What is an artist?

"If what AARON is making is not art, what is it exactly, and in what ways, other than its origin, does it differ from the 'real thing?' If it is not thinking, what exactly is it doing?" - Harold Cohen

Aaron the artist?

Painting by Aaron

AARON is a software program written by artist Harold Cohen
that creates original artistic images.

Harold Cohen is an English artist who established an international reputation in the 1960s when he represented Great Britain in the Venice Biennale, Documenta 3, the Paris Biennale, the Carnegie International and many other important international shows. He is also author of the celebrated AARON program, an ongoing research effort in autonomous machine (art making) intelligence which began when he was a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1973.

Cohen is one of the few artists ever to have become deeply involved in artificial intelligence. He has given invited papers on his work at major international conferences on AI, computer graphics and art technologies.

About Aaron: http://crca.ucsd.edu/~hcohen/