Shapes of Imagination: Calculating in Coleridge's Magical Realm

Visual calculating in shape grammars aligns with art and design, bridging the gap between seeing (Coleridge's "imagination") and combinatoric play (Coleridge's "fancy").

In Shapes of Imagination, George Stiny runs visual calculating in shape grammars through art and design--incorporating Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetic imagination and Oscar Wilde's corollary to see things as they aren't. Many assume that calculating limits art and design to suit computers, but shape grammars rely on seeing to prove otherwise. Rules that change what they see extend calculating to overtake what computers can do, in logic and with data and learning. Shape grammars bridge the divide between seeing (Coleridge's "imagination, or esemplastic power") and combinatoric play (Coleridge's "fancy").

Stiny shows that calculating without seeing excludes art and design. Seeing is key for calculating to augment creative activity with aesthetic insight and value. Shape grammars go by appearances, in a full-fledged aesthetic enterprise for the inconstant eye; they answer the question of what calculating would be like if Turing and von Neumann were artists instead of logicians. Art and design are calculating in all their splendid detail.

在形狀語法中進行視覺計算與藝術和設計相契合，彌合了「看見」（柯勒律治的「想像力」）和「組合遊戲」（柯勒律治的「幻想」）之間的差距。

在《想像的形狀》一書中，喬治·斯蒂尼通過藝術和設計運用形狀語法進行視覺計算，融入了塞繆爾·泰勒·柯勒律治的詩意想像力和奧斯卡·王爾德對事物的不同看法。許多人認為計算將藝術和設計限制在適應電腦的範疇內，但形狀語法依賴於「看見」來證明相反。改變他們所看到的規則擴展了計算的範圍，超越了電腦在邏輯、數據和學習方面的能力。形狀語法彌合了「看見」（柯勒律治的「想像力或統一力量」）和「組合遊戲」（柯勒律治的「幻想」）之間的差距。

斯蒂尼表明，沒有「看見」的計算排除了藝術和設計。看見對於計算來增強創造性活動的美學洞察力和價值至關重要。形狀語法根據外觀進行操作，成為一個完整的美學企業，為不斷變化的眼睛提供答案；它們回答了一個問題，即如果圖靈和馮·諾依曼是藝術家而不是邏輯學家，計算會是什麼樣子。藝術和設計在所有細節中都是計算的一部分。

George Stiny is Professor of Design and Computation at MIT. He first used shape grammars for painting and sculpture and is the author of Pictorial and Formal Aspects of Shape and Shape Grammars; Algorithmic Aesthetics: Computer Models for Criticism and Design in the Arts (with James Gips); and Shape: Talking about Seeing and Doing (MIT Press).

George Stiny是麻省理工學院的設計與計算教授。他最早將形狀文法應用於繪畫和雕塑，並著有《形狀和形狀文法的圖像和形式方面》、《算法美學：藝術中的評論和設計的計算機模型》（與James Gips合著）以及《形狀：關於觀看和做的對話》（麻省理工學院出版社）。