What is Generative Art

This process could be carried out a number of ways, it could a computer algorithm, a random number generator or the opinion of another person. Generative works could include animations, images or music.

This form of art originally evolved from the minimalist movement, whose aesthetic was to remove as much as possible from the art work, which was often made using industrial materials and made by someone other than the artist. (Meyer 2005)
One such practitioner and founder was Sol Lewitt. He started of by building simple arrays of white lattice frame works and in his later life he made huge, brightly coloured wall paintings in basic block colours.
Often he would not make the work himself but employ others to do it for him, giving mathematical instructions that resembled blue prints of a building, but he would always give credit to his assistants allowing them to become part of the art work. He also made logic games which he used to create his work. (Kimmelman 2007)

The use of other human interaction by generative artist like Lewitt is a key part of it's concept. Take generative art project called Dandelion, developed by a collaboration between Yoke and Sennap and is part of the Victoria and Albert museum's Decode: digital design sensation exhibition. It was a simple computer generated dandelion, surrounded by a appropriate landscape. Attached to this dandelion is a hair-dryer that, when pointed and turned on, simulates the wind in that direction and makes the seeds disperse and controls the camera angle. The use of viewer interactivity is key to this piece, but its makers had no control over how the people who saw it would react, just as Lewitt couldn't control how his assistances would interpret his artwork.



Now lets compare it with the PS3 game Flowers, developed by thatgamecompany. It involves flying around as a petal collecting other petals, this is done by use of a motion sensitive controller. These two art works are almost identical in their use of viewer interactivity and both use similar aesthetics, but only Dandelion would normally be considered generative art. The reason for this is not because of any conceptual difference, no you become a generative artist not by the way that you work but by giving yourself the title of a generative artist.

Galanter (2003) states that “if generative art also included art produced by any kind of ideas generating idea, then generative art would include all art, and it would loose its utility as a distinct term.”

Galanter forgets that everything is created by a process.

The truth is that generative artists, despite all pretence, remain completely in control of their work, and they have full choice over what they exhibit. They will understand the process that they work under to such an extent that the results will be entirely predictable.
It could be argued that this predictability means the artist regains control over his work and make his process no different from that used to make paintings or movies, as it is impossible to make anything at all without a process. And if this is the case would call into question the definition or possibly even the existence of generative art.
Even with out this there will always be differences in the way that your audience interprets the work you show them, whether in reaction to it or how they use it.

This faked autonomy only creates the illusion of being lifeless, in contrary to Orwell's bleak vision of a future where creativity is dead, replaced by emotionless machines, generative art has as much humanity as any other traditional art form. This façade's only purpose is to hide what is the genius of this art form, the language it uses to describe itself.

It is a language based on science and it talks about randomness, about sine waves and arrays taken from the fields of science and maths and enhanced by the increased use of software to create their art work, this language builds on formalism in the fact that it uses simple instructions to form lines and geometric shapes.
This new way of seeing has in recent years been adopted mainly by artist working with computer generated images.
One such example is Casey Reas who work is created wholly by digital software, much of this was done using an open source program he created called Process.
One project he made was called {Software} Structure and is inspired by the work of Sol Lewitt. It involves creating a structure that is then interpreted by different artists and then further interpreted by putting the same instructions into different software. The finished products are all unique but it is possible to discern their connection with each other. (Reas 2002)
The bases of his aesthetic is simple lines and dots, but they are defined computer code, a rational and predictable method that he uses to create his images.

In conclusion, generative art is a medium where the process is more important than the end product, but it is my opinion that when process is used for the sake of process it becomes harder to disentangle from other areas of art, for example between Yoke and Sennaps Dandelion and Flowers created by thatgamecompany. The clear line of what is and what isn't generative is blurred making it hard to distinguish between them.
It is founded on the idea of randomness and inevitable the mathematical way of looking at the world, which is almost unique to computer generated art. It has a diverse history starting with minimalists like Lewitt and has now been taken up with gusto by the IT generation, such as Reas, and it appears that it's still in its prime as a movement.




Bibliography


Orwell, G. (1969) Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bungay: Penguin.


Galanter, (2003) P. What is Generative Art? Complex Theory as a context for Art Theory [Online] Available from http://philipgalanter.com/downloads/ga2003_what_is_genart.pdf [accessed on 09th April 2010 at 20.35]


Kimmelman, M. (2007) Sol Lewitt, master of conceptualism, died at 78 [Online] Available from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/arts/design/09lewitt.html [accessed on 13th April 2010 at 17.50]


Meyer, J.(2005) Minimalism, Hong Kong: Phaidon Press Limited


Boden, A and Edmonds, E. (2009) What is Generative Art. Digital Creativity, 20, (1-2), pp. 21-46


Reas, C. (2002) {Software} Structures Casey REAS et al. [Online] http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/softwarestructures/map.html [accessed on 20th April at 21.31]

Andrew Price's Marketing Advice

Andrew Price is a free lance digital 3d graphics artist. He has a website that has several thousand hit a day called Blender Guru, which offers tutorials on how to use a piece of free software called Blender. He recently published a video that was recorded at the blender conferance in Amsterdam, it is targeted at people how use 3D software but i still learned a lot about viral marketing from it.

How to Raise Your Profile as an Artist from Andrew Price on Vimeo.

Robert Capa, Image analyise

For my object analysis I have decided to select a photo of Robert Capa taken on Omaha beach on the 6^th June 1944, afterwards know as D-day. The picture shows a United States soldier in the ocean with water up to his chest, the image is very grainy and is short in black and white. To get these photos Capa landed with the first wave of soldiers to land on Omaha beach, placing himself in great danger during the process.

What happened next has become legendary. During the development of the films a lab technician accidentally turned the temperature up to high on the dryer and melted the film, only 11 images survived (Aperture Foundation, 1996).

I wish to start by at looking at this picture purely by analysing it aesthetically. The large amount of grain is more reminiscent of a snapshot and makes it appear more real. Its strong contrast and motion blur makes it seem action packed and exciting. It also marks it out as a photograph of a real evident as opposed to being staged or shoot in a studio.

The image was shot on 35mm film, with a high ISO, and was badly focused. It is akin to the U-tube style aesthetic, with its low quality and amateurishly shot footage that has become a byword for real within contemporary society. Capa’s photos could be seen as a forerunner to this.

Its aesthetic content is clearly not adequate to explain why this image is so emotive and iconic. To discover this we will have to look at the context of these images and what their destruction means to us.

The idea of a photograph is to capture a moment in time, preserving it for all to see. As Elaine Scarry point out “Beauty brings copies of itself into being. It makes us draw it, take photographs of it” (Scarry, 2006, p3) this desire to look at beauty and create copy of it to preserve it means that its destruction is alien to us, think of the gallery ethos, conserving paintings so that we can continue to gaze at them. Capa’s photos may be macabre or horrifying but that doesn't stop them from being beautiful and certainly doesn't stop it being unique. There destruction represents a loss of beauty as well as a waste of effort and risk on Capa’s part. Coupled with the potential loss of the soldier they serve to create a poignant story of loss and regret.

The most important part of this image is clearly then its narrative denotations, the images and the stories that go with them are connected, whenever one is shown the others shown with it. They are probably almost as famous as the photos themselves, it has become iconic. The actual images are not its mind numbingly beautifulness or originality, it is their context and gives them their strength.

It is not only this image that uses narrative, it is all images. When you see the picture of a man you think who is he, where does he come from, it weather it was staged as well as a myriad of other questions. This is particularly true for photography, as people often see it as based on a real event. To explain this it is necessary to look at how it is used in other photos.

Take the “death of a loyalist soldier” also by Capa, it is of a soldier fighting in the Spanish civil war and captured the moment after he was shoot but before he had hit the ground, between life and death. Aesthetically it has many similarities to his d-day images and like his d-day images people have often talked about it’s context, in this case whether it was faked or not to the extent of the subject still being topical 72 years later. (Johnson, 2008)

Another example of this is Steve McCurry’s photo “Afghan girl”, it was not enough for him to take the photo, he had to go back and find her, as if the story was as important as the image itself. (Braun, 2003)

The same was true for the work of Diana Arbus when the makers of “the genius of photography” found the child holding the grenade. (The Genius of Photography, 2007)

None of these people revealed anything extra about the power of the images themselves from a visual perspective, the quest to find them can only be explained by a need for narrative.

As it was for McCurry and Arbus so it was for Capa, the man’s name was Houston Reilly and he lives just outside Seattle (Boyle, 2007).

If you look at the world you see repeatedly how people create their own stories and meaning from an image. This is supported by the work of the sociologist Anthony Gibbins who states are people have a need for narrative and that they use it to model their own lives on (Gauntlett, 2008). Finding the people in these photographs is a way to complete their story and bring it to some conclusion.

In Ways of Seeing John Berger said that a piece of art cannot be interpreted without its context (Berger, 1977), the truth is this context is part of the art.

Capa’s work should not be seen in terms of line and form but as a narrative he only partly intended to create. The way we interpret a piece of visual imagery is based not just its physical appearance but on the symbols of its narrative history. This history can add the depth to an artist’s work. In Capa’s depiction of d-day it is clear that it is this narrative where the images power comes from, the fact that they needed to find the individual shown clearly supports this view. By depicting a story and being part of the wider story of the Second World War this image managed to became iconic.

Bibliography

Berger, J. (1977) Ways of seeing. London: Penguin.

Scarry, E. (2006) On beauty and being just. 2^nd ed. London: Princeton university press.

Gauntlett, D. (2008) Media, Gender and Identity. 2^nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge.

Braun, D. (2003). How They Found National Geographic's "Afghan Girl". [online]. National geographic. Available from: http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2002/03/0311_020312_sharbat_2.html [Accessed on 22nd November 2010, at 19.54].

The genius of photography (2007) Episode five, We are Family. London: BBC4. 23^rd October 2007 [Television Series].

Aperture Foundation, (1996). Robert Capa photography. Hong Kong: Aperture Foundation

Boyle, C. (2007) G.I. in classic D-Day image to visit exhibit featuring photo. [Online] New York daily news. Available from: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/09/23/2007-09-23_gi_in_classic_dday_image_to_visit_exhibi-2.html [Accessed on 29th November 2010 at 23.14]

Johnson, A (2008) New evidence on mystery of famous 'faked' soldier photo [Online]. The Independent. Available from: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/new-evidence-on-mystery-of-famous-faked-soldier-photo-937000.html [Accessed on the 29th November 2010 at 22.07

Why i do photography

The first thing that drew me to photography was my need to create, a physical desire that makes me make things.

I have grown to think like a photographer, when I look at the world I see light and line, reality and the imaginary, it has changed the way I see photography.

I further believe that it has the ability to be a tool for self analysis, the fact that you can learn about yourself, as though it is a metaphorical representation of my mind.

I have also developed an Interest in philosophy, and how it can be visual representation by photography. This is part of greater Interest in ideas, a wish to know everything, a fervent curiosity about knowledge that increases for the more I learn the more I realise there is to learn. It transforms into a wish for truth, but my own inability to know what truth is holds me back.

I have a dislike traditional forms and values of photography, as I am to socially awkward to photograph people and don’t have the means of travel to take landscape photos I have found that outside of college I tend to photograph the street. But not traditionally method, more in the meandering manner during which I tend to end up photographing nothing.

When I take these photographs I try and capture beauty but I have developed a deep mistrust over it as I fear it detracts from truth, that it adds value beyond its use, also in reaction against the picturesque.

It ultimately adds up to an uncertainty over how to act as a photographer, I am lost, without purpose, I don’t know why I photograph what I photograph. I am a firm believer in the power of photography and its power to change things, but have no idea how I can use it.

It is also important to remember that I am constantly changing as I go through the education process, my interest in ideas mean that the way I look at photography alters. I am unable to know why I take photographs if my feelings constantly changing. This lack of a constant is highly reviling, if you bear in mind what I mentioned earlier about my need to consume knowledge and photography’s self analytical properties. The discourse of photography is a means of conveying information, the visual arts in particular could be described as a copy of the world. A copy that is clearer and more predictive than the original and from which I can discern the truth.

I am uncertain about the purpose of my work because I am uncertain about my purpose in life. It is a crisis of existentialism.

Satsumas and the search for TRUTH

Within societys past and present the idea of beauty has been linked perminantly with the idea of good, from St. Augustin to Plato good and beauty where one and the same.

This is, when you think of it, a strange concept. Amelia Jessica is just as likely to kill you as Susan Boil, just because your clothes look good doesn't mean they keep them warmer. We believe that just because something is beautyful it has more value.

This belief isn't immoral, its an emotional response, it's the way where made, but i think it also deducts from truth, so i intend to subvert the idea of truth.

Enter the Satsumas. My intention is to take traditional still life and instead of having food and letting it rot.

Unfortaintly they don't look quite as green in black and white. : (

At least it's a start.

This is my first Blog Post.
Heres a Picture of a flower to cheer everyone up.