What is Generative Art?
At its core generative art is the creation of rules and/or systems that "share" the decision making process with the artist.
The movement emerges on the heels of genres like Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism, celebrating the chaos and serendipity of its predecessors.
Some of its early exposers are the musician John Cage (1912-1992), who started using the I Ching as a tool for decision-making in its compositions and later set up randomness of repetitions and variations in its musical scores, and Vera Molnar (1924-2023), one of the first visual artists using computer algorithms and mathematical formulas to create her pieces.
[RanLo #134 - A piece from one of my upcoming collections, based on a study of Vera Molnar's 'Interruptions']
Throughout the last century Generative art has used the most advanced technology available to create something previously unattainable by humans.
In the words of Vera Molnar:
“Without the aid of a computer, it would not be possible to materialize quite so faithfully an image that previously existed only in the artist’s mind. This may sound paradoxical, but the machine, which is thought to be cold and inhuman, can help to realize what is most subjective, unattainable, and profound in a human being.”
Today's generative art applications span from algorithmic visual pieces created in a variety of programming languages to autonomous decision making tools used in music production.
[left: snippet of a p5.js code for generative art, top right: art exhibition created in Touch Designer, a visual programming software, bottom right: an eurorack modular system to create generative music]
In my artistic practice I use the programming language javascript and its library p5.js to write the rules that ultimately define my pieces.
Every collection on this website is the result of a different algorithm.
My focus while creating is the system itself, the rules that define the outputs.
[Various iterations from the project Neon Shipibo, all outputs from the exact same algorithm.]
In the same way that a painter would spend countless hours working toward the right texture of green, or the right shapes of a hand, a flower, a rock, I spend countless hours learning the rules behind what are ultimately natural systems and applying them in code.
A wonderful example of that learning would be "The Nature Of Code", by Daniel Shiffman, a free book and online course that goes through the mathematical rules behind forces and resistances, the behavior of cells, neural networks and much more.
My creative process is a mixture of deepening my knowledge and understanding of maths and programming practices, a research for aesthetic, historical and psychological meaning, and, simply put, the fun and thrill of diving into something new and unknown.
I feel like generative art broadens my understanding of the world and the ways it functions.
In the words of Tyler Hobbs, the creator of mesmerizing long-form art systems like Fidenza and QQL:
"Generative artwork also tends to explain things about the world to us, given that the universe itself is generative, it's based on laws, and probabilities. These result in certain patterns, emergent patterns, and generative artwork deals heavily in patterns. So, one cool of example of that is a seashell. [...] the pattern there happens to be very, very similar to a cellular automata that Stephen Wolfram created (or discovered) called Rule 30, except that it has some glitches in it."
You can watch the video of his whole talk here, I highly recommend it.