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

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

> More I think of this term applied to life-art or artificial life, more 
> it
> does not appear to me as a relevant global name (I mean as concept) 
> but only
> showing to a part of your object.

I think I agree. The term is really meant as a "tag" for an aspect of 
this specific practice... but still an important aspect. On the other 
hand, I think it is in some sense a "global" concept or at least a 
tendency... creation's will to creation... which is reflected in other 
forms as well.

> Or you would tell of organic creative conmittment? "the practice of 
> creating
> systems which are themselves (somehow) creative" do you mean by a 
> generative structure (as a
> creative langage of the process not depending of the matter of fact), 
> or an
> organic structure (without divide between the content and the creative
> process)?

I think I mean the latter. "Generative" as in grammar, seems to me to 
be a permutational kind of generativity, an exhausting of combinations. 
 The generativity that a-life art seeks is more like a surprise, a 
spark, the moment of emergence. More organic, certainly, and without a 
form/content divide.

> And I have another question: where do you place the environment of the
> creation? Is it about the very computer, about the society, etc.? make 
> they
> part of the creation " méta " or not? For example, is it about tools, 
> about
> constituents or components, about addressees? Etc....

The question of environment is a powerful one. Some a-life / art 
systems are tightly sealed - the computer is its own environment. 
Others (eg Sommerer and Mignonneau) are transparently interactive 
(though in finite ways). Often in either case "environment" is a very 
limited figure, reduced to a few parameters, or a static, empty field, 
or a handful of interacting "species". A lovely counterexample to this 
is the way organism and environment can sometimes be fused into a 
single dynamic, self-constraining system (more like our ecosystems 
perhaps). Driessens and Verstappen, and especially Mauro Annunziato, do 
this - both are joining us later in the month...

Mitchell