Generative Art/Generative Systems: visual arts, literature

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Generative Art/Generative Systemsvisual arts,
literature (computer-)automated art

• SM2220/SM6305
• Writing Machine/Digital Media Theory Practice
• Linda Lai
• January 25, 2005

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What is Generative Art?

• Generative Art performs the idea as process.

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Generative Art?

• Generative capable of producing
• (To) generate to produce, to bring into
  existence, to bring forward, to present to view
  or notice

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Generative Systems?

• a system capable of functioning with generative
  forces
• a system that imposes a structure on something
  that is very lively, viable and fluid

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Generators

• a unit (part) of the system that is capable of
  generating (producing) more units

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Generators

• What does it mean to say that something is
  (serves the functions of) a generator?
• e.g. when is an apple just an apple?
• when is an apple a generator?

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Generators

• Anything can become a generator when
• it is turned into a principle for more
  productive activities
• it is studied for its ability to push forward
  the production of the next possible members

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Generators

• Generators can be
• A key word
• An object
• A name
• A graphic element (point, line, shape etc.)
• A fragment of a story
• A narrative
• A dramatic structure
• .

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Generators

• Generators can be
• Visual
• Aural
• Verbal
• Structural

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THREE features of Generative Art

• 1st feature
• Design of structuring device
• rules procedures
• 2nd feature
• Spatial extension establishment of networks
• 3rd feature
• Genetic code of artificial units

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1st feature rules procedures

• Rules
• something to be acquired/learned
• (by the users/receivers/participants)
• Something enabling
• (allowing more complex tasks to be carried out)

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1st feature rules procedures

• Rules
• Based on sources that are outside of the work
  itself

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1st feature rules procedures

• Rules map out procedures
• e.g. Serial methods

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2nd feature extension networks

• Exchange of languages (esp. between visual art
  and literature)
• Visual and linguistic elements are turned into
  generators of a conscious and reflexive creative
  process
• Practice of collaboration

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3rd feature artificial objects

• Celestino Soddu
• A 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.
• see introduction to the Generative Art
  Conferences

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3rd feature artificial objects

• KEY emphases in Soddus quote
• What is possible (as opposed to what is actual)
• -possible worlds, possible space, possible
  vision...
• -work is the designers visionary world
• -calls attention to the amazing, endless
  expansion of human creativity

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3rd feature artificial objects

• KEY emphases in Soddus quote
• (2) Design Non-repeatable/unpredictable events
• design carefully planned structure
• non-repeatable/unpredictable events enhanced
  degree of complexity due to the use of the
  computer. ?

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3rd feature artificial objects

• KEY emphases in Soddus quote
• (3) The basic characteristics of computer
• as tools for storage in memory AND automated
  executive of tasks
• are turned into the core creative factors.

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3rd feature artificial objects

• In all three cases,
• Theres a shift of emphasis
• from more humanistic input in the creative
  process to the act of conception, leading to the
  design of rules and procedures

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3rd feature artificial objects

• Generative art brings back the human creativity
  that computer had killed in the beginning of the
  computer era
• Computers become
• tools that open new fields and enhance our
  understanding of creativity as an indissoluble
  synthesis between art and science.

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Generative Visual Arts

• TWO kinds of generative systems in 20th-C art
  history (Diane Kirkpatrick)
• Close generative systems
• e.g. conceptual art
• in each work a closed analytic structure is set
  up which becomes a generator for exploration

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Generative Visual Arts

• TWO kinds of generative systems in 20th-C art
  history (Diane Kirkpatrick)
• (2) Organic generative systems
• A work begins with creating one word or idea and
  uses that to generate the next, and the next and
  so on(creating generators)

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Generative Visual Arts work examples

• Josef Albers
• (1) Homage to Square series (1950s)
• Frank Stella
• (1) Protractor Series (93 paintings based on
  31 canvas formats each with 3 compositional
  types)
• Sol LeWitt
• (1) Squares with Corners Torn off (1975) X
• (2) Modular Open Cube

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Generative Visual Arts work examples

• Dorothea Rockburne
• (1) Set (1970) inspiration from Mathematics
• (2) Radiant and Fields (1971) concept of
  units becoming more complex X
• (3) Drawing That Makes Itself (1973) X
• Jennifer Bartlett
• (1) Rhapsody (1975-76)

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Generative Visual Arts work examples

• Doug Huebler
• (1) Duration Piece No. 6 (NY, 4/1969) photo
  series X
• (2) Location Piece No. 6 (1970) X
• (3) Duration Piece No. 7
• (4) Location Pieces No. 7

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Generative Visual Arts work examples

• Sonia Sheridan
• (1) mono-prints series based on one image
  (1963-64)
• (2) Unwind the Wheel of Time (1979) eight
  drawings X

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Generative Literature

• Generative Literature attends to the conscious
  and overt process through which a work unfolds
• -an art of positive construction that seeks to
  invent new systems of coherency
• (Bruce Morrissette)

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Generative Literature

• Generative Literature attends to the conscious
  and overt process through which a work unfolds
• -attention to the function of language

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Generative Literature

• Generative Literature attends to the conscious
  and overt process through which a work unfolds
• -artificialness of the text underlined
• Text giving rise to itself
• (David Leach)

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Generative Literature

• TWO types of generators in postmodern literature
• Linguistic generators
• Lettrist, syllabic, phonetic
• Situational generators
• Producing fictional structures

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Generative Literature work examples

• Works of the OuLiPo group (next week)
• French New Novelist Jean Ricardous work
• Robbe-Grillets La Belle Captive, turning
  Magrittes works and titles into generators
• Robbe-Grillets collaboration with visual
  artist Traces suspectes en surface (Robert
  Rauschenbergs lithograph Robbe-Grillets text)
• Robbe-Grillet Paul Delvaux
• mutual exchange of 10 chapters and short
  narratives (writing etching)

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Generative Literature Process poem by A.
Leandro from Ponto-Ovum 10
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Generative Literatures critical impulse

• a continuation of the modern tendency to
  contest, attack, destroysuch traditional
  fictional concerns as thematic causality, linear
  chronology, justified narrative viewpoint, and
  the like, thus working at the aesthetic level for
  the revolutionary overthrow of bourgeois values.
• (Bruce Morrissette)

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Automated/Computable Generative Art (new media)

• Generative Art web resources
• http//www.generative.net/
• http//www.generativedesign.com/
• http//www.generativeart.com
• http//www.thesocietyforpotentialliteratures.com/h
  tml/043.html

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Automated/Computable Generative Art (new media)

• Work examples
• Design of Morphogenesis (Celestino Soddu)
• -- an AI original software, created to simulate
  the logical procedures of some specific (and
  subjective) approach to the increasing complexity
• http//www.generativedesign.com/demetra2.htm
• 2. An animation showing the sequence of
  generation of ever different 3D models of Woman
  from Picasso (Celestino Soddu)
• http//www.generativedesign.com/cinema5.htm

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Automated/Computable Generative Art (new media)

• Work examples
• Generative industrial design (Celestino Soddu)
  generated by ARGENIA
• http//www.generativedesign.com/rp/RP_chairs.htm
• More ARGENIC design chairs
• http//www.generativedesign.com/stoc_sed.htm
• http//www.generativedesign.com/cinema.htm