Such a coder's approach to art... :) But I have to agree that the process is familiar, and I have little doubt that our ability to see objects in clouds is akin to accessing different transforms of data and feeding them into other processes. Some of those pictures look psychedelic, and I would bet it is because psychedelics enhance similar kinds of data/processing jumps and interations in our own minds. Just as we can look at the image produced by a neural network and optimize the network upon it, I am sure that in time these networks will be able to create literature, optimized to emotionally resonate with us in ways that we cannot imagine. We had better get away from centralized government structures before propoganda is optimized by neural networks.It also makes us wonder whether neural networks could become a tool for artists—a new way to remix visual concepts—or perhaps even shed a little light on the roots of the creative process in general.
There's actually some interesting work done on the neurobiology of hallucinations. For example, the research described here suggests that hallucinations of spirals and tunnels are caused by stripes of activity on a rectangle of neurons that process vision – the angle of the stripes changes whether you see concentric circles, rays or spirals.