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]
