Mitchell Whitelaw

Ten Questions Concerning Generative Computer Art

ABSTRACT In this paper the authors pose 10 questions they consider the most important for understanding generative computer art. For each question, the authors briefly discuss its implications and suggest how it might form the basis for further discussion.

A framework for understanding generative art

In this article we argue that a framework for the description, analysis and comparison of generative artworks is needed. Existing ideas from kinetic art and other domains in which process description is prominent are shown to be inadequate. Therefore, we propose a new framework that meets this need and facilitates the long-term aim of constructing a comprehensive taxonomy of generative art. Our framework is divided into four major components: a description of a works entities; its processes and their environmental interactions; and the outcomes experienced by the works audience. We describe a set of diverse generative artworks in terms of our framework, demonstrating how it can be applied in practice to compare and contrast them.

Synesthesia and Cross-Modality in Contemporary Audiovisuals

ABSTRACT This paper considers contemporary practice in “fused” or transcoded audiovisual art, focusing on the work of Australian artists Robin Fox and Andrew Gadow. In this practice sound and image are tightly linked by a cross-wiring of media signals. Synesthesia is often invoked around such work, proposing a parallel between perceptual and technical cross-wiring. This synesthetic analogy provides a historical context as well as an analytic frame; it is tested here through a reading of relevant neuro- and perceptual science that illustrates some striking parallels. Ultimately, however, an alternative model is proposed based on cross-modal binding, where stimuli in different modalities are “bound” into correlated wholes. Understood as cross-modal objects, transcoded audiovisuals direct us to the signal that underpins both sound and image, as well as to the map, or domain of correlation, between modalities. The wider significance of this practice, it is argued, lies in its ability to provide an aesthetic and affective manifestation of these abstract structures—structures that are central to new media culture, but largely imperceptible.

Strange ontologies in digital culture

The concept of a “strange ontology” is articulated via the intersection of philosophical and computational definitions of ontology. Within digital media, each simulated world requires both; an ontology, to define its existence as data; and a subject, the player or user, who engages with the simulation. Glitches or interventions in these simulations create ontologies that are inconsistent with our lived experience, rendering them “strange.” We draw upon a range of works to illustrate this concept, including game art, social networking software, Guglielmettis “Laboratories of though” and generative art. This article aims to define this concept and outlines a terrain for further investigation.

The Abstract Organism: Towards a Prehistory for A-Life Art

The author examines historical precedents for contemporary art practice using artificial life, in particular in the work of Paul Klee and Kasimir Malevich. Similarities are identified between artificial life and the philosophical tradition of organicism; specific examples from Klee and Malevich indicate that those artists were engaged in a form of creative organicist thought that imagined the realization of living structures in artificial media.

Morphogenetics: generative processes in the work of Driessens and Verstappen

Dutch artists Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen work with generative techniques in a range of media, from digital imaging and software to sculpture and robotics. In their own words, they pursue “an activity that explores the unseen, the unthought and the unknown”. To this end they create rich, elegant, self-constraining generative systems, which draw on, and re-engineer, techniques from the field of artificial life. This paper sets out a critical survey of the artists’ generative work, and shows how their application of a-life techniques destabilises, and enriches, some of the problematic aspects of those techniques. Specifically, where a-life frequently ignores complex morphogenetic processes, dematerialising them into a formal and instantaneous moment of genetic expression, the artists demonstrate the possibility and potential of richer, more complex and more ‘materialised’ models.

Accretor: Generative materiality in the work of driessens and verstappen

Accretor, by the Dutch artists Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen, is a generative artwork that adopts and adapts artificial life techniques to produce intricate three-dimensional forms. This article introduces and analyzes Accretor, considering the enigmatic quality of the generated objects and in particular the role of materiality in this highly computational work. Accretor demonstrates a tangled continuity between digital and physical domains, where the constraints and affordances of matter inform both formal processes and aesthetic interpretations. Drawing on Arps notion of the concrete artwork and McCormack and Dorins notion of the computational sublime, the article finally argues that Accretor demonstrates what might be called a processual sublime, evoking expansive processes that span both computational and non-computational systems.

Research Through Design and Digital Humanities in Practice: What, How and Who in an Archive Research Project.

This article highlights shared methods, questions, and challenges between Research Through Design (RtD) and Digital Humanities (DH) through the discussion of an archival research project. In DH, debates continue e.g. in (Gold, Debates in the Digital Humanities. University of Minnesota Press, 2012) regarding the impact of digital technologies on epistemology, methodology, and our professional identities as researchers, scholars, academics, and teachers. Our reading of this debate is that there is a tripartite relationship between the kind of work we should call DH (and aspire to produce), the nature of DH knowledge, research and scholarship (particularly regarding the role of artefacts produced), and issues of disciplinary orientation or professional identity. We could phrase these as the what, how, and who of DH and, of course, RtD. The discussion of our project is in no sense intended to provide an exclusive answer to those questions, but to give one snapshot of what DH and RtD may look like when they come together. We emphasize that this relationship can and will be productive for both disciplines and point to the lack of significant discussion hereto.