Re: [-empyre-] making a meta-living / a-life & generative art

[Marius Watz <marius@unlekker.net>]

mitchell,

> I also wonder if there's a new fetish emerging here, in the form of 
> "code"...  the discourse around this work emphasises code as process / 
> tool etc... all fine I suppose... but it has a whiff of idealism (as in 
> Plato) which I'm not so sure about, and it can also act as a barrier to 
> critical engagement, by alienating those who aren't "code" inclined. 
> A-life techniques can do the same, but at least there is often a 
> metphorical level which does give some traction for critique. That said I 
> love a lot of the work...

The importance of code in recent generative art (and its applied twin, 
compuational design) is definitively ideological. The goal behind projects 
like Processing etc is to teach a new type of software literacy, i.e. 
artists should be ablt to both read (== use) and write (== program) 
software. The aesthetic typical of this kind of work is concerned with 
complexity but rarely in a "pure" form. As for alienating, I've found that 
audiences are currently interested in the mechanisms of software and hence 
appreciate the level of code. This might of course be a matter of fashion 
and might not be true tomorrow. On any level I don't think fetishization of 
code is a good thing, since it tends towards a fascination with novelty and 
wizardry.

You mention Casey Reas, his Microimage piece 
(http://www.groupc.net/work.php?section=software&work=microimage_s) is 
clearly related to AL techniques. If one was to speak of quality in this 
kind of art, I admire Casey's work because he balances the artistic 
harnessing an algorithm to create interesting images with retaining a 
purity of process. A lot of the artists in this field either create 
interesting images by over-controlling the algorithm or interesting 
algorithms without too clear visual success. Of course, you can replace 
"visual" in this context with aural / kinetic / what have you.

An interesting article by Lev Manovich attempts a critique of generative 
work by viewing it as an aesthetics of complexity: 
http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/abstraction_complexity.doc. It seems as close 
to the mark as most attempts I've seen.



Marius Watz - Amoeba / Unlekker
marius--at--unlekker.net

http://www.unlekker.net/
http://www.evolutionzone.com