Casey Reas’s talk on chance operations made me reflect on an issue I deeply care about, AI art. As an aspiring artist, seeing how far AI has come truly worries me about the future of this field. One can argue that AI can never take over art because the human touch and emotion cannot be replicated. However, when randomness is introduced to art pieces, what is the line that divides what is human and what is AI? If an artwork primarily uses randomness, does that make it AI? What about replication? Would having more chance elements in a piece make it easier or harder for AI to replicate?
I believe that randomness has value, yet I can’t help but wonder whether the artists who have designed these chance art pieces have thought of the implications of their work. Sure, at the end of the day, the person is creating the code and setting the limits for randomness, but what happens afterward, the actual conception of the work, is out of their hand. Using that logic, one could argue that the artwork isn’t original. In my own work, I’m not against using randomness, but I will limit it to simple things like choosing color or text from a certain array. That makes an art piece more human; therefore, I believe the optimum balance is having more control than randomness.