Harold Cohen (artist)

Harold Cohen, who lived from 1 May 1928 to 27 April 2016, was a British-born artist noted as the creator of AARON, a computer program designed to produce paintings and drawings autonomously, which set it apart from earlier programs. Born in London to Polish-Russian Jewish parents and educated at the Slade School of Fine Art, he represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennial in 1966 and moved to the United States in 1968 as a visiting lecturer at the University of California, San Diego, where he later became professor, taught until 1994 and directed the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts from 1992 to 1998. His work on AARON began at San Diego in 1968; he first wrote it in the C programming language and later converted to Lisp. His work at the intersection of artificial intelligence and painting led to exhibitions at many museums including the Tate Gallery in London, and in 2014 he received the ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement.