PDQ: What
is significant about artificial life as a medium for artists?
KER: I think that artists, from the very beginning of time, have been trying
to not only create an illusion of life but have been trying to discover
how to capture an elan or spirit in an art work. If you look at the caves
in Lascaux for instance and the drawings of bison on the cave walls. That
was an attempt to recreate reality in a pictorial way. They knew it wasn't
the bison but they knew that it would communicate some kind of likeness
of a bison. You can look at artists like Michelangelo and his desire to
give the illusion of life by modeling every muscle. Being so aware of every
movement of the muscle and trying to give an illusion of life, or Leonardo
with his paintings and how carefully he chose to mimic skin tones. You can
start at the beginning of art and keep working your way up find realist
artists trying to create some sort of illusion of realism in their work.
And I think, in a sense, that is all an attempt at a form of artificial
life. You can even look back at people like Vaucanson that did the amazing
duck that would eat, and quack so realistically that people thought it was
a real duck. It wasn't artificial life but it was an attempt toward mimesis
and creating the illusion of life. Even the Jaquet-Droz family that had
created automatons that could write was an attempt at creating an illusion
of life. Of course, with these early works we know that they were stone
and they were cam driven, they were not alive, even though they tried to
create and illusion of life. But, with artificial life and with systems,
non linear systems in particular, for the very first time artists have access
to these tools and can create something that is perhaps living or create
an illusion of life that takes us to far beyond the bison on the wall or
the muscle of Michaelangelo's sculpture. It is interesting that you mention
the Lasceaux caves, Michaelangelo, and the Realists in relation to artificial
life.
