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Re: iDrama or hiDrama??

TG wrote:


On Jun 6, 2005, at 11:24 AM, Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes wrote:


  Automatically generating art is clearly possible in many fields.
Samples, remixing, and algorithmic blending of melodies lend themselves
well to computer-generated music.  There are software-generated poems
and stories, and I've been entertained by them in a few cases, which is
more than I can say for many meat-based writers.


So, you are saying that computational writing is far more interesting to you than human writers? Pure bull shit and describing human writers as meat-based writers is stupid.

You're not reading what he wrote, and at this point, you'd do well to inflame less and read more. The fact is, many writers are boring. Certainly not all; that's not what he said.


  Consider <http://www.random-art.org/>, which is often surprisingly
good.  I've used many of them as desktop backgrounds over the years.


You have to be kidding. Maybe the code to generate the 'decoration' for your screen savers is an art but this stuff on the screen is not art.

I found some of those images to have perfectly acceptable graphic arts qualities to them. In fact, it was interesting to contemplate what kinds of composition I was responding to. I seem to like things that evoke landscape, have high contrast, are not composed of uniformly shaped areas... but then, I already knew that. Despite aspersions to the contrary, I'm a visual artist. I could put more effort into taxonomizing the 'decorations' I respond to, but instead I'll go find lunch.

I think the user of a breeder system should be able to label a given 'artwork' with tags for what properties it's exhibiting. So, perhaps the work is ugly overall, but is a good exemplar of landscape forms. Give it the 'landscape' tag. This would be an arbitrary label devised by the user; it has no meaning apart from the selections the user makes. I'm just saying it's another part of the UI and process requirements. One would run the breeder, then tag the images, then breed again. The time consumption of this artistic process is probably about how fast you can tag stuff.

The assertion that modern
impressionists are not artists is more than just false,


Again, what I said was Impressionism was an art movement in the 19th century. We are in the 21st century and that art movement is over. It is played out. anyone today passing themselves off as an impressionist doing field paintings is painting-by-the-preestablished-numbers.

The temptation to respond in an inflammatory manner to this is quite strong. Instead I am left to wonder, how is it that you teach practicing artists, and end up with such a narrow processual and historical view of Impressionist painting styles? Is this some kind of ivory tower thing? Maybe there really is a big conflict between people who teach art and people who do art. I wonder if it's any greater a conflict than between those who do art, though. It's an opinionated lot.


it's openly
insulting, and you need to think long and hard about why you'd say such
a horrible and monstrous thing,


Monsterous? Aren't you the guy who just referred to meat-based-writers?

You got something against meat? 'Meat' doesn't automatically imply 'Francis Bacon'.


Hubert Dreyfus, the philosopher from Berkeley was once said if you want to get to the moon you can climb a tree and you will get closer but until you get out of the tree you will never get to the moon.

i just see a lot of folks in trees yelling back and forth that they are closer. It looks pretty funny from ground level. I'm arguing for a BIG I approach rather than a little i approach and definitely not something limited to <i>egom<u>bs</u>Drama</i> list approach which thinks randomly generated screen saver art is good enough and and no thanks to meat-based writers. I want something which has to and can be held up to the standards of Shakespeare, Picasso, ee cumings, stravinsky and Swoon. Hey, you all used the word 'drama' not me. You use that word you gotta meet the bar ... and I actually think there are people on this list who want to meet that bar.

Ok, so what are your concrete proposals for enabling such things? What exemplars do you point out as "the way to go?"

The reason to discuss things like breeder technologies is that they're doable.


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

When no one else sells courage, supply and demand take hold.