Harold Cohen, British computer artist, Died at 87

Harold Cohen was born on May 1, 1928, and died on April 27, 2016.

He was a British-born artist.

He was noted as the creator of AARON, a computer program designed to produce art autonomously.

Cohen served in the intersection of computer artificial intelligence and art attracted a great deal of attention, leading to demonstrate at many important museums, including the Tate Gallery in London, and acquisitions by many others.

Cohen went to the United States as a visiting lecturer at the University of California, San Diego in 1968, but he was given the rank of professor and stayed on for nearly three decades, part of the time as chairman of the Visual Arts Department.

Also to that, Cohen served as director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts at University of California, San Diego from 1992 to 1998.

When he retired from UCSD, he continued to work on AARON and produce new artwork in his studio in Encinitas, California.

Harold Cohen partner was the prominent Japanese poet Hiromi Itō.

Harold Cohen work on AARON began in 1968 at the University of California, San Diego.

Cohen initially wrote AARON in the C programming language but eventually converted to Lisp, citing that C was “too inflexible, too inexpressive, to deal with something as conceptually complex as color.

Harold Cohen passed away at 87 yrs old.