Alright. So I'm starting this thread for everyone who has any cool pictures or any science-related art clips to share. I'll start with this one by Murray Robertson. No explanation for this one is needed as it is pretty much self-explanatory.

The Executive of the Future, by Boris Artzybasheff, 1952.

This is one of my favorite robot pictures. Notice the brain box full of vacuum tubes and robot humerously changing his own brain state by the manual switch.

....but all my art is about science, in one way or another.

These 'nano-flowers' were created from silicon carbide nanowires growing on gallium particles. As the growth proceeds, individual nanowires 'knit' together to form intricate and beautiful 3-D structures. Nanometer-scale wires (about one thousandth the diameter of a human hair) of a silicon-carbon material (silicon carbide) are grown from tiny droplets of a liquid metal (gallium) on a silicon surface, like the chips inside our home computers. The wires grow as a gas containing methane flows over the surface. The gas reacts at the surface of the droplets and condenses to form the wires. By changing the temperature and pressure of the growth process, the wires can be controllably fused together to form a range of new structures, including these flower-like materials. Possible applications for these structures include water-repellent coatings and parts of a new type of solar cell. This image was taken with a scanning electron microscope. Image courtesy of Ghim Wei Ho and Professor Mark Welland, Nanostructure Centre, University of Cambridge. (Year of image: 2004.)

I've posted a few of my web collects of oddball pikkies (along with some cats) here :-

http://rhymer.imeem.com/publiccontent/

If oddball images are your forte I have many more!!

Gas plume from newborn star.


The Swan Nebula


Blue Stars


Cygnus Loop Supernova Blast Wave


Ant Nebula


Cat's Eye Nebula

Really beautiful !

Has anyone seen art generated by AI?

That wouldn't be considered art in the true sense of the word, would it? Artistic expression involves abilities known to humans and highly intelligent mammals only?

Why not look at it first and then ask "is it art?" Judge the art on its own merits, not by the artist.

"David Cope's EMI program -- composes music in the style of dead composers; fooled humans into thinking they were real"

From:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence

This site shows computer-generated art. (Click "View Full Screen" and then refresh to your heart's content.) I don't particularlly like it, but then, I'm just a beholder.
http://www.robertpeake.com/CannedKandinsky/
I don't know what art is, actually. I had a bit of an argument with someone on this board regarding the definition of music. S/he said that all noise is music. I said no, because that would mean that not only everything we hear, but everything we see is an artistic image, everything we feel is artistic touch, etc. This could only be true of course, if EVERYTHING is art. Then I got to thinking that maybe everything IS art, depending on how you look at it, of course. My pictures of outer space, above, might not be considered art by some. The objects were not designed by a human, and I think the photographs were taken by Hubble. However, *I* think they're pretty.

An interesting way to look at art is to try to figure out what is really ugly. Instead of trying to find the most beautiful things, see why things might be ugly. Then try to produce some ugly art. Looked at in the right way, it's very difficult to find anything that is truly ugly.

Take for example the random noise of a factory floor. To a captitalist factory owner, that noise may be beautiful.

Another example might be a photograph of fecal matter. Maybe there are flies on it. To an entomologist, watching flies eat and reproduce in their preferred environment might be beautiful.

Getting back to cannibis, I remember realizing that every single thing is absolutely beautiful--almost too much to "take in." Art? Maybe. If art imitates life, then life itself must be the ultimate, perfect art form.

And who would the artist be?

Well, I guess the artist is God...or me.

not really ai but i often sit amazed by what g-force can kick out whilst i'm listening to sol seppy and scott matthew in itunes.

Is Mathematics Beautiful?

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), Autobiography, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1967, v1, p158
It seems to me now that mathematics is capable of an artistic excellence as great as that of any music, perhaps greater; not because the pleasure it gives (although very pure) is comparable, either in intensity or in the number of people who feel it, to that of music, but because it gives in absolute perfection that combination, characteristic of great art, of godlike freedom, with the sense of inevitable destiny; because, in fact, it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect but true.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), The Study of Mathematics
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty -- a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.

Aristotle (384 B.C.-322 B.C.), Poetics
Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry.

J.H.Poincare (1854-1912), (cited in H.E.Huntley, The Divine Proportion, Dover, 1970)
The mathematician does not study pure mathematics because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it and he delights in it because it is beautiful.

J.Bronowski, Science and Human Values, Pelican, 1964.
Mathematics in this sense is a form of poetry, which has the same relation to the prose of practical mathematics as poetry has to prose in any other language. The element of poetry, the delight of exploring the medium for its own sake, is an essential ingredient in the creative process.

J.W.N.Sullivan (1886-1937), Aspects of Science, 1925.
Mathematics, as much as music or any other art, is one of the means by which we rise to a complete self-consciousness. The significance of Mathematics resides precisely in the fact that it is an art; by informing us of the nature of our own minds it informs us of much that depends on our minds.

G. H. Hardy (1877 - 1947), A Mathematician's Apology, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colors or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics.

Lawrence University catalog, Cited in Essays in Humanistic Mathematics, Alvin White, ed, MAA, 1993
Born of man's primitive urge to seek order in his world, mathematics is an ever-evolving language for the study of structure and pattern. Grounded in and renewed by physical reality, mathematics rises through sheer intellectual curiosity to levels of abstraction and generality where unexpected, beautiful, and often extremely useful connections and patterns emerge. Mathematics is the natural home of both abstract thought and the laws of nature. It is at once pure logic and creative art.

I.Newton, Letter to H.Oldenburg, the Secretary of the Royal Society, October 24, 1676, in A Source Book in Mathematics, D. J. Struik, ed, Princeton University Press, 1990
I can hardly tell with what pleasure I have read the letters of those very distinguished men Leibniz and Tschirnhaus. Leibniz's method for obtaining convergent series is certainly very elegant...

Jane Muir, Of Men & Numbers, Dover, 1996.
Gauss: You have no idea how much poetry there is in the calculation of a table of logarithms!

F.Dyson, in Nature, March 10, 1956
Characteristic of Weyl was an aesthetic sense which dominated his thinking on all subjects. He once said to me, half-joking, "My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful." (Herman Weyl (1885-1955))

O. Spengler, in J. Newman, The World of Mathematics, Simon & Schuster, 1956
To Goethe again we owe the profound saying: "the mathematician is only complete in so far as he feels within himself the beauty of the true."

O. Spengler, in J. Newman, The World of Mathematics, Simon & Schuster, 1956
"A mathematician," said old Weierstrass, "who is not at the same time a bit of a poet will never be a full mathematician."

Jakob Bernoulli, Tractatus de Seriebus Infinitis, 1689 (quoted in From Five Fingers to Infinity, F.J.Swetz (ed), Open Court, 1996)
So the soul of immensity dwells in minutia.
And in narrowest limits no limits inhere.
What joy to discern the minute in infinity!
The vast to perceive in the small, what divinity!
S.Lang, The Beauty of Doing Mathematics, Springer-Verlag, 1985
Last time, I asked: "What does mathematics mean to you?" And some people answered: "The manipulation of numbers, the manipulation of structures." And if I had asked what music means to you, would you have answered: "The manipulation of notes?"

I just listened to "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini" by Rachmaninoff. No, science is not art or beautiful. If it is it is subservient to music, at the least.
ps how does music (no words) evoke such emotion?
pps no easy answers please, I live a hop, skip and a jump from a retired music professor.