Nawon Choi— Looking Outward 06

Composition in Line

I found this piece through a really interesting article about how an IBM 7094 computer generated a drawing that was very similar to a painting done by Piet Mondrian. The two images were prompted with this questionnaire—”One of the pictures is of a photograph of a painting by Piet Mondrian while the other is a photograph of a drawing made by an IBM 7094 digital computer. Which of the two do you think was done by a computer?” According to the article, few people, including those who claim to like abstract art, were unable to identify the painting.

I admire the thought and intentions behind this project and how it questions the nature of art, how one was made traditionally, with hours of an artists’ time spent in front of a canvas with oil and paint, while the other was generated by an algorithm, specifically and deliberately designed to emulate Mondrian’s original work. It challenges people’s ideas on what traditional art is, and introduces randomness and computational practices to abstract art.