Robots at the Whitney

Today’s letter:

Robots at the Whitney (4 min)

Harold Cohen’s 40 Year Journey

Harold Cohen + AARON: A Journey in A.I. Art

• In the late 1960s, Harold Cohen, originally a celebrated British painter, shifted his focus towards the intersection of art and technology, creating AARON, an AI image-generating software

• Over forty years, Cohen and AARON produced an extensive body of work, transitioning from basic line drawings to complex, colorful scenes, demonstrating an unparalleled blend of artistic vision and algorithmic precision.

The Big Picture: Artistic Creation + Technology

• Cohen’s venture into digital art with AARON challenged the prevailing notions of creativity, authorship, and the essence of artistic expression, redefining the potential of digital art.

• Different from other A.I. art generators, which typically rely on extensive datasets of existing art, AARON utilizes a unique approach by constructing images from scratch based on predefined coding rules, working like a painter.

Why It Matters:

• The methodical evolution of AARON under Cohen's guidance demonstrates the more untapped creative potential of A.I.

• The collaboration between Cohen and AARON highlights the possibilities for art created through the partnership of human ingenuity and machine learning.