LECTURE: Pamela McCorduck on Harold Cohen
| July 6, 2016 |
“The First Robot Artist”: On the Life and Work of Harold Cohen and His Artificially Intelligent Painting Program Aaron
Saturday August 6, 2016, 2-4 p.m.
Art House, 231 Delgado Street, Santa Fe, NM
Free and open the public. Limited Seating. RSVP required here.
A conversation between author Pamela McCorduck and Foundation curator Jason Foumberg will explore the life and legacy of English artist Harold Cohen (1928–2016), who developed Aaron, the first contemporary software program capable of autonomously generating unique paintings and drawings. Following a successful career in London as a Color Field painter who followed a rule-based technique, Cohen relocated to San Diego where he was inspired by the burgeoning fields of artificial intelligence and machine creativity. There, Cohen developed Aaron and evolved his custom code until it was capable of behaving and painting in mimicry of human thought processes. Cohen exhibited his artwork at the 1966 Venice Biennale, the 1964 and 1977 versions of Documenta, and had solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Tate Gallery, London.
Artworks produced by Aaron from the Foundation’s collection will be on view during this event. Pamela McCorduck is the author of Aaron’s Code, the biography of artist Harold Cohen, and the author of ten published books, including Machines Who Think. Both her fiction and nonfiction deal with aspects of science—mainly the psychological impact of computing, especially of artificial intelligence, and in her later books, of the sciences of complexity. http://www.pamelamc.com
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LECTURE: Pamela McCorduck on Harold Cohen Saturday, August 6, 2-4 p.m. at Art House
If you were unable to attend the lecture or would like to re-watch it, the video is available here: https://vimeo.com/181211591