Paul Cohen’s article for Right Click Save revisits the legacy of Harold Cohen and his pioneering work with the AARON program to unpack a central issue in digital art: language. Terms such as “creativity”, “autonomy”, and “authorship” are often used loosely, yet rarely defined with precision. Cohen argues that these “troublesome words” gain meaning through use, but can become increasingly ambiguous when applied to computational systems.
Rather than abandoning these terms, Right Click Save proposes a more rigorous approach: artists should define them through the observable behaviour of their systems. As both artist and programmer, Harold Cohen exemplified this method, grounding abstract ideas in the mechanics of code and process. In doing so, he reframed debates around machine creativity, shifting focus from philosophical speculation to practical description.
