Re: [-empyre-] Defining metacreation...

[Mitchell Whitelaw <mitchell.whitelaw@canberra.edu.au>]

re. Metacreation... the term is stirring up some reaction; below is a 
grab from [spectre] which briefly explains my intended meaning..

> > Melinda, something could appear abusive in the term "metacreation" 
> > stricly
> > applied regarding to life-art and more to artificial life.
> >
> > Don't you think so ? "Meta" literally : what comes after, what 
> > succeeds...
>
> Aliette I think my intention was simpler than your critique! In the 
> book, metacreation is used to refer to a particular tendency within 
> a-life art - something that I argue is a characteristic motivator of 
> this practice. "Meta" here relates to recursion or 
> self-referentiality. Metacreation is the creation of creation. For 
> a-life artists this is the practice of creating systems which are 
> themselves (somehow) creative. This is an ideal, an aspiration, rather 
> than a reality, for there are real limits on the extent of that 
> metacreation... but it's an important desire in this field (and 
> actually, I would argue, in almost all generative art).

re. a-life as art/science: Paul has already made the point about the 
shared / merged history. It's also true that a-life is far from a 
'hard' or establishment scientific practice. I'd suggest that its roots 
are in West-coast US culture & Santa Fe Institute interdisciplinarity; 
and that most mathematicians and physicists would still regard a-life 
as a fairly way-out endeavour. This is apart from the basic artfulness 
of a-life science methodology (based on synthesis rather than 
analysis). Nell Tenhaaf's writing is useful on this point; like Paul 
she characterises a-life as an artful and post-modern science.


Mitchell Whitelaw
Program Director, Media / Multimedia Production
University of Canberra

On 05/11/2004, at 9:00 PM, Jose-Carlos Mariategui wrote:

> Dear Friends:
>
> I do believe we must seriously and rigorously define "metacreation".  
> What
> does Mitchell exactly means with his title.  There are a lot of 
> wordings
> that we normally impose when the thing is not the same as it was 
> before.
>
> In that sense I do believe Artificial life works (or creations, or
> 'metacreations') are relevant when we take it to analyze some future
> premises for our society or when we develop a new kind of order or
> micro-cosmos-inside-the-computer.