Why We Might Augment Reality: Art’s Role in the Development of Cognition

Abstract

In our investigations, here and elsewhere, art serves a neurological role, shaped by evolution. Art, not as a thing that is, but as a function that occurs, we will call Behavioral Art (BA). An important aspect of BA is “borrowing intelligence” from a humanly organized source, such as a painting, and applies it to a computer process. This process might easily be mistaken for an objet de (computer) art, but we must look further into the larger dynamic system, one that includes the audience as well. As we discuss, the machine itself is incapable of any type of organization. A human (often the programmer) must supply the organizational paradigm to the input, and a human must recognize one in the output. However, by sampling from the environment via machine, a process we can now call Augmented Reality, we might imbue whatever quality triggered an interpretation of “potentially meaningful” in audience members regarding that painting, to our computed output. In this chapter, we address how and why humans tends to employ this particular form of nonverbal expression.