., 1965).

3. Abraham A. Moles, Information Theory and Esthetic Perception (Urbana, IL: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1968; originally published in French, 1958).

4. Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication (Urbana, IL: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1964; originally pub-
lished in 1949). The famous quantitative concept of information as measured in bits is outlined in this seminal work.

5. Peirce defined the sign as a triadic relation. A sign, according to this theory, is constituted by a representamen, an object, and an
interpretant. The representamen is the tangible, corporeal ingredient; the object is that which is designated; the interpretant is the interpre-
tation by the recipient of the sign. See The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, eds., 6 Vols. (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard Univ. Press).

6. See [5].

7. For information on Cohen and his work, see Pamela McCorduck, Aaron's Code: Meta-Art, Artificial Intelligence, and the Work of Harold Cohen
(New York: Freeman, 1990).

8. Manfred Mohr's work has been exhibited and cataloged all over the world during the past 20 years.

164 Editorial
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