This Wednesday was held the lecture “From Birthing the Apocalypse to BIG FAT FAIL: (Net) Art as Software Research”, given by Benjamin Grosser, at Taguspark campus.

For about 1 hour the artist and university professor (School of Art + Design, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States) talked about his artistic, cultural and social experience, and some of the different projects he has been developing: Touching Software, ScareMail, Facebook Demetricator or Tracing You – the latter is exhibited at PLUNC – New Media and Digital Art Festival, in Lisbon, until October 2.

“Can machines create art and appreciate it?” is one of the questions that Grosser has been trying to answer. “I don’t want them [machines or robots] to create art as we, humans, do. I want them to make their own decisions and create art as they want to.”

This lecture was organised by professor Joaquim Jorge, from the Department of Computer Science, within the American Corner initiative – partnership between the US Embassy in Lisbon and Instituto Superior Técnico.