Minor Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Minor - Essay Example The subject of this analysis is a singular piece of art titled; electric sheep, created by Scott Draves, which personifies â€Å"dreams of machines† through artificial life forms, generated using computer software. The concept is a combination of human and machine, a cyborg mind that has over 450,000 participants globally connected via the internet. The connected computers work together to form a supercomputer that renders animations referred to as sheep which anyone on the system can see (Draves, 2005). The software for this artwork can be installed on any PC or android device, when these computers ‘sleep’, the sheep come to life and communicate with each other via the internet. Those connected to the network can vote for their favourite sheep using the keyboard, with time the most popular sheep will last longer as the less voted for are phased out (Ekà ¡rt, Sharma & Chalakov, 2011). On the screens of thousands computers, survival for the fittest, with people being judges, is played out on a digital â€Å"canvas† as the sheep evolve at the pleasure of the digital audience. Each of the participating computers follows a set of mathematical instructions. On the electric shee p website, viewers can trace back the families of sheep through the family trees with the artist’s clade showing a section of family members in HD. Participants in this art project can benefit from the code made freely available online since it is open sourced making it easy for more people to take part and introduce their creations. Critics mirroring the ex post factor epistemological school of thought in which art was considered based on the essence of truth rather than something constructed have opposed the notion of technology in art (Becker & Eckel, nd). They hold that art and technology are diametrically opposed since for art to be authentic since it should be a product of human