Artist Review: Harold Cohen

Born in London in 1928, Harold Cohen studied at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London before becoming a teacher there himself and eventually joining the Visual Arts Dept. in 1968. His digital work did not begin until he moved to San Francisco, when he became interested in computer programming and in artificial intelligence. in 1971, he was invited to spend 2 years at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of Stanford University. The most important result of this, in relation to his art, is the ongoing programming project called AARON, which produces art that looks like freehand work. AARON has been producing artwork, in multiple styles, since the 70's into the modern day.

Some of the computer generated worked produced by Cohen are more abstract, like the one I began this post with. Others, like the one to the left, have clearer, more recognizable figures in them. AARON's earliest works were just in black and white, but as can be seen in its later works it moved on to color. This switch to color from black and white creates an almost more human element to the works, even though they are created entirely by a program, making them feel warmer and more welcoming to the eye. In a way, it shows a sort of evolution in the program's works, much like you would see in a human artist, though ultimately this evolution is brought on by the one altering the program.

I enjoy the works created by Cohen and AARON mostly because I enjoy seeing what computers are capable of when left mostly to their own devices. I find it fascinating that a computer, given the right input, can create both images we could easily attribute to a computer and images that we could easily mistake for having been hand drawn. Though one might say that there is something missing from completely computer generated artwork, some sort of emotional quality that is missing, I would say this is not the case. Though the art itself is computer generated, some human input had to go into it to help produce the images, and I believe that is enough to help the computer produce a piece that has just as much emotional value as something produced entirely by hand.

Information from:
http://www.kurzweilcyberart.com/aaron/hi_cohenbio.html
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/artist/cohen/biography/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARON

Images From:
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/name/cohen-harold/6433/