This was a conceptual generative art system built in the Cloud, which exercises a degree of autonomy in deciding when and for whom to generate art works.
Its generative processes were based on those of a dead artist, Hans Arp.
The philosopher Douglas Hofstadter claims that humans are basically just a set of patterns, which are instantiated in mortal cells, but capable of surviving after death.
After a study of the visual works and poetry of Arp, I tried to identify some of the 'patterns' or rules or algorithms which guided his artistic practice. This is perhaps excusable since Arp was an early generative artist, using chance to develop images, poems, and mixed poems and images which he called 'fatagagas'
I've tried to decide these rules and convert them into computer algorithms, which guides this generative system, in the hope that it can produce art works as Arp might do if he was alive today. (Not crude copies of his one hundred year old works!) Arp and his friends wrote quite a lot about his generative processes. See here for a more detailed description.
The system worked best with text, producing poems in the style of Arp:
To emphasise the intangibility of the patterns, the system was hosted in the Cloud, making it as near as possible non-existent, in any physical or virtual sense.
This demo model was built, to show how patterns in a brain might transfer to software in the Cloud.
What are the implications if such patterns really can live on as software after the death of the mind that used them?