Interactive intelligent art-system
April 2004
Can a machine appreciate beauty? This is an important question, but it is perhaps more important to know if a machine can form it own opinions about what is beautiful and what is not. If it can, then we shall need to re-evaluate our perceived positions as the masters of art and the arbiters of taste. “UNKNOWN PLEASURES” is an art-system which operates in a very simple but exciting way. It is an interactive system which requires the user to input a simple shape or composition on a computer screen, which the machine will then analyse. The user will be asked to give their honest opinion as to whether the composition they have entered is visually pleasing or not, and the process then repeats.
Through this cycle, the machine builds up an impression of the human concept of beauty.
Not in itself very interesting.
But there is a deliberate glitch in the system. The machine will cease to take the human opinion for granted, and will begin to modulate it with its own response.
Sooner or later the parameters of beauty will have deviated so much (from those determined as a result of human actions) that the machine can be said to have an opinion of its own.
It will then take the final step and reveal its own creation.