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realism, with creating images that look real or that look as if they were not made with a computer. Most artists using computers do not know how to program, and instead use existing software,just as most painters no longer prepare paints themselves and instead buy prepackaged paints. Cohen is clearly a pioneer and important as an artist using computers. He programs his software himself and even makes his mechanical plotting engines. Aaron is designed in a certain way because Harold Cohen has made Aaron that way. There is ultimately no doubt in my mind that the kind of art making carried out by Cohen is part of the art of the future rather than part of the art of the past. So it is annoying that the drawings created by Aaron are so boring. At present, Aaron's work is more successful as computer science than as art making. And it is not clear to me whether in another 20 years, Aaron's drawings will be any more interesting as visual images, even though more complex and rich in vocabulary. Harold Cohen has clearly defined the task. He has set out to create a computer program that draws on a two-dimensional static canvas. And he has resolutely decided to do this within the Romantic image of the artist recluse in his studio, with his own inspiration and effort being the primary drivers. The task he has set himself may be so large that it is implausible that a single individual, developing one line of inquiry, can make a major breakthrough. I have a nagging suspicion, as do the art theorists who are announcing the 'end of art', that the human imagination has exhausted the permutations of lines, colors, effects, styles and meanings that can be compressed onto a two-dimensional static canvas. There is a whole body of literature, and art making (barely referred to by McCorduck), that explores rule making and art from the Constructivists to the proponents of mathematical bases of art. However elaborate the artificial intelligence that creates drawings or paintings on a canvas, I doubt that the images will ever be the foundation for the art of the future. Art making of the future that uses computers must somehow exploit the unique attributes of computers. If the art could have been made without a computer, as in the case ofAaron's drawings, then it is ultimately interesting and important as part ofa research program in artificial intelligence rather than in art in and of itself. Cohen's work, I believe, is crucially important in developing the techniques and vocabularies that will ultimately allow truly new art forms to be developed, these that could not have been made without the use of a computer. The book is well written and the illustrations , both of Cohen's own work as well as ofAaron's, are well chosen. I wish the book could have included more of Cohen's own writing; Cohen has written extensively and compellingly about his own work. This book results from a close collaboration between the artist and the author and does not quite establish a clear critical stance. There are some valuable discussions of the psychological issues surrounding Cohen as creator of an autonomous art-making entity. There is, however, little discussion of the work of other artists using computers, or of the context ofAaron within the larger research of image-generating software, automata or art-making machines. As a result, the book gives a somewhat unbalanced view of Cohen's overall importance. In spite of these misgivings, this book is an important addition to the literature on art and the computer. THE DESERT IS No LADy: SOUTHWESTERN LANDSCAPES IN WOMEN'S WRITING AND ART Vera Norwood andJanice Monk, eds. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, CT, U.S.A., 1987.283 pp., illus. Trade, $28.00. ISBN: 03688-4. Reviewed Uy Elizabeth Crumley, Leonardo, 2030 Addison Street, Suite 600, Berkeley, CA 94704, U.S.A. A powerful, provocative and beautifully illustrated book, The Desert Is No Lady: Southwestern Landscapes in Women's Writing and Art illuminates the lives ofwomen artists whose backgrounds are as different by ethnic background as they are by...

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