Art is not the “slavish reproduction of sense experience” (Ernst Cassirer) but “produces and posits a world of its own”. As such art is just like perception which is not determined by a world outside, but produces the world through the forms and prior workings of the brain. The brain does not “learn from experience to create a perceived world out of the data transmitted to it by the sense organs” but “it is necessary for the brain to have already carried out its characteristic function before there can be any experience...” (Brian Magee: “The Philosophy of Schopenhauer”)

There is a common process for art, experience and computer programmes. Each one creates a world of its own through its pre-existing forms and processes. Nevertheless each one follows an internal necessity. In art, what is considered beautiful is the product of millions of years of the formation of imagination. Jung conceives this as archetypes. "These are the common forms of the collective unconscious” which “comprises in itself the psychic life of our ancestors right back to the earliest beginnings” (Carl Jung).

Computer programmes have a more limited history. For them to gain the power of human creativity, they need to have millions of years of prehistory programmed into them. “The collective unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage of mankind's evolution, born anew in the brain structure of every individual.” ”To me it is a vast historical storehouse” (Carl Jung).

In terms of the question of the existence of software, this collective unconscious has strong parallels to the software running in computers which is not seen. This vast historical storehouse can be compared to an object class library, providing the rules and constrains for creativity (although themselves changeable).

Quotes from: The Strong Eye of Shamanism Robert E Ryan p10 ff