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GENERATIVE
ART DEFINITIONS, THOUGHTS AND VIEWS Generative
Art refers to any art practice where the artist
uses a system, such as a set of natural language
rules a computer program, a machine, or other
procedural invention, which is then set into
motion with some degree of autonomy to or
resulting in a complex work of art (Philip
Galanter).
Generative Art is the idea
realized as genetic code of artificial objects.
The generative project is a concept-software that
works producing three-dimensional unique and
non-repeatable events as possible and manifold
expressions of the generating idea identified by
the designer as a visionary world.
This Idea / human
creative act renders explicit and realizes an
unpredictable, amazing and endless expansion of
human creativity. Computers are simply the tools
for its storage in memory and execution. This
approach opens a new era in design and industrial
production: the challenge of a new naturalness of
the industrial object as a mirror of Nature. Once
more man emulates Nature, as in the act of making
Art. This approach suddenly opened the possibility
to rediscover possible fields of human creativity
that would be unthinkable without computer tools.
If these tools, at the beginning of the computer
era, seemed to extinguish the human creativity,
today, with generative tools, directly operate on
codes of Harmony. They become tools that open new
fields and enhance our understanding of creativity
as an indissoluble synthesis between art and
science. After two hundred years of the old
industrial era of necessarily cloned objects, the
one-of-a-kind object becomes an essential answer
to emergent aestethical needs.
(Celestino
Soddu)
Generative Art is art or design
generated, composed, or constructed through
computer software algorithms, or similar
mathematical or mechanical autonomous processes.
The most common forms of generative art are
graphics that visually represent complex
processes, music, or language-based compositions
like poetry. Other applications include
architectural design, models for understanding
sciences such as evolution, and artificial
intelligence systems (Wikipedia).
Generative software art, as it is usually
understood today, is artwork which uses
mathematical algorithms to
automatically or semi-automatically generate
expressions in more conventional artistic forms.
For example, a generative program might produce
poems, or images, or melodies, or animated
visuals. Usually, the objective of such a program
is to create different results each time it is
executed. And generally, it is hoped that these
results have aesthetic merit in their own right,
and that they are distinguishable from each other,
in interesting ways. Some generative art operates
completely autonomously, while some generative
artworks also incorporate inputs from a user, or
from the environment (Carlo
Zanni).
Generative art is a term given
to work which stems from concentrating on the
processes involved in producing an artwork,
usually (although not strictly) automated by the
use of a machine or computer, or by using
mathematic or pragmatic instructions to define the
rules by which such artworks are executed
(Adrian
Ward).
System usage is identified
initially as a key element in generative art. This
leads to the adoption of complexity, order and
disorder as efficacious organizing principles in
the comparison of several generative systems of
art. The trace of definition of generative art is
the preference the artist establishes in a system,
that can generate a number of possible forms, and
better than a single terminated form. The artist’s
role is to build, begin or merely select the frame
of procedures to generate possible expressions
and, for this, the visual aspect may or may not be
determining (Vera
Sylvia Bighetti).
Generative art describes a
strategy for artistic practice, not a style or
genre of work. The artist describes a rule-based
system external to him/herself that either
produces works of art or is itself a work of art.
I agree with Philip Galanter that work with
generative qualities can be found throughout art
history, but I typically use the term to describe
computer-based work created from the 1960s to
today. I consider much of the work in abstract
painting and sculpture done in the 1960s as
essential for the understanding of generative art.
For the term generative art to have any meaning
when applied to a given work, the aspect of
generativity must be dominant in the work. Many
computer-based art projects have generative
elements, but are not concerned with generative
systems as an end result. In these days generative
art is typically connected with software-based
abstractions. I think the popularity of the term
is due to an emerging group of younger artists and
designers concerning themselves with code as an
aesthetic material. This naturally leads to
explorations of the ways code affects both the
artistic process and the end result, including a
materiality of algorithms etc. (Marius
Watz)
Generative art is a
contested term but for my purposes refers to
artwork that is broadly rule-based, a further
understanding of which has been informed by the
co-curation of touring exhibition Generator (with
Spacex Gallery, UK). The exhibition title
“generator” describes the person, operating system
or things that generates the artwork, sh9ifting
attention to the interaction not separation of
these productive processes. Significantly, once
the rules have been set, the process of production
is unsupervised, and appears self-organising,
though only if knowledge of other aspects is
suspended. As a result, although generative art
might appear autonomous and out of control, my
argument is that control is exerted through a
complex and collaborative interrelation of
producer/s, hardware and software. The relations
of production within generative artwork are thus
seen to be decidedly complex (its operations not
open-ended or closed, as complexity theory and
dialectics would verify).Like the programmer, the
code that lies behind a generative artwork remains
relatively hidden and consequently difficult to
interpret. (Geoff
Cox)
Even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
developed a “musical game of dice” that contained
most of the elements that today are associated
with generative tools. The piece carries the
explanatory title “Composing waltzes with two
dices without knowing music or understanding
anything about composing”. Using this historical
example, the methodology of generative art can be
appropriately described as the rigorous
application of predefined principles of action for
the intentional exclusion of, or substitution for,
individual aesthetical decisions that set in
motion the generation of new artistic content out
of material provided for that purpose. To describe
this method, musicologists introduced the concept
of “aleatoric music”. The name is derived from the
Latin “aleator” (the dice player), and could not
be more appropriate for the above example. In
aleatoric music, the principles of chance enter
into the composition process. There is no standard
artistic position connected with the concept of
“generative”, but rather, a method of artistic
work, which was and is employed with the most
diverse motives. At the same time, it is
interesting to observe that this way of working
appears not only in connection with a certain
genre, but has in fact established itself in
nearly every area of artistic practice as music,
literature and fine arts. (Tjark
Ihmels, Julia Riedel)
Aaron (celebrated art making
program) was clearly not a tool in an orthodox
sense. It was closer to being a sort of assistant,
if the need for an human analogue persist, but not
an assistant which could learn what I wanted done
by looking at what I did myself, the way any of
Rubens’ assistants could see perfectly well for
themselves what a Rubens painting was supposed to
look like. A computer is not a human being. But it
is the case, presumably, that any entity capable
of adapting its performance to circumstances which
were unpredictable when its performance began
exhibits intelligence: whether that entity is
human or not. We are living on the crest of a
cultural shock-wave of unprecedented proportions,
which thrusts e new kind of entity into our world:
something less than human, perhaps, but
potentially capable of many of the higher
intellectual functions we have supposed to be
uniquely human. We are in the process of coming to
terms with the fact that “intelligence” no longer
means, uniquely, “human intelligence”. (Harold
Cohen)
Until
100 years ago every musical event was unique:
music was ephemeral and unrepeatable, and even
classical scoring couldn't guarantee precise
duplication. Then came the gramophone record,
which captured particular performances and made it
possible to hear them identically over and over
again. But Koan and other recent experiments like
it are the beginning of something new. From now on
there are three alternatives: live music, recorded
music and generative music. Generative music
enjoys some of the benefits of both its ancestors.
Like live music, it is always different. Like
recorded music, it is free of time-and-place
limitations- you can hear it when you want and
where you want. And it confers one of the other
great advantages of the recorded form: it can be
composed empirically. By this I mean that you can
hear it as you work it out- it doesn't suffer from
the long feedback loop characteristic of scored-and-performed
music.
(Brian
Eno)
Generative Art - "A form
of geometrical abstraction in which a basic
element is made to ' generate' other forms by
rotation, etc. of the initial form in such a way
as to give rise to an intricate design as the new
forms touch each other, overlap, recede or advance
with complicated variations. A lecture on 'Generative
Art Forms' was given at the Queen's University,
Belfast Festival in 1972 by the Romanian sculptor
Neagu, who also founded a Generatiave Art Group.
Generative art was also practised among others by
Eduardo McEntyre and Miguel Ángel Vidal [1928- ]
in the Argentine." (Harold
Osborne)
Generative Art: Process by which a computer
creates unique works from fixed parameters defined
by the artist. The result can range from an
engaging screensaver to a jazz solo to a lush
virtual world. The visual application of
generative art is newer, however. In the mid-1970s
British abstract painter Harold Cohen plugged in
his palette and designed AARON, a computer artist
that produces original work. Since then,
generative techniques have been used to grow
artificial life based on genetic algorithms and
massively complex virtual worlds that take
infinitely longer than seven days to create by
hand. But whatever the output, there is always a
human behind the high tech curtain. "The computer
is actually generating the art in partnership with
the artist/programmer, who defines the fields of
possibilities," says Holtzman, who has been
experimenting with generative music for more than
20 years. "People live with this romantic notion
that an artist gets struck with a thunderbolt of
inspiration and runs to the piano or canvas and
expresses an idea. The reality is that art has a
formal underpinning, and computers are a perfect
tool because they're perfect for manipulating
formal structure." (read
more)
Software as material is always liquid, potentially
intelligent, interactive and constantly changing.
The only way to approach such a medium is as a sum
of processes and interactions. Generative art and
design describes a process-based practice, where
the artist enters into a collaboration with the
machine, describing aesthetic qualities in terms
of rules and instructions. Random factors are
allowed for in order to produce organic behavior.
By combining rational/scientific principles with
subjective/aesthetic choices, new and unexpected
products are created. The results are dynamic
forms and processes through which we gain a new
understanding of the world around us, as well as a
new and dazzling source of aesthetic experience.
(read
more).
One might define generative art as art where the
main technique of development within a piece or
series of pieces is an evolutionary process, like
biological or physical evolution, or the evolution
of ideas. This might mean that the intent of the
work is to make evolution the primary message.
Evolution involves a complex process of
development with many possible influences. Much of
art involves generative processes of development,
selection of work for various reasons. These
reasons include everything from emotional impact,
to beauty, to commercial appeal, to personal
fullfillment, to social propaganda, and more.
(Greg
Jalbert)
People have said to me that if I
build a machine that creates music or art, what
role do I play in the final product? Who is the
artist? The art process that I am involved with is
the design and implementation of algorithms. When
I was at the International Computer Music
Convention in 1993 (Tokyo), a panel of composers
declared that algorithmic composition was not a
valid form of art because the composer was not in
control of the music or sound being generated.
They didn’t understand what the art process was.
The art process was the composer creating the
algorithms that created the music or sound.
Creatively designing algorithms, even when there
is random input that affects the algorithms output,
is a very valid art form. To answer the question:
Who is the artist when the final product is
unpredictable and beyond the direct control of the
artist? My feeling is that the composer or artist
who designed the algorithmic system is the
composer or artist for all possible outcomes of
that system. (John
Clavin)
First
of all, the use of generative methods tends to
redefine, in a completely new way, the figure of
the author. We said that generative art is based
on a process which, "set into motion with
some degree of autonomy", produces a
completed work of art. In other words, there are
two acts of creation, one following the other, and
two distinct "authors": the person who
choose the system that must be used and writes the
program - the instruction set, the algorithm - to
be performed; and the person - or the thing - that
materially performs the program. The person that
we keep, even if with some doubts, considering as
the author, only writes the instructions, that are
performed - with a margin of interpretation which
can be considered relevant - by somebody or
something else. The author, therefore, sets into
motion a process which develops itself
autonomously, and, often, in an unpredictable way,
under an amazed gaze. We seem thus to deal not as
much with an artist, considered in the way we
usually do, but rather with a minor God, who
activates a system and then watch it coming to
life. (Domenico
Quaranta)
Generative art is the production of rules to
define a fixed conceptual space as art. A rule-follower
(such as a computer) then moves through the space
in an arbitrary manner, but not beyond it.
Furthermore the method for navigating the space
does not change with time. What is presented is
simply a single, unchanging conceptual space
navigated by naive serendipity. (alex)
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