Google 'Paintbrush' Raises Some of Art's Oldest Questions

A recent San Francisco art show hosted by Google included the typical trappings - a big crowd, striking pieces of art and high prices. But there was one noteworthy distinction of this particular exhibit: All of the pieces were created with the help of a Google computer program.

The artwork relies on software that remakes an image to include whatever the software is being told to see in the image. The result is a hallucination of the image that has a psychedelic look.

The new software provides artists opportunities to be creative as never before. With this fresh approach, there are questions about who or what should get credit for the artwork. Should it be the artist, the computer software or the software's creator, and is the final product really art?

For the London man behind one of the pieces that sold for $8,000, the price was an endorsement of artists' continued value in a world that is increasingly reliant on technology and machines. (Another piece of art at the show also sold for $8,000.) Artist Memo Akten said that Google has made a better "paintbrush" but that the human artist is essential. Not just any image fed into the computer program can sell for so much, he said.

Akten began creating his artwork, called "GCHQ," with a Google Maps screen shot of GCHQ, the British intelligence and security agency. He put it into a Google program called DeepDream, which is available on a website that anyone can use. But Akten went a step further, tweaking the code to produce multiple morphed versions of the Google Maps screen shot that were to his liking. One was covered in eyes, another had web-like detail and a third had a textured look. Then Akten merged those three images using Adobe AfterEffects into a single image, his final product.

While the initial version of his art took only a couple hours to make, Akten later spent a couple weeks creating a larger scale version of the art. (The print that was sold was about 6 feet by 3 feet.)

The inspiration behind the piece was Akten's view that tech companies such as Google and government agencies are like modern deities that play the role of religions in previous years.

"[When] we have a problem, we ask Google instead of praying," Akten said. "We're provided with a false sense of safety. 'You're being watched, don't do that, we'll find you.' "

He thinks it's "quite scary," given the data and artificial intelligence expertise Google has acquired. For him, it was fitting to use a Google product to help make a statement about the omnipresence of technology companies in our lives.

And this perspective has resonated with some in the art world.

"It's beautiful and yet does something more than demonstrate computing prowess," said Peter Patchen, chair of digital arts at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. "It questions everything from corporate control of culture to changing socio-religious beliefs and taps into our deep distrust of seemingly omnipotent power structures."

Patchen was happy to see digital art being given a value in the thousands of dollars but said there is still room for growth. (The most coveted classic pieces sell for millions.)

As young, affluent art collectors start to buy works, he expects that they will appreciate digital techniques and be willing to pay higher prices.

Patchen thinks credit for Akten's work should be shared between the artist and the algorithm's creators. Until the algorithm becomes a thinking being, he thinks it is merely a tool, deserving no credit.

For Christiane Paul, the adjunct curator of new media arts at Manhattan's Whitney Museum of American Art, credit lies solely with the artist. She noted that an artist using Adobe Photoshop to make a piece of art would not credit the team that made Photoshop.

Paul said artists have long sought new tools to elevate their work, such as creating new colors or finding new materials with which to work.

"Whether it's a new paintbrush or pigment or neural network, they are all potentially great tools for creating sophisticated art," said Paul, who thought Akten's work was richly creative.

Others were not as impressed.

Emily L. Spratt, a PhD candidate in art history at Princeton with a research focus on artificial intelligence, described the artist's explanation behind his work as an anarchist's rant and reflective of our paranoia about machines. Spratt was not sure who ultimately deserved credit for the work - the artist, the software or the team that made the software.

She cautioned that the painting's high price should not be seen as an acceptance into the art world; the piece was sold at a charity auction, with money going to Gray Area, a reputable nonprofit arts organization in which auction attendees had an interest.

Still, new techniques such as the use of artificial intelligence to create art are promising, in Spratt's view. She noted that the emergence of oil paints was a breakthrough for artists centuries ago. Now artificial intelligence presents new possibilities for the creative class.

"It's definitely a venue for more possible creativity. Will it be as simple as uploading a photo into Google DeepDream and then seeing what type of distorted image it will produce?" Spratt said. "I imagine artists will be using this type of technology in a more complicated, nuanced and sophisticated type of way."

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