Examining
2.8. Discussion
There are two senses of this objection that may be true. One is that I don't understand art well enough .and must be an artist or study art for many years to even attempt to form a theory of animation. I am trying to reduce. this deficiency as best I can, by reading, by making films, by going: to.art museums and screenings, by talking: to animators, etc. but it may be that this will prove inadequate. It is common in AI, however, for researchers who are not experts in language, medicine, electronics or perception to still try to apply AI to those fields.
A -more serious problem would be the interpretation of this objection, as no one knows enough about art, at least In an explicit form,, to attempt such a project. Many people believe that the skill to produce art is not understood, some even venture to claim that it is not capable of being understood. If, however, I do manage to create a convincing system then I would. have made a contribution to the thesis that the knowledge involved in producing and appreciating art is symbolic and not very different from the other kinds of knowledge that people possess.
Page - 57
A. Computational Theory of Animation
I) Good Art combines very many subtle aspects
One interpretation of this objection reduces, once again, to the possibility that I don't (or can't) know enough to tell the system enough to perform adequately. We'll see.
It should be clear, however, that the system will be capable of subtle effects. It might make the difference, in. say color, between two objects very small, just barely perceptible. Or it may want to subtly create a. schizophrenic character by down playing the obvious schizophrenic behavior and by avoiding obvious techniques such as quickly changing the shape or color of the character.
Page -58
Kenneth Kahn
A Computational Theory of Animation
IX. Summing up
A system has been proposed that I hope will contribute to Al, animation, aesthetics, and computer graphics. The system will be based upon a computational view of generating art that emphasizes the need to structure the necessary knowledge so that it can be used in a very flexible manner and be easily modified and manipulated by the system. .The emphasis will be on the facts, generalizations, rules, and procedures. What they are, how'they should be represented, how they should be organized, etc... This is not to say that no attention will be devoted to trying to discover.
very general and powerful principles or to heuristics for searching through the very large decision space,5 " only that I consider the problem of getting the needed knowledge into the system. to be more: important.
I keep seeing strong analogies between this research and research on natural language understanding. Linguists traditionally were interested primarily in the syntax and generation of language:. hey lacked a sufficiently powerful view of computation to handlt adequately problems of semantics and meaning. When a computational view was applied to language by AI researchers the. emphasis shifted towards the understanding and interpretation of Utterances. Art historians and theoreticians have, for the most part, studied the problems of interpretation and criticism of art They have failed, or more, commonly not even tried, to formalize the knowledge or discover the rules behind the generation of art. Perhaps, in the same. way that a computational view of language has aided linguistics and furthered the state of artificial intelligence, a. computational view of aesthetics will aid in the understanding of art and artificial intelligence.
5 The notion of many sources of suggestions, sometimes competing and conflicting, sometimes reinforcing each other, and sometimes merging together is an example of a general technique that
•may be developed in the course of this research.
Page- 59
Kenneth Karhn
A Computational Theory of .Animation
Comments of any sort very welcome.
I wish to thank the following people for comments and criticisms of earlier drafts of this paper:. Carl Hewitt, Seymour Papert, Henry Lieberman, Marilyn McLennan, Peter Szolovits, J. C.
R. Licklider, Mike Genesereth, Bruce Schatz, Bill Kornfeld, Marvin Minksy and Ira Goldstein.
Most of the research reported herein was done while the author was supported by an IBM fellowship.
6+
Page - 60
Kenneth Kahn
A Computational Theory of Animation
Bibliography
[Baecker 1969]
Baecker, R.
"Interactive Computer-Mediated Animation"
MIT EE Ph.D. Thesis 1969 MAC-TR-61
B.erlyne 1971]
Berlyne, D.
Aesthetics and Psychobiology
Meredith Corporation, New York, 1971 .[Berlyne 1972]
Berlyne, D.
"Affective Aspects of Aesthetic Communication"
pp. 97-118
in Communication and Affect - A Comparitive Approach ed. Alloway, T., Krames L., and Pliner P.
Academic Press, New York, 1972 [Franke 1971]
Franke, H.
Computer Graphics Computer Art Phaidon Publishers, New York 1971
O[ips 1974]
Gips, J.
"Shape Grammars and their Uses"
Sanford AI Lab AIM-231, March 1974 [Goldberg 1974]
• Goldberg,: A.
"Smalltalk and Kids -- Commentaries"
Learning Research Group, Xerox Palo Alto Research -Center, 1974 Draft [Goldberg 1976]
Goldberg, A., Kay A. editors
"Smalltalk-72 lristruction Manual"
The. Learning Research Group, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, March 1976 [Goldstein 1974]
Goldstein, I. P.,
Understanding• Simple Picture Programs, MIT Al Laboratory AI-TR-294, September 1974
Page- 61
Klenneth
Kahn-A Computational Theory of Animation
[Goldstein 1975]
Goldstein I., Lieberman H., Bochner H., Miller M.
"LLOGO: An Implementation of LOGO in LISP"
MIT-AI Memo 307, March 4, 1975 [Goldstein 1976a]
Goldstein I., Papert S.
"AI, Language and the Study of Knowledge"
MIT-AI Memo 337, 1976 [Goldstein 1976b]
Godlstein, I., Abelson H., Bamberger J.,
"LOGO Progress Report 1973-1975"
MIT-AI Memo 356, March 1976 [Gombrich 1961]
Gombrich, E.
Art and Illusion - A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 1972
[Halas 19741
ed. Halas, J.
Computer Animation
Hastings House, New York, 1974 [Hewitt l~75]
Hewitt C., Smith B.
"Towards a Programming Apprentice"
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering SE-I, March 1975 [Kahn 1976]
Kahn, K.
"An Actor-Based Computer Animation Language"
Proceedings of the SIGGRAPHIACM Workshop
on User-Oriented Design of Computer Graphics Systems Pittsburgh, Pa., October 1976, in press
[Kahn 1977]
Kahn, K.
"Three Interactions Between AI and Education"
Machine Representations of Knowledge ed. Elcock, E., Michie D.
Ellis Horwood Ltd and John Wylie (in press)
Page -62
Kenneth Kahn
A Computational Theory of Animation
[Leavitt 1976]
Leavitt, . editor
Artist and Computer
Creative Computing Press, New Jersey, 1976 [Michotte 1950]
Michotte, A.
"The Emotions Regarded as Functional Connections"
Feelings and EmotiQns ed. Reymert M.
Hafner Publishing Company, New York, 196.7
[Michotte. 1963]
Michotte, A.
The Perception of.Causality
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1963
[Minsky 1975].
Minsky, M.
"A Framework for Representing Knowledge"
The Psycholomy of Computer Vision ed. Winston, P.
McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1975 [Negroponte 1977]
Negroponte, N.. . ' .
"The Return of the Sunday Painter or The Cpmputer in the Visual Arts"
Future Imp'act of Computers and Information Processing Dertouzos, M. and Moses J. ed.
in press 1977 [Newman 1973]
Newman W.
Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics Mcdmraw-Hill, New York, 1973
[Papert 1971a]
Papert S.
"Teaching Children Thinking"
MIT-AI Memo 247, October 1971 (Papert 1971b]
Papeirt S.
"Teaching Children To Be Mathematicians vs. Teaching About Mathematics"
MIT-AI Memo 249
Page. 63
Kenneth Kahn
A Computational Theory of Animation
[Parke 1972) Parke, F. I.
"Computer Generated Animation of Faces"
.Univ. of Utah Report.CSc-72-120, June 1972 [Russett 1976)
Russett,'R. and Starr C.
Experimental Aniinationh An Illustrated Anthology Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York 1976 [Schank 1975]
Schank, R.
Conceptual Information Processing North Holland Publishing Company 1975 [Simmons 1975]
Simmons, R.
"The Clowns Microworld"
Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing ed. Schank R. and Nash-Weber B. June 1975 [Smith 1975]
Smith B. and Hewitt C.
"A Plasma Primer"
MIT-AI Working Paper 92, October 1975 [Sutherland 19631
Siutherland, I.
"Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System"
M.IT Lincoln Lab TR-296 1963 [Tilson 19763
Tilson, M.
"Editing Computer Animated Film"
University of Toronto,. Technical Report CSRG-66, January 1976 [Tinbergen 1951]
Tinbergen, N.
The Study of Instinct
Oxford Uniersity Press, London, 1969
Page - 64
Kenneth Kahn