Yael Eylat Van-Essen PhD – Curator / Researcher

“Optimizing” Creativity

We live in a new complex ecology in which the clear distinction between humans and machines that has characterized the technological world in the past, is becoming increasingly blurred: computer systems and the logic of code are embedded in the most essential characteristics of human existence, while automated machines are acquiring traits of living systems. Thanks to new developments in the field of computer science, on the one hand, and in the natural sciences and new-materialism, on the other, the new algorithms based machines, are no longer characterized only by computational mechanisms of a significant logical nature, but they take part also in areas that were previously considered unique to human beings, especially the creative field. Their creativity is being implemented both with respect to information – through the use of algorithms for identifying patterns and manipulating them, and on material phenomena – through the ability to make modification in the material’s code.

In his article “Technology’s in-betweenness” philosopher Luciano Floridi suggests classifying technologies by three categories of order that describe the relationships between users and objects. While the first and second order technologies refer to the relationship between technology and the world of phenomena or the person who uses them, third-order technologies, relate to other technologies as users. These technologies exclude the human subject from the chain of interactions and thus become autonomous. Information technologies, artificial intelligence systems and artificial life are among the territories where third-order technologies are most fully realized. In the artistic process, these technologies are becoming increasingly significant in light of the use of deep learning systems and computerized neural networks that enable automation of the creative processes, of which learning is a central part. By this processes, they challenge the traditional meaning of the concept of creativity and its unique qualities.

This paper relates to artistic works which use machine creativity, whose meanings go far beyond the mediumal formulation that they present. The paper analyses the conceptual principles that machine creativity relies upon and the infrastructure that enables its performance. Based on the theories of Bruno Latour it relates to the ways in which computer systems act within different environment, virtual or material, connecting natural phenomena and objects to large data systems, and the ideological and political perceptions and value systems reflected by them. It refers to works of art that recount to the practical dimensions of learning systems and to the philosophical and ethical aspects derived from the meaning of the learning process in various contexts, particularly to the meaning of different optimization systems that deep learning mechanisms defined in relation to the concept of creativity. What is the meaning of “optimizing creativity”, will be a central question in that respect.