[-empyre-] Process as paradigm

[Simon Biggs]

This question opens a very interesting can of worms regarding what valid
agents can compose a system of a particular kind. Conventionally, generative
art has been seen to involve artificial agents, such as software routines
and hardware processes. However, why we should limit the character of the
agents involved. Why not allow all sorts of agents in such systems ­
biological, social and ecological systems are just a small number of the
potential examples.

The first generation of generative artists emerged at the same time as
process became an abiding concern in other areas of creative arts practice.
Smithson¹s eco-systems, Campus¹s video systems, Trisha Brown¹s movement
systems or Le Witt¹s formal structural systems all share this fascination
with constraint, process and emergence. The thinking of people like Jack
Burnham, Richard Gregory, Gordon Pask and John Conway were in the mix,
blurring differences between aspects of creative practice, engineering and
early informatics. The commonality of approach was a structuralist
understanding of things, whether formal or more informal.

To take all that in a relaxed manner, where we do not require narrow
definitions of what constitutes correct practice, and to situate it in a
contemporary post-structuralist context that is very much concerned with
notions of expanded agency, complexity and emergent phenomena across all
sorts of living and non-living systems might be the more productive route to
developing other ways of understanding and imagining the world.

Best

Simon


Simon Biggs

s.biggs at eca.ac.uk  simon at littlepig.org.uk  Skype: simonbiggsuk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
Research Professor  edinburgh college of art  http://www.eca.ac.uk/
Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
http://www.elmcip.net/



From: Yann Le Guennec <y at x-arn.org>
Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 21:27:16 +0200
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Process as paradigm

Hello,

I'm very interested in your definition of 'generative image'.

http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/en/714-catalogue (p55)

The text describes well what i call 'variable pictures' (eg, a networked
still picture, always changing, and removing its precedent state,
according to some online activities) or 'evolving pictures' (eg a
networked still picture transforming itself, according to some online
data accumulation processes).

I think that the term 'generative' is now closely linked to what is
called 'generative art', dealing with algorithms and systems, looking
for some kinds of emergence. That's ok, but a 'generative artwork' is
also often defined by its autonomy and self-containment. Is this
approach compatible with the picture as a result of a process where the
involved system is wide and open, closely linked to other systems (the
internet + its users , for example)?

Furthermore, with the expression 'generative image', one can think that
the image generates something, not that the image is generated by a
system or process ?


Best,

Yann Le Guennec
http://www.yannleguennec.com/






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