Faking Hirst with four lines of code

I don't know anyone who's not grateful that computers have replaced humans for performing tasks like doing arithmetic calculations or searching for bits of information. Few think, however, that humans can be replaced for creating art. I have yet to see a computer-generated piece selling for millions.

But how difficult is it to mimic art pieces on a computer? Are pieces worthless because they can easily be replicated? And who gets the credit (or the money) for a computer-generated piece - the programmer or the computer?

Here are two examples to put things in perspective. First, my replica of Damien Hirst's polka-dot-LSD painting, obtained with only a few Mathematica lines:

The advantage of using the computer here is obvious: I can generate endless variations of Hirst's piece with different colors at random at the touch of 'Shift-Enter'. How's that for simplicity and productivity?

Needless to say perhaps, I'm not a big fan of Hirst, and being able to generate what he sold (or copied) for £43,300 doesn't help me appreciate what he does.

Next, a piece of Bridget Riley I saw described this morning by Adrian Searle on the Guardian website:

Searle says about the piece: "I can't see the system of drawing at all... It took about a week, a week to actually execute... What you're watching is your own perception."

I'm not sure about my own perception - even less about Mathematica's - but I know that with a bit of fine-tuning and luck (the output is random after all), I can get close to the original, again with only a few lines of code.

Does that mean that Riley's circles are trivial? Well no. She puts a lot of time on her pieces, as shown in the Guardian video, and it does take some work for us humans to come up with something that looks random yet nice and original at the same time.

Riley has also done in the past some remarkable pieces on optical illusion and geometry. For those in London, you can see some of her works at the National Gallery until May 2011.

This is a just a preview of the underestimated art of using computers for doing art. Have a look at the Computer Arts Society website for more (historical) examples. I'll post more of my own computer art in the future, though none in the next two weeks because of Christmas vacations.