The Aesthetics of Intelligent Systems

Comparing two artists work, Rembrandt's portrait of his father and Kenneth Noland's work on exhibition at a gallery. Burnham said, the differences between these two painting is not painting themselves, it's the way we are forced to look at the work of art. We have been conditioned by art- history texts to look at art in the classical manner, as Rembrandt did, where the work is removed from its environmental context either by the frame of the painting or by the arbitrary decision of a photographer. 

Burnham discussed earlier art as a form of communication-ignoring style, its a one way process, then later on electronic technology increases, two way exchange of information becomes a normative goal. The shift of communication is a evolutionary step in aesthetic response. This shift represents what could be called a figure-ground reversal in human perception of the environment.

 "The computer's most profound aesthetic implication is that we are being forced to dismiss the classical view of art and reality which insists that man stand outside of reality in order to observe it, and, in art, requires the presence of the picture frame and the sculpture pedestal."

The possibilities of nonbiological intelligence were first explored in the writings of Allen Turing, John von Neumann, and Ross Ashby, three pioneers of cybernetics and computer theory