However, it ought to be possible to simulate drives and thus generate a system with artificial drives which could then be combined with ANNs to generate a truly creative artificial system. We conclude that ANNs are similar to human artists in their basic abilities of perception, but different regarding purposefulness. In order to get animation of any reasonable length, we had to train the networks only partially. Because of that, these networks produced enigmatic, evolving imagery that was strikingly reminiscent of entoptic visions seen when pressure is applied to the closed eyelids, and even to the hypnagogic imagery of reverie states. That is an apt description, at face value, of the animated imagery our trained neural networks produced.
All memories are reconstructions, whether human or machine.
So it's tempting to wonder if these results might shed light on the understanding of abstract avant-garde films such as those of Jordan Belson, the Whitneys, and Stan Brackage. A second phase of our experiment with networks arose when we noticed that often we were able to produce still images that clearly drew from the animated-painting sequence yet did not correspond to any recognizable frame. It would produce a single prototype, or abstraction, of the sequence of associations it had incorporated. From the point of view of a computer animator or engineer, an artificial neural network device may be just another mathematical strategy. From the point of view of a biologist, however, it is far more than that, because it represents the only strategy that can be used by living things, whose evolution from individual cells is an entirely practical necessity.