Harold Cohen

            I really enjoyed Paul Cohen’s talk about his father’s work with AARON. It elided perfectly with an recent interest of mine, which is the question of machine agency and meaning of creativity. The paradox of tools like AARON is that the create things we ourselves can’t, but wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for us. (Weird though it may seem, contemplating this paradox always make’s me think of the NRA catchphrase, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” which, if you think about it, sums up perfectly the complexity of the question of technological agency).

            Supposedly, that AARON can create interesting, unique and representational images challenges the notion of the human mind as the exclusive source of creativity in art. I kind of think of it differently than that, though. I’ve always felt that the source of meaning in art came more from the viewer than the artist themself. Hence why we’re sometimes more moved by phenomena in the natural world than by works of art… it’s about what we see in the piece, not what the intention of the artist is.

            Though I also like Ben Grosser’s painting machine, I’m more intrigued by AARON. Though I’ve asserted that the meaning of art lies in the beholder, I don’t mean to say that art can be anything, and meaning, anywhere. I do believe that certain patterns, shapes, and behviors are intrinsically meaningful (whether for neurological or social reasons, I don’t know) and I like that with AARON, Cohen is trying to parse out what those are. That is, what rules about image-making make and image work? In that sense, he’s working with the same question that artists have always been grappling with.