Aesthetic Computing

In the introduction to the book, Paul Fishwick writes that aesthetic computing is the application of aesthetics to the field of computing, however, in this context aesthetics is defined broadly as sense perception, encompassing the whole aesthetic experience, as a philosophy of art, and not just a classical and formal appreciation of beauty. It tries to bridge the unhelpful dichotomy between the sensory experience of aesthetics and the optimality of mathematics.
There are various ways that aesthetics and computing have been related previously — most obviously the application of computing to aesthetics in design and software interfaces, however, there are also areas where artists have drawn inspiration from mathematical ideas, and additionally, when mathematicians talk in classical and formal terms about the beauty of a particular mathematical solution. However, the latter situation is criticized in the book as “The classic Platonic definition of mathematical aesthetics describ[ing] mental pleasures associated with specifying theorems and deriving proofs. More generally, the mathematician’s aesthetics involves concepts such as invariance, symmetry, parsimony, proportion, and harmony.” (p.9, Fishwick, 2006) This is reductive, it fails to take into account the evolution and innovations in aesthetics from the Enlightenment to the contemporary. The book attempts to formulate the impact of aesthetics on the field of computing when computing opens up to broader and more contemporary innovations from aesthetics.
“Re-presentation need not compromise the goal of abstraction, which is a necessary but not sufficient condition for mathematics and computing, as meaning, comprehension and motivation may be enhanced if the presentation is guided by a pluralism of aesthetic choices and multiple sensory modalities.” (p.255, Fishwick, 2003)
Art has a broader history and culture and had contributed to innovation in ways that computing has yet to acknowledge. There is an assumption that the use of aesthetics in computing and research tends toward a mass-media approach, intent on simplification to reach a larger audience, and standardized design practices, however this does not take into account arts’s strategy of a cultural, personal, and customized set of aesthetics, the innovation that has resulted from art’s methods, and how this can be leveraged at the intersection of software and mathematics. The manifesto of aesthetic computing was written in 2003 and is defined as “the application of art theory and practice to computing” (p.255, Fishwick, 2003). It emerged from a workshop conducted by the Aesthetic Computing group in Wadern, Germany in 2001.
For aesthetic computing to work, we need to breakdown the field of computing, which is understood to combine computer science, information science, and computer engineering, to identify the subareas that compose the discipline: discrete mathematics, theory of computing, programming languages, data structures, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction (HCI), operating systems, computer graphics, computer simulation, and computer vision. From here we can also identify core concepts in discrete mathematics and the algebraic extension to automata theory (the foundation of computing), such as formal grammar, language notation, geometry, and topology, and confine aesthetics work to a particular aspect of this broad discipline.
“Mathematics has historically emphasized solution spaces, and not notational spaces (i.e., for framing problems), but visualization in computer science is playing an increasing role in visualizing structures and data.” (p.11, Fishwick, 2006)
We also need to bring the full array of thinking and creative strategy from aesthetics, rather than rely on only a classical and formal interpretation of art. This would include the full history of artistic movements and genres up to the contemporary. It would include art’s occupation with multi-perspectivism cultivated through the multiple lenses of cultural perspective, the preoccupation with finding new ways of looking, touching, listening, and the pluralistic heart of representation. It would include an awareness of the subject/medium to make clear that aesthetic computing is not solely a tool to further facilitate the field of computing and engineering, but to enable new research to develop by providing a new subject/medium for both art and computing to explore.
“When a program is used for its ‘tool-worthiness’, there is little or no reflection on the essence of computing (i.e., the internals of the program or data structures, their underlying mathematical structures) or the practices of computing. However, art created using the medium of programming (i.e., as in the emerging areas of software art) involves greater reflection and emphasis on the computing (i.e., the programming as a subarea of computing, in this case).” (p.8, Fishwick, 2006) The goals of aesthetic computing may produce both useable or nonusable results, according to the strict definition of usability in computing. Aesthetic computing “is about surfacing the core components of computer science, its areas of study, and its methodologies. One of its core goals is to modify computer science through the catalysis of aesthetics.” (p.11, Fishwick, 2006) The work done so far in connecting the visual to the scientific is not what aesthetic computing is advocating for, in fact visualization tactics used for science, information, and software, lack the potential that aesthetic computing makes possible. Amongst several examples that Fishwick cites as examples of aesthetic computing, software art is isolated as an art that uses computer code as its raw material. The Processing Language, a programming language aimed at artists, has facilitated this work significantly. Fishwick evidences some Processing applets as “stretching the boundaries between surfacing computing artifacts as medium and subject”. (p.9, Fishwick, 2006) The script Distance2D is specifically called out for both reflexively representing and surfacing a computational structure, “the essence of what it means to be a matrix is surfaced, making the computing artifact (i.e., a matrix) the subject material of the piece”. (p.9, Fishwick, 2006)
Artists have long drawn on mathematics and technology in their work and examples given are: the use of Euclidean geometry in perspective drawing, Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura in painting, the influence of multi-dimensional space on the art of Duchamp, mass productions trends in modern art, computing trends on new media art. However, the book argues, there is no corresponding history of art practices on computing. Fishwick attempts to broadly conceive one by identifying three tactics, drawn from the history of the arts, and which have applicability to computing: the first concept, modality, refers to the way we interface with objects, and this is an attribute of the arts that has been taken up by HCI. However, he argues that “fields such as HCI, ubiquitous computing, augmented reality, virtual reality, and tangible computing are made possible only by rapid advances in computer-related technology. We have had to wait for the technology to become available to leverage the arts.” (p.13, Fishwick, 2006) The second concept, culture, manifests in art across multiple artist practices, art movements, and genre, and there is no reason why these cultures cannot be applied to computing. Subjectivity is considered expensive, where single standardized ideas are cheaper than multiple representations, but “as the subjectivist hallmark of the arts becomes less expensive, representations in computing will change.” (p.11, Fishwick, 2006) Thirdly, quality, refers to general aesthetic qualities such as mimesis, symmetry, complexity, parsimony, minimalism, and beauty, that the arts take issues with and have a lot more to offer to computing.
Some cases studies are provided, which, in part, have come out of the Aesthetic Computing group at the University of Florida, where Fishwick is a professor. One example demonstrates the effect of aesthetic computing on finite state machines, where a highly abstract mathematic diagram of a FSM is visualized with 3D graphics to create both a mechanical system where pipes carry water, and a lamp-lit walkway in which a human agent walks from one gazebo to another. These are presented as alternative metaphors for understanding formal structure, and core computing concepts such as state, and which strength the feeling of immersion, relatability, and being able to envision the concept more meaningfully. Mathematics has traditionally enforced a visual minimalism in the name of abstraction, whereas Fishwick argues that it “is quite possible to preserve abstraction without requiring visual minimalism, Within the context of the art community, this can be seen when we compare and contrast the genres of abstract expressionism and surrealism. Both genres contain a wide variety of works that employ symbolism, iconography, and the richness of semiotics even though the visual presentations are strikingly different. Consequently, abstraction as a one-to-many mapping has nothing to do with how we visually or aurally represent notations.” (p.16, Fishwick, 2006) Both examples in his argument of mathematical diagrams and aesthetic computing visualizations “are at the same level of abstraction regarding notating a state. Both require the same number of bits from an information theoretic perspective.” (p.16, Fishwick, 2006) In fact, it is the “abstraction afforded by states [that] suggests a one-to-many mapping in which one FSM may map to a large number of different applications.” (p.19, Fishwick, 2006)
Works Cited:
Fishwick, Paul. Aesthetic Computing, 2006, MIT Press
Fishwick, Paul. Aesthetic Computing Manifesto, 2003, Leonardo, 36 (4): 255–256, MIT Press
