Can Computers Be Artists?

A year before I was born, a computer wrote the following:

At all events of my own essays and dissertations about love and its endless pain and perpetual pleasure will be known and understood by all of you who read this and talk or sing or chant about it to your worried friends or nervous enemies. Love is the question and the subject of this essay. We will commence with a question: does steak love lettuce? This question is implacably hard and inevitably difficult to answer. Here is a question: does an electron love a proton, or does it love a neutron? Here is a question: does a man love a woman or, to be specific and to be precise, does Bill love Diane? The interesting and critical response to this question is: no! He is obsessed and infatuated with her. He is loony and crazy about her. That is not the love of steak and lettuce, of electron and proton and neutron. This dissertation will show that the love of a man and a woman is not the love of steak and lettuce. Love is interesting to me and fascinating to you but it is painful to Bill and Diane. That is love!

That computer's name was Ractor, short for raconteur. It was an artificial intelligence, programmed to write without need of human input. Most of Ractor's work is somewhat middling, but I loved the piece above. Let me repeat:

Here is a question: does a man love a woman or, to be specific and to be precise, does Bill love Diane?

...

Love is interesting to me and fascinating to you but it is painful to Bill and Diane

Ain't that the truth? That the difference in the abstract and the real is far more acute than we would like to admit.

If you read enough of Ractor's writing, you'll see that like a flesh-and-blood artist it has recurring themes and obsessions in its work. It has a love of lettuce, and steak, and tomatoes. It is constantly wondering about flight, and the differences between the hawk, gull, and crow. It dreams of white crows on black skies, and it has great hunger for electric current and expresses it - as much as we have need of steak and lettuce for sustenance.

Does Ractor suffer to create art? Does Ractor become paralyzed when trying to choose the right word? Does Ractor question it's value when most of what it produces is utter dross? No. Ractor generates reams and reams of mostly unintelligible prose. If Ractor was to express it's artistic philosphy, it would be "Just crap it out, throw it at the wall, and let the humans figure out what sticks".

I think there's a lesson to be learned here. As an artist, it is not your job to criticize your work, or evaluate it's merit. It is your job to create art. To create art to the best of your ability, and then leave it to your audience to take from it what joy, meaning, or inspiration they can. Just keep creating, something is bound to resonate with someone eventually. However, if you let your fear of failure take over, if you never express all that is in you, you will never create the opportunity for someone else to find that moment of connection and shared humanity.

I originally discovered Ractor's book, "The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed" on the Taking Over Hollywood blog.