AARON, the Cybernetic Artist, a Masterpiece in Artificial Intelligence, Created Using Lisp Technology.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers BERKELEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 10, 2001 Harold Cohen Harold Cohen (born St Kilda, Victoria, Australia, 25 November 1881 - died 29 October 1946, South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) was a Victoria State politician like his grandfather Edward Cohen. Cohen was the son of Montague and Annie Cohen. uses Lisp and Allegro CL by Franz Inc Franz Inc. was founded in early 1984 as a vehicle to produce and sell Macsyma. While that never developed into a business, Franz Inc. did sell Franz Lisp while working on their own Common Lisp implementation. Franz Lisp died out in the 80s as Common Lisp became more popular. . to create AARON, a software application that creates original artwork. Thirty years ago, Harold Cohen, began to explore how humans make and read representations (drawings, pictures, shapes, etc.). He believed that if he could teach a computer how to draw, he would have a better understanding of this process. So, he designed AARON, an application that uses an expert based system to hierarchically encapsulate en·cap·su·late v. 1. To form a capsule or sheath around. 2. To become encapsulated. en·cap and model the behavior that an artist employs to create art. Over the years, AARON's artwork has evolved from simple lines and scribbles to complex colorful paintings of recognizable figures and shapes. And, Cohen cohen or kohen (Hebrew: “priest”) Jewish priest descended from Zadok (a descendant of Aaron), priest at the First Temple of Jerusalem. The biblical priesthood was hereditary and male. couldn't have done it without Lisp. Cohen built his original program in Algol and then C, but ported it to Lisp when the tasks he needed AARON to accomplish grew too complex to express in C. "I realized finally, that a human and a machine are both 'hardware dependant' and simply can't approach things in the same way, even if the final goal is very similar," argues Cohen. "A human colorist col·or·ist n. 1. A painter skilled in achieving special effects with color. 2. A hairdresser who specializes in dyeing hair. col proceeds largely by trial and error, relying upon feedback from a sophisticated visual system. A computer program lacking such a system has to function through a complex, knowledge-based rule-set to generate the entire image before a drop of paint hits the canvas. Lisp and Common Lisp (language) Common Lisp - A dialect of Lisp defined by a consortium of companies brought together in 1981 by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Companies included Symbolics, Lisp Machines, Inc., Digital Equipment Corporation, Bell Labs. in particular, allow me to express these abstractions in a way that C and C-like languages do not support." Lisp also gives Cohen the flexibility and power he needs to make adjustments and enhancements to the AARON program. He likes the fact that with Lisp, he can make a single change to a single function, without needing to recompile To compile a program again. A program is recompiled after a change has been made to it in order to test and run the revised version. Programs are recompiled many times during the course of development and maintenance. See compile. the code. He also believes that no other language can build complex data structures like Lisp can. Recently, Cohen collaborated with Kurzweil CyberArt Technologies to make AARON available to everyone. Cohen is excited about this latest "output device" for the AARON software program. While the earlier AARON used a machine with a robotic arm A robotic arm is a robot manipulator, usually programmable, with similar functions to a human arm. The links of such a manipulator are connected by joints allowing either rotational motion (such as in an articulated robot) or translational (linear) displacement. to manage the drawing and coloring, the "new" AARON creates paintings directly on a person's computer which can then be printed out, emailed, or generated as a screensaver. No two paintings are the same. The current version of AARON was developed in Allegro CL by Franz Inc. Franz Inc.'s products enable developers to build complex, flexible and scalable applications quickly, easily and cost-effectively. Founded in 1984, Franz Inc. has demonstrated consistent growth and profitability. For more information, visit our website at www.franz.com, call 1-888-CLOS NOW or email info@franz.com. For more information on the AARON Program, please visit www.kurzweilcyberart.com. |
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