
Why Love Generative Art? - Artnome
https://www.artnome.com/news/2018/8/8/why-love-generative-art
======
dahart
The problem with generative art is not that it isn’t considered art by
everyone. The main problems are:

\- It is very difficult to value. One can’t see at a glance whether it took
time or skill to create. And similar to other types of art that involve
mechanical reproduction, e.g. photography, generative art can be produced on
demand, it’s not irreplaceable like a sculpture or painting is.

\- It usually lacks a good story. Getting attention in the art world may
depend more on the artist’s narrative than on the art itself, and many art
consumers will similarly buy when the story is right, and avoid art they love
when it has a bad or boring story. I think people legitimately and reasonably
need to be able to have something interesting to say when their friends
comment on the artwork in their house.

I say this as a generative artist and absolute generative art lover myself. I
explored what it might take to make a living from generative art for a year,
and I’ve met a lot of people who hate all things digital, as well as a lot of
people who get what I do and love it. The thing is, the people who hate it or
don’t get it have a point.

> Myth Two: The artist has zero control and the autonomous machine is randomly
> generating the designs. The computer is making the art and the human
> deserves no credit, as it is not really art.

This one I’ve run into a lot. People who don’t think I deserve full credit, or
just don’t know how to assign or think about credit.

> Myth One: The artist has complete control and the code is always executed
> exactly as written. Therefore, generative art lacks the elements of chance,
> accident, discovery, and spontaneity that often makes art great, if not at
> least human and approachable.

This one I haven’t seen much of, and I’d question whether it’s a common myth.
But, more importantly, I cringe at the idea that randomness leads to discovery
or spontaneity or human approachableness. I would never compare randomness to
surprises or creativity in traditional art, but _that_ idea is fairly
pervasive among generative art initiates. I use randomness a lot, but
randomness is very boring. It’s mechanical variety without surprise,
randomness rarely leads to surprise without a lot of generative creativity on
the part of the artist.

~~~
tokyodude
I also love generative art ... mostly .... and I've made quite a bit but
.......

The problem I have is generally when it appears to me it didn't require much
effort. Making a program that draws random dots, random rectangles, random
lines, is almost a rite of passage for new programmers. A lot of generative
art looks like hardly many more steps beyond that. Draw 100 rectangle each
slightly smaller and rotated from the previous and you get a beautiful spiral.

I know my own rarely take more than 30 minutes each. I just take some existing
generator and start tweaking. If I get something mildly pleasing I save it.
But I rarely promote it because I feel at some level it was farted out, it was
a sketch, a doodle, not a "work" of art.

Of course I know effort is probably not a valid criteria but still, it's
sometimes hard not to see what appears to be low-effort generative art as
barely more than the random dot/line/rectangle exercise most programmers do
early in their learning. Like instead of 100% random colors use HSL and only
vary the values 10% from some initial value and suddenly it's "art". (pick
light blue and it's snow on the ground, pick light brown and it's sand, pick
green and it's grass, pick red/orange/yellow and it's lava). It makes it hard
to know when it crossed the line from learning to code to "art".

Of course like I said I still appreciate generative art but for some reason my
own block is that I need to perceive effort. It can even be simple but I have
to look at it and think something like "That was simple but took a long time
to find the right parameters to get it to look that pleasing".

Let me add, it's a pie in the sky dream of mine to have/run/start/manage a
kinetic interactive art museum the size of the Exploritorium in SF with
constantly new exhibits much of which would be generative art.

~~~
tomjen3
Don't forget that 99+% of the population can not program at all.

------
mattdesl
Nice to see generative art discussed on the frontpage. :)

I think the next several years will be really interesting for generative art.
Consumers are getting more interested in it, and some of our tools and
collective knowledge has really grown since the days of Flash and before. In
some cases, we are revisiting old techniques with new & easier-to-use
hardware, like AxiDraw pen plotters. It's allowing artists to iterate more
quickly and become better curators of their output.

Open source and online tools like Glitch are helping share knowledge and
ideas, and together the community is pushing each other toward more and more
interesting results (conceptually, algorithmically and aesthetically). The
community (mostly Twitter & IG) is one of the things that makes generative art
so fun to be a part of.

Totally shameless self-plug: you can follow my own generative art on IG below
[1]. I hope to set up an online print shop in the coming months.

[1] -
[https://www.instagram.com/mattdesl_art](https://www.instagram.com/mattdesl_art)

~~~
kjeetgill
Absolutely beautiful work. My childhood love for sketching and doodling grew
into a love for digital art (Macromedia Flash 5 anyone?) and later generative
art. Anytime I'd try my hand at with generative I spent way too long trying to
get a setup or a workflow together.

Eventually they get left in the island misfit quarter-done side projects well
before I've gotten to playing with images.

Any advice? Stories on workflow? Is this all in processing?

~~~
mattdesl
Thank you! This is all in JavaScript with some open source tools I'm
building[1]. I write about my process in a few places: often on Twitter,
recently in a TinyLetter, and occasionally more in-depth on my blog[2].

I'd suggest Tim Holman's GenerativeArtistry[3] as a starting point to get back
into it.

Good luck! Feel free to ping me any time on Twitter or IG if you have any Qs
about generative art.

[1] - [https://github.com/mattdesl/canvas-
sketch](https://github.com/mattdesl/canvas-sketch)

[2] - [https://mattdesl.svbtle.com/](https://mattdesl.svbtle.com/)

[3] - [https://generativeartistry.com/](https://generativeartistry.com/)

------
b0rsuk
Three more approaches not mentioned in the article:

    
    
      Pixel Sorting
      -------------
    

A subtype of glitch art. Generally you do it horizontally or vertically. You
choose contiguous intervals in a bitmap and sort pixels in it by color, hue,
value etc. Here's a moose I made based on a Wikimedia Commons photo:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pixelsorting/comments/7oioko/moose/](https://www.reddit.com/r/pixelsorting/comments/7oioko/moose/)

    
    
      Glitch art
      ----------
    

Also has its own subreddit. People over there get excited over printers
breaking down in the middle of printing a page, etc. Sometimes results are
truly intriguing.

    
    
      Primitive
      ---------
    

Geometric primitives. The ingenious library written in Go. It transforms an
image into a composition of 2D overlapping, translucent polygons. Output is
available chiefly as an .svg
[https://github.com/fogleman/primitive](https://github.com/fogleman/primitive)
Using this and images from a search engine, I made a calendar with animals. I
could post it if anyone's interested.

~~~
akx
Re glitch art, I wrote a (moderately popular?) tool for it:
[http://akx.github.io/glitch2/](http://akx.github.io/glitch2/)

------
rices
Wew! Nice write up - I'm a huge fan of Tarbell's work. I'm curious if
generative art lead him to found Etsy.

This field is still in its infancy - I'm excited for the future.

I wrote a generative art algorithm a bit ago - check it out :D -
[https://anemy.github.io/concentric/#/](https://anemy.github.io/concentric/#/)

~~~
sago
It's a really handsome piece of work. I love the papercraft aesthetic. Well
done.

One of the randomizations I generated was uncannily like a winking eye. But
sadly I only discovered the shareable link after I had lost it. Oh, the
ephemeral nature of generative art!

------
DonHopkins
Electric Sheep is generative crowdsourced evolutionary art that enables
viewers to vote for their favorite "sheep" animations to send them off to the
pasture to breed with other user's favorites with genetic cross-over and
mutation.

So it just gets better and better, in response to what people actually enjoy!

[https://electricsheep.org/#/about](https://electricsheep.org/#/about)

[http://scottdraves.com/sheep.html](http://scottdraves.com/sheep.html)

[http://scottdraves.com/flame.html](http://scottdraves.com/flame.html)

[http://flam3.com/](http://flam3.com/)

[http://flam3.com/flame.pdf](http://flam3.com/flame.pdf)

Once I fell asleep while watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 on Netflix, and then
half woke up after the Electric Sheep screen saver has kicked back in but I
didn't realize it, so my brain struggled for several minutes trying to make
sense of the never-ending wormhole sequence that I though was an out-of-
control shuttlecraft lost in space!

------
zmitri
I do some generative art [1] and I think a lot of the concerns in this article
have to do with it being accepted by the art world vs consumers.

In my experience consumers enjoy generative art, and are happy to buy
generative work so long as its in a medium they are used to - such a as a
print or plot - and are not interested in moving/digital screens.

Instead of picking a render and placing it for sale, show the buyers the
software, show them the parameters and give them an option between a few
renders to choose from. It makes it way more personal. People and popular
culture are also much more tech savvy now and appreciative of elements of
digital/internet culture.

This is just my opinion, but I believe many generative artists seem to put the
algorithmic focus ahead of the aesthetic. From my experience if you treat the
aesthetic as the primary objective and the technology as a tool it resonates
better. Jared Tarbell and Manoloide both seem to do this, but have very
different styles, and are by far my favorites in the space.

[1] [http://instagram.com/dmitricherniak](http://instagram.com/dmitricherniak)

------
sakri
I got to live parallel to some of this. In the early 00's Agencies would send
their designers/creatives/frontend devs to conferences that centered around
Flash. Along with marketing talks and inspirational self help crap, the events
gave a platform for some very smart/creative individuals. The enthusiasm drove
a circle of innovation and competitiveness, which was good fun to watch. The
scene has somewhat fallen off my radar since those days, but articles like
this remind me of my soft spot for it.

~~~
Fifer82
I have fond memories of this time as well. It is the first time I have seen an
article where I am seeing old names like Joshua Davis and Jared Tarbell. Manny
Tan and Keith Peters were similarly cool.

I don't get a lot out of the art side, but I have always been fascinated by
this particular topic. Where little pieces of code, depending on some inputs,
can generate some really fun output.

------
ArtWomb
Good retrospective. Excellent playlist on youtube of early computer art,
including some of Manfred Mohr's films that still have the power to hold the
attention of modern, distracted minds ;)

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmmzCSWIggxABGOurYq2I...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmmzCSWIggxABGOurYq2IvB7Zr_OeNAAU)

~~~
tripzilch
They left out the demoscene :(

I mean, it's not generative art (with a few exceptions) but it definitely _is_
computer art. In the early 2000s I went to demoparties that had over 2000
attendees. These were combined showcase/gallery events with competitions and
live art. Imagine a LAN-party where no one's gaming, but instead coding,
drawing or producing music (and socialising--because _" real party is
outside"_). And when I go to check, the scene is still active today. That's
gotta count for something, right? :)

------
OnACoffeeBreak
Can anyone recommend tools for getting into generative art?

I have tried using a gamedev engine. It worked OK, but there have got to be
better suited tools out there.

~~~
DanBC
There's an old book with a bunch of pseudocode that might be interesting,
especially if you're interested in the early examples provided in the article.

 _Computers, Pattern, Chaos, and Beauty_ by Clifford Pickover.

[https://www.amazon.com/Computers-pattern-chaos-beauty-
Graphi...](https://www.amazon.com/Computers-pattern-chaos-beauty-
Graphics/dp/0312041233/)

~~~
ciaron
Clifford Pickover has some great books, I can't recommend them enough if
you're interested in the intersection between maths and art.

------
nwatson
Great artist painting in "generative" fashion by hand ... one can see her
murals in many North Carolina locales especially around Winston-Salem ...

Laura Lashley ...
[https://m.facebook.com/laura.lashley.77/posts/picfp.15145307...](https://m.facebook.com/laura.lashley.77/posts/picfp.1514530781/?photo_id=10214569410858376&mds=%2Fphotos%2Fviewer%2F%3Fphotoset_token%3Dpicfp.1514530781%26photo%3D10214569410858376%26profileid%3D1514530781%26source%3D69%26refid%3D17%26cached_data%3Dfalse%26ftid&mdf=1)

------
alexpotato
Saskia Freeke has some amazing work done via generative methods.

You can check out her profile here:
[https://www.instagram.com/sasj_nl/](https://www.instagram.com/sasj_nl/)

Great example:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/BltlYsgnVd9/?utm_source=ig_web_c...](https://www.instagram.com/p/BltlYsgnVd9/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link)

------
sjb554
In light of this article, new genres like glitch/aesthetic/simpsonswave are
just versions of generative art. All that stuff takes some simple code to
augment images, then MS paint comes in to superimpose an 80's car, some green
lines, and a statue of david, haha.

I really enjoyed reading about the newer AI methods though.

Here are some of my drawings :)

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BY_yHsuB8nF/?taken-
by=kolmogorov...](https://www.instagram.com/p/BY_yHsuB8nF/?taken-
by=kolmogorov_smooth_jazz)

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BklsIsBlmij/?taken-
by=kolmogorov...](https://www.instagram.com/p/BklsIsBlmij/?taken-
by=kolmogorov_smooth_jazz)

[https://www.instagram.com/kolmogorov_smooth_jazz/](https://www.instagram.com/kolmogorov_smooth_jazz/)

------
coldcode
Not exactly generative art, but still computer aided art - my home is filled
with impressionist artworks I created from photographs using a product called
Impresso Pro which does a nice job of adding brushstrokes to images in a
realistic fashion. I use all the options to direct the choices and even
manipulate the photo in Pixelmator first to influence the choices. Is the
computer doing most of the work? Yes, but I still decide what it does and wind
up with things I like. They are then printed to large canvases and I hang them
up. It would be fun to make some completely generative art pieces if I had
more time.

------
beat
Note that generative art is not necessarily digital. I used to make generative
music using a pretty mundane electric guitar and amp, with a digital delay
looper (which I suppose makes it kinda digital). I leaned the guitar against
the amp to induce feedback, which went into the looper, which was on a long
fade (probably 20+ repeats, well over a minute of music echoing around in
there), with modulation to destabilize the pitch. Thanks to the configuration,
the feedback was unstable, continuously generating an unpredictable melody of
feedback.

Kinda loud, but kinda lovely.

------
techbio
Generative art would be more compelling with clean, commented source attached.
Even to non-programmers. I am always drawn to good explanations for
inexplicable beauty, but what better explanation for the unknown than
procedures to repeat it? (Especially if the source itself is formatted
artfully.) I would love to see human readable DNA for example, one day.

Edit: Not that I believe DNA to ever be human readable, I'm referring to a
level of abstraction that might be, and the expression of awe that art can
evoke in relation to this and many other natural processes.

------
darzu
In my view, Minecraft worlds are beautiful works of generative art and the
appreciation and exploration of these worlds probably makes this the most
popular and beloved form of generative art to date.

------
Jupe
Generative/algorithmic art:

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/abstractusinterruptus](https://www.flickr.com/photos/abstractusinterruptus)

------
java_script
Check this shit out
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqayDnQ2wmw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqayDnQ2wmw)
(epilepsy warning)

~~~
bane
As a demoscener, it's always awesome to see our craft leak out into other
places. Aphex Twin getting in on the aesthetic is a real feather in the cap of
the scene.

------
sixstringtheory
I was hoping it would mention Jared Tarbell, as I discovered his work back
when he was making it on
[http://complexification.net](http://complexification.net), thanks to
StumbleUpon (may it rest in peace). Too bad the article didn’t mention this
site of his, but to be fair I didn’t know about levitated, so I was glad to
learn that.

------
filleokus
Are there any artists who work in kind of the intersection between data
visualisation and generative art? I'm thinking of works where the main point
is not necessarily to show the data as clearly as possible (i.e not a graph),
but rather where the data is somehow interleaved and helps tell the story.
Somewhat similar to the map of the US in the article based on the roads.

~~~
zmitri
Yes, there are lots. I would say Mike Bostock of d3 fame is an example of
someone who does that well, as so is Yi Shen
([https://twitter.com/pissang1](https://twitter.com/pissang1)).

------
TeddyDD
I am currently writing master thesis about generative art, this article comes
in handy :)

If you interested in generative art there is nice tool called Context Free
Art: [https://www.contextfreeart.org/](https://www.contextfreeart.org/) It's
not as well known as Processing or other tools and that's a pity.

------
sp332
Vi Hart has a "Sol Lewitt Forgery" VR project.
[http://elevr.com/portfolio/sol-lewitt-
forgery/](http://elevr.com/portfolio/sol-lewitt-forgery/) I don't know how far
it got but I liked the idea.

------
g3ndo
@bkezy0 has some interesting work on Instagram. It's more of a mix between
generative and non-generative than anything pure. Still worth checking out.

Profile:
[https://www.instagram.com/bkezy0/](https://www.instagram.com/bkezy0/)

------
js8
I looked at the chart in the middle and was like, whoa, that one is pretty
nice!

It reminded me of:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlLqYBU8qsY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlLqYBU8qsY)

------
akshayB
There is lot of equations and geometry that are hiding under the hood along
with some clever programming. Personally one of my personal favorites is
Fractal art which involves lot of recursive programming.

------
ForrestN
Disclaimer: I come more from the contemporary art world even than from the
tech world. (Much of my job is looking at thousands of art exhibitions from
around the world each month. My little non-profit publishes the ones we think
are most important to see at the moment so that the public can learn about
them for free even if they aren't rich collectors.)

First, I want to say that I'm thinking about Generative Art in the context of
"contemporary art," which despite sounding like it could apply to literally
any art made in the current era actually denotes a specific social context and
the set of people, institutions and works that constitute it. Some people call
this "fine art" but I don't like the implied hierarchy and value judgment of
that term. I think there's a separate case to be made that Generative Art is
actually more akin to important historical craft and decorative arts
traditions, which have great artistic importance and matter much more to many
people than contemporary art. I mean "contemporary art" the way people usually
mean it when they start institutions called "Museum of Contemporary Art" or
"Contemporary Art Center."

Generative Art qua "contemporary art" seems to fit a pattern that you see a
lot in startups: people who are into coding and technology enter a given field
that they aren't so involved with and start applying their skills to it. As
far as I know, the AirBnB people weren't running bed and breakfasts at the
beginning, they were looking for problems to solve with technology. That
worked great, for the most part: they identified concrete problems and found
ways to solve them.

The odd thing about Generative Art, which seems to fit this pattern insofar as
the energy and interest is coming much for from the tech side than the art
side, is that art doesn't have any problems because it has no clear purpose.
Any idea you may individually have about what art should do, or what makes art
"good," can be easily defeated by famous counterexamples. Lots of important
art declines to be beautiful, to start interesting conversations, or to care
at all about the history of art, for example. In other words, no one ever sat
on a bench in a contemporary art museum looking at paintings and, chin-on-
fist, said "there has to be a better way!"

This article goes to great effort to insert Generative Art into the history of
art, more or less finding math-y geometric art or artists who used algorithms.
These artists were often doing so to resist earlier ideologies about the
genius of the master's hand, or to pretend to escape their own subjectivity,
rather than out of an enthusiasm for visual algorithms as a craft. I'd suggest
those interested in contextualizing Generative Art historically also research
"process art," which normally had a messier aesthetic but, like Generative
Art, posited the activity of producing the artwork as the most expressive
aspect of the artist's practice. The act of painting, for process art, would
be more important than the painting itself, almost closer to performance art
than any other movement. That certainly seems to fit the Generative Art ethos,
which is often about the construction of a specific activity that leads to an
uncertain result. That said, process art is associated with the 1970's.

We're about two decades into a deep rejection of art movements, which are
inextricable from the problematic, exclusive teleology of modernism. A certain
kind of person with a certain kind of power used to dictate what forms and
ideas were important, and rewarded artists who fit the narrative and, well,
were the same race and gender as all the other successful artists. These days,
artists are generally expected to be individuals rather than to be swept up in
some cultural wave. To be part of a group with such a narrow direction ("we
make art using cutting-edge software!") subordinates the individuality of each
artist and, I think, compromises their efforts to be successful in the field
of contemporary art.

Therefor, I think that the project of including Generative Art as a movement
into contemporary art discourse is probably quixotic. Instead, I'd suggest
that we're likely to see more and more individual artists incorporate these
tools, not just because they're neat tools but in service of their own unique
aims. Simon Denny, for example, engages heavily with digital and start-up
culture, but he does so (I would argue) from a place of critique and
fascination about what the state of technology implies about both current
society and human beings on some kind of fundamental level. I don't doubt that
an individual artist could exclusively use Processing to make their work and
have an art career. But they would need to make the case for themselves,
rather than for Generative Art, and in my opinion the less they position
themselves as representing a craft-driven community the more likely they are
to be successful.

I did want to say that I really appreciate the effort in this article to
highlight the contributions of women to Generative Art. This is very much in
keeping with where the art world is at the moment. Just like tech, art has
been the subject of extreme discrimination that is only just beginning to be
improved, and there is broad consensus about that within the art world.

~~~
itronitron
I found the post interesting and appreciated the copious references to 20th
Century artists. In my opinion, the generative work is preoccupied with the
method of creation and is nothing more than a self-pleasuring act, they
provide no meaningful paths to insight or reflection for the viewer.

------
acdanger
Not necessarily generative art, but I've always been a big fan of Team Lab’s
work.

[https://www.teamlab.art/](https://www.teamlab.art/)

------
lixtra
Warning to data plan users: The page is 11MB.

------
abainbridge
Personally, I don't trust art from digital computers. It might contain
subliminal messages from the feds. Gimme a few sticks and elastic bands any
day. The Harmonograph -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck_JY-Z5kZI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck_JY-Z5kZI)

