The magazine MAQ September 2018 MAQ Magazine November 2018 | Page 168

Automated art has been around in one form or another for centuries. Musikalisches Wurfelspiel – dice throwing determining the order of passages of pre-composed

music – was popular in the 18th century. One attributed to Mozart, published in 1792, has 45,949,729,863,572,161 variations.

But research began in earnest with computers and the search for artificial intelligence, with human-level creativity seen as an indispensable component of human-level intelligence. In the 1960s, A. Michael Noll, an engineer, wrote a program which

generated a version of Piet Mondrian's Composition with Lines. New York Times art critic Stuart Preston reviewed an exhibition of Noll's work with alarm, fearing for a future in which the artist's identity could be erased by machines.

A. Michael Noll-Database of Digital Art

Automated art has been around in one form or another for centuries. Musikalisches Wurfelspiel – dice throwing determining the order of passages of pre-composed music – was popular in the 18th century. One attributed to Mozart, published in 1792, has 45,949,729,863,572,161 variations.