Harold Cohen was a pioneer in computer art, in algorithmic art, and in generative art; but as he told me one afternoon in 2010, he was first and foremost a painter. He was also an engineer whose work defined the first generation of computer-generated art. His system, AARON, is one of the longest-running, continually maintained AI systems in history. Harold Cohen was an exceptional artist, an impressive engineer, and an important bridge between those two worlds.

Harold Cohen coloring the forms produced by the AARON drawing “Turtle” at the Computer Museum, Boston, MA, ca. 1982. Collection of the Computer History Museum, 102627459.

他于1950年从伦敦大学的斯莱德美术学院毕业，是英国画家一代的成员，其中包括戴维·霍克尼（David Hockney），布里奇特·莱利（Bridget Riley）和理查德·史密斯（Richard Smith）。到1960年代初，他在英格兰的几次展览中赢得了名声，到60年代中期，他开始在国际上展示他的作品，并在伦敦，纽约和多伦多举行了画廊展览。他的作品集中在抽象的生物形态上，并带有调色板，似乎与当时的波普艺术从业人员叛乱分子出来。他的艺术代表大不列颠参加了重大活动，例如威尼斯双年展和巴黎双年展，这是欧洲两个最负盛名的艺术节。到1960年代后期，科恩已经厌倦了伦敦的艺术界，并开始将他的思想转移到将为他其余艺术生涯带来的主题 - 艺术家如何处理他们的信息来创作艺术品？一组标记作为图像的最小条件是什么？是什么使图像令人回味？为了回答这些问题，他开始调查儿童绘画和古老的岩画，寻找他们的“艺术”。

在1960年代后期，科恩对计算机技术产生了兴趣。他离开了伦敦的家，在加利福尼亚大学圣地亚哥分校的艺术系任命。在那里，他遇到了研究生杰夫·拉斯金（Jef Raskin），他向科恩（Cohen）介绍了学院的CDC 3200大型机。Cohen是由计算机在确定艺术家如何处理信息的可能性中所吸引的，因为计算机在处理方面非常出色，并且纯粹基于定义的输入。拉斯金（Raskin）从福特兰（Fortran）开始向科恩（Cohen）介绍了编程。圣地亚哥分校的CDC 3200是批处理机器。程序员将在打孔卡上创建一个程序，然后将卡片提交，然后由操作员提交给机器，然后将结果归还结果，无论是打印输出还是一系列新打孔卡。科恩对这个过程感到窒息，并最终获得了他可以编程和运行自己的计算机的访问权。他的第一台计算机是Nova的数据。后来，科恩收购了数字设备公司PDP-11和VAXS。 He started out programming in FORTRAN, before transitioning to the C programming language.

科恩（Cohen）成为圣地亚哥分校的常设教授，并开始进一步研究计算机。到1971年，他已经开发了一个绘画系统，并在秋季联合计算机会议上介绍了一篇论文。此后不久，他被邀请在洛杉矶县博物馆展示该系统及其作品。

来自无标题的亚伦图纸的细节。1980年。

These early presentations and papers attracted attention in both art and technology circles, and Cohen was invited as a Visiting Scholar to Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL), where he spent two years working on a paint system surrounded by AI luminaries such as John McCarthy and Ed Feigenbaum.

AARON image created at the Computer Museum, Boston, MA, 1995.

Cohen’s initial program was rather simple. He defined a small set of rules and forms that the computer composed into drawings, which were then put to paper using a drawing “turtle”—a small robot equipped with a marker.

The 1979 exhibition, Drawings, at SFMOMA, featured this “turtle” robot creating drawings in the gallery. Collection of the Computer History Museum, 102627449.

Of the early versions of AARON, Cohen wrote, “In all its versions prior to 1980, AARON dealt exclusively with internal aspects of human cognition. It was intended to identify the functional primitives and differentiations used in the building of mental images and, consequently, in the making of drawings and paintings. The program was able to differentiate, for example, between figure and ground and inside and outside, and to function in terms of similarity, division and repetition. Without any object-specific knowledge of the external world, AARON constituted a severely limited model of human cognition, yet the few primitives it embodied proved to be remarkably powerful in generating highly evocative images: images, that is, that suggested, without describing, an external world.”1

从1973年开始，亚伦（Aaron）与科恩（Cohen）一起工作，但可以将其视为一种艺术创造专家系统，尽管科恩（Cohen）有些拒绝了那个绰号。

“… perhaps AARON would be better described as an expert’s system than as an expert system: not simply because I have served as both knowledge engineer and as resident expert, but because the program serves as a research tool for the expansion of my own expert knowledge rather than to encapsulate that knowledge for the use of others,”2Cohen wrote in 1988.

视频：哈罗德·科恩（Harold Cohen）关于计算机生成艺术的演讲，1980年9月23日

油漆系统的初始输出是原始的。这些图纸是黑色和白色的，尽管随着时间的流逝，科恩会手工上色。使用这种技术，亚伦在许多不同的尺度上制作了数千张图纸，从字母大小的纸到1980年为计算机博物馆创建的“春天的Primavera”等大型壁画。

Cohen dedicated most of his time to creating AARON and less to painting in the 1970s. In 1979, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) held an exhibition calledDrawings,科恩的工作。展览功能d a hundred-foot long mural of forms drawn by AARON and hand-colored by Cohen, as well as a drawing “turtle” creating images on the museum floor. The SFMOMA exhibit was the first in a string of exhibitions at major museums around the world, including Britain’s venerable Tate Gallery in 1983. AARON created many works that Cohen would color. Cohen’s work with AARON represented a unique man-machine collaboration, which became popular with science centers as an area of exploration. Many commissioned artworks, including what some consider AARON’s masterpiece—”Socrates’ Garden,” created for the Buhl Science Center.

“Socrates’ Garden,” on display at theBuhl Science Center。

测量18到23英尺,“苏格拉底的花园”是一个年代eries of the biomorphic forms that the early AARON system specialized in creating. Cohen then took the images, enlarged them, colored them with acrylic paint, and mounted the individual forms on plywood, arranging them to form a “tree” that loomed over visitors, immersing them in the piece.

与任何艺术家一样，亚伦系统经历了阶段。这些早期的形式（通常类似于儿童的图纸）发展成为更具生物形态的人物，与科恩本人在职业生涯初期专业的人没有不同的人物。在1980年代，进一步的创新使科恩增加了亚伦的知识库，增加了更多的规则和形式，包括日常物品，植物甚至人。有时，科恩会添加表格，例如动物，只是在证明与科恩自己的研究目标不一致的情况下删除这些形式。

The first color image created by AARON at the Computer Museum, Boston, MA, in 1995. Collection of the Computer History Museum. Collection of the Computer History Museum, 102741168.

哈罗德（Harold）试验了几种将亚伦（Aaron）图纸纸张放到纸上的技术。乌龟让位于机器人臂上的较固的笔。1995年，科恩（Cohen）首次亮相了亚伦（Aaron）的版本，该版本不仅吸引了表格，而且可以为它们着色。该系统的长度将近8英尺，宽度将近6英尺，使用真空桌子将纸固定在适当的位置，而手臂则绘制了纸张，然后为表格涂色。这需要更复杂的软件，只有科恩从C语言中演变为通用语言of artificial intelligence—LISP. The Computer Museum in Boston was home to the exhibit,机器人艺术家：亚伦活着的颜色。The process was slightly altered for the exhibit. A Silicon Graphics workstation ran AARON’s software overnight, creating many images. Cohen then reviewed the images, selecting one to become the day’s work. Next, the file was loaded onto the PC-compatible, which controlled the robot arm. The robot then mixed paints on a palette to create custom colors, which it applied using a variety of brushes. The images featured fewer of the biomorphic forms that had been the hallmark of the early versions of AARON and, instead, showcased images of people, plants, and tables. The coloring of the drawings was also nearly indistinguishable from that Cohen had done by hand for AARON’s drawings a decade before. Cohen had trained AARON to create convincing “Harold Cohen” paintings.

展览在ABC的去od Morning America和PBS。使用新系统创建的第一张图片是在波士顿计算机博物馆举行的拍卖会上出售的。2015年，这两个数字的无题绘画捐赠给了计算机历史博物馆，现在已成为其永久收藏的一部分。

科恩（Cohen）广泛写了亚伦（Aaron），研究了在计算机和艺术世界中提出的基于计算机的艺术系统。亚伦有创意吗？科恩当然认为这没有他创建该计划的创造力。Who was the artist—Cohen or AARON?Cohen compared it to the relationship between Renaissance painters and their studio assistants.亚伦创造了艺术作品的事实是计算机智能的证据吗？关于这一点，科恩似乎是不委托的，说亚伦从来没有努力改善自己，这是智慧的迹象，但与此同时，捍卫了亚伦做了人类艺术家所做的事，将其采用了形式知识并将其应用于创建过程。

革命计算机历史博物馆展出的亚伦油漆系统：计算的前2000年。

哈罗德（Harold）于2010年夏天来参观计算机历史博物馆，以帮助我们重新组装1995年版的亚伦（Aaron）参加我们的展览，革命：计算的最初2000年。我很幸运地度过了一个下午的协助，友好地谈论艺术，电影和他的作品。我问他为什么他没有创建亚伦签署绘画的过程。他说：“好吧，我想它是否曾经自行签署一幅画，这将表明所有关于其智力问题的辩论的结束。”

后来，我在我们的系列中发现了一幅绘画，该绘画以熟悉的系统风格签名为“ Aaron 19-7-85”。显然，这是一个短暂的实验。

1995年版的亚伦可以使用各种刷子和机器人手臂为自己的图像着色。

科恩继续创作作品，并在80多岁时写得很好。2016年2月8日，科恩出版Fingerpainting for the 21st Century。In it, he describes the latest iteration of AARON. Much like the system displayed at the Computer Museum in 1995, a Linux-based workstation generates line drawings akin to those AARON created in its earliest form. Cohen would then select images to send to a Windows machine attached to two monitors: one displaying a paint system control screen, and the other a 7-foot-tall display showing the artwork. Selecting a brush type and color from the palette on the control screen, Cohen could then color the work using his fingers on the large screen. Cohen described how his relationship with AARON had changed with this version.

“直到最近，我才以一种非常基本的方式改变了与计划的关系，我的合作者的关系。在这个新阶段之前，一直有必要将亚伦的贡献从该计划的空间中带出来，以便我可以做出自己的身体贡献 - 也就是说，在我开始着色之前，将其图纸打印在画布上。现在，我几乎完全在该计划的空间中工作。直到硬件的物理限制使调整颜色关系的最后阶段之后，身体问题才会出现。”

Harold Cohen passed away on April 27, 2016. He was 87. Over a career that spanned more than 60 years, he exhibited work around the world in dozens of exhibitions. His works are held in major museums like the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Tate Gallery. Commenting on Cohen’s passing, legendary early computer artist Frieder Nake said, “Harold was the lonesome rock of rule-based algorithmic art. Nobody in the world did anything in fine art as courageous, as daring, and as successful as he. His approach was unique in all its facets. His rich work stands out unparalleled.”