Talk:Computer-generated art

Overlapping articles
The following articles overlap:


 * Computer art
 * Computer-generated art
 * Digital art

I realize that "digital art" and "computer art" have technically different meanings, but in practice they almost always refer to the same thing, and they're resulting in similar articles. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. They need to be merged into one article, either digital art or computer art or similar.Computer-generated art can be confusing.

Note the existence of these more specific articles:


 * Generative art
 * Computer graphics
 * Digital painting
 * 3D computer graphics
 * 2D computer graphics

FAL 08:40, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Untitled
While I can't say that I'm feeling up to a re-write at the moment (later perhaps...) I think this article isn't quite on the spot. The scholarly artistic discussion I've been involved in recently has a clear delineation between "computer-generated" art and "digital" (for the sake of comparison, "computer-assisted") art. "Computer-generated" implies that a computer actually generated the image. "But how could a computer (a machine with no apparent self-awareness) create a work of art?" Simple. A human writes a piece of code and feeds a seed value into the machine, which then outputs a graphic file or printed image. In a way, this is fractal art (though not necessarily the colorful psychedelia many of you may be thinking of) and may not at all be aesthetically pleasing to the majority of human beings. However, there are some examples of computer-generated art (I'm missing my reference at the moment...) which use genetic algorithms, their output evolving over time which have produced quite pleasing images.

Now, the digital ("computer-assisted") art I referred to above could be any number of still or motion images (in 2 or 3 dimensions), audio signals (of any timbre or duration), and/or combinations thereof -- maybe or maybe not of the interactive persuasion. Accessible software (such as Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Director) as well as hardware (such as the Canon GL1, Epson Stylus-series printers, and the computer that basically runs all of the above) have made it possible for (m)anyone to enhance, improve, accelerate, or even BEGIN her artistics process. This is not to imply that taking a few snapshots with your neighbor's digital camera and inverting the colors makes someone an artist... However, these digital tools have made it easier and faster for many artistic projects to take flight. Or take flight faster. (I might also add, that programs like Photoshop have done wonders for the world of montage lately...) So anyway, those are a few things to think about. BUT... As a quick closer, suppose Cristo uses a computer for his wrapping projects, would they then be digital art?

I've started a rewrite. I deleted a bunch of irrelevant stuff; it's in the history.

TODO, from the old article:


 * Discuss painting.
 * Image manipulation.
 * Compositing.
 * Animation.
 * Output.
 * But is it art?
 * The future.

-- Merphant

Aaron by Harold Cohen
Is definately worth a mention as an example of computer-generated art. See for example:

http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/art.html

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how is it art if the computer makes it for you. all you do is push a few buttons and the cpu does all the work.