In all aspects of life, machines are slowly taking over. But are we losing out on the essence?
Michael Connor, the artistic director of Rhizome, a non-profit that provides a platform for digital art, agrees. He describes the gap between silicon- and carbon-based artists as wide and deep: “Making art is not the sole role of being an artist. It’s also about creating a body of work, teaching, activism, using social media, building a brand.” He suggests that the picture Elgammal’s algorithm generates is art in the same way that what a Monet forger paints is art: “This kind of algorithm art is like a counterfeit. It’s a weird copy of the human culture that the machine is learning about.” He adds that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing: “Like the Roman statues, which are copies of the original Greek figures, even copies can develop an intrinsic value over time.”
Needull in a haystack 