Re: <nettime> Introducing Daria: An autonomous software artist

[brian lee dae yung <brian@muxspace.com>]

Dan:

Can you clarify whether you consider the labeling of Daria as an artist to be
part of her anthropomorphism or not? From the below comment, I take it that the
artist label is not a part of the anthropomorphism:

> If the question that concerns you primarily is "can autonomous systems
> integrate into human society? can we consider autonomous software agents as
> artists?" then I wonder why you bother anthropomorphizing at all. Once you
> deliberately anthropomorphize, integration is no longer the intent; you're


However, the following comment indicates that you do, in fact, consider the
artist label as being an anthropomorphic quality:

> I'm not saying that the anthropomorphosis kills the project, only that
> without it I might have been less disappointed by Daria's product. Because
> once you tell me Daria is an artist, I can only wonder, "good artist or bad
> artist, an artist who makes work that excites, entertains, and edifies, or
> an artist whose work wastes the time of the viewer?"

Without knowing this, it is difficult for me to discern whether you dislike her
"product" because I've called her an artist or because you think the underlying
content is sexist.

Regardless of whether Daria's "product" is good or bad, you yourself by
questioning my priorities and my decisions as the "creator" have come to ask
the same questions I set out to raise in the first place:

> Really, even if we
> allow that Daria can be an artist, how good an artist can Daria be?


To that extent, I consider _my_ project to be a success.

Thanks,
Brian


Quoting "Dan S. Wang" <danwang@mindspring.com>:

> Hi Brian,
> > 
> > It's a good question why Daria is a "she"? The short answer is that
> > it follows a long line of precedence of men naming and referring to 
> > their machines as female. To a certain extent, this female-biased 
> > gender association is less apparent in computers (particularly large 
> > networks), in which computers are named for cities, stars, mountains, 
> > or people. It is possible though, that the moment we anthropomorphize 
> > the computer, we associate a gender, but I don'thave data one way or 
> > the other to back up such a claim.
 <...>

-- 
  ====
brian lee dae yung
biomimetic art and research
  mux space . com

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