Page 276 - The Black Box Book

based on their validity (in German: Geltung), and not merely in accord-
ance to their specific genesis. Moreover, it can be assumed that the act
of deviation from a defined norm is significantly more complex in CANs
than in the case of human art production, simply because an AI system
can be more familiar with the virtual archive of art than any human artist.
Perhaps people must learn to live with this narcissistic slight. In any
case, an artist like Roman Lipski has long been using an AI system that
works with machine learning algorithms as a ‘muse’. He feeds it with his
own art works so that the machine can suggest what his next piece of art
might look like. However, the artist’s linguistic use of the concept of the
muse is not entirely appropriate. This is not because the concept of the
muse is transferred to a machine, but because the muse is characterized
precisely by the fact that it does not directly intervene in the production
of the work of art. In this case, the AI system is simply an analytical tool.
But even this approach is not new in the field of computational
creativity. In the 1980s, while he was supposed to compose an opera,
but suffered from a creative blockade, David Cope developed the already
mentioned AI program EMMY to be inspired by its compositions, based
on the analysis of his own work. Whether in the end he was able to come
up with more interesting results than he would have at some later point
without the help of his program, cannot be answered anymore. Hence,
perhaps the real achievement of the program was simply to serve a ther-
apeutic purpose.

THE FUTURE OF MACHINE CREA-
TIVITY AND THE NOTION OF ART

Whatever the future of machine creativity may look like, at best its devel-
opment and reflection will help us to re-examine socio-cultural perceptions
and practices of art and creativity in the very light of these technological
changes. It remains to be noted that the societal use of concepts like art
and creativity, insofar as they relate to humans, is determined by a striking
paradox that also inscribes itself into the current AI debates: on the one
hand, these terms are used in such an inflationary manner that basically
everything under the sun can be considered as creative or art, while on
the other hand, there is a tendency to mystify and esoterically transfigure
corresponding artifacts and activities.
In this respect, the current discussions about computer creativity
should also challenge us to take seriously the contradictions of human
creativity and art production and to question, for example, how ma-
chine-like or not they are, particularly under conditions of an industrial
and post-industrial society (Sudmann, 2019).

Figures 1 and 2:
Images were created by Julia Herbach
with the AI tool Midjourney
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