EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Second Iteration : emergence, the second international conference on generative systems in the electronic arts. At your fingertips is a summary of the ideas presented at this event, held from the 5-7th December 2001, in Melbourne, Australia. This CD-ROM contains supporting software, visual and aural material, as well as the full texts of papers, summaries of artist and technical talks, panel sessions and a host of other goodies submitted to the conference.
Whilst it would usually be pertinent at this stage to briefly introduce the conference theme of emergence, I feel that enough has been said about this elsewhere in the proceedings, especially in the paper by Jon McCormack and myself. This introduction will instead provide some general background information.
This document constitutes a collection of papers, artist and technical talk abstracts and material which details the commitment of a relatively small group of individuals as far as Arts practice is concerned, or the practice of Science for that matter. The individuals who have contributed to Second Iteration are engaged in an exploration which fuses ideas spanning diverse fields in the Arts and Sciences: sculpture; painting and visual arts; Mathematics and Physics; Music and Architecture; Biology; Chemistry; History; Engineering; Philosophy; Cultural Theory; Computer Science... and others. All of these fields come within the domain of Generative Art.
An approach to defining Generative Art appeared in the First Iteration conference proceedings introduction. Briefly, and loosely, we refer to an artwork as "generative" if it involves, as part of its means of expression, some process which is authored or established by the artist, and which operates to a greater or lesser extent, independently of him or her. The work as exhibited may be the process, or it may be an artifact produced by it. In either case, we consider a metaphor which relates the biological term of genotype to that which is created by the artist (a set of instructions, a set of axioms, a set of rules about interactions etc.), and phenotype to the work as it is experienced by a viewer (a still image, a visual or aural representation of a process, a piece of music, a sculpture or architectural space etc.).
As shall be discussed below, there are many artists who have employed processes in their work. To distinguish between works which employ process, and generative works more specifically, a Generative Artist is one who not only employs processes in their work, but who is concerned with process as it relates to his or her art. That is, the process is not only a means to an end, but it is at least partially, the motivation for the work, the end itself. Whilst the most frequently employed process-based works have utilized movement, there are other process types, sometimes more difficult to control, which may also be employed in generative art. Growth and decay, repetitious pulses and chaotic systems all provide potential for generative art [3]. Some of these have been explored in the physical domain (for example in the Kinetic, Op(tical) and Process Art movements) but recently, it has also been feasible to explore these processes in the logical context in the form of computer software. Whilst previously artists intent on utilizing and/or exploring processes needed to cross into engineering and sculpture, now they are finding they need to become proficient computer programmers.
Perhaps the first generative sculptural works were gardens. Following closely on their heels might well be the manipulation of water within fountains and cascades, or wind, guided through wind-chimes and later over the strings of aeolian harps. In these artifacts, the processes operating the work occur outside the control of the artist. Although they may be guided, the growth of a plant, movement of the wind and the falling of a mass under gravity are natural, physical processes, harnessed or guided by humans. Modern desk ornaments make use of similar principles to these forms of generative artifact. Examples include shifting sand-landscapes formed in the space between fluid-filled plates of glass, and magnetic pendulums swinging in seemingly unpredictable patterns. Of course there are also the large-scale architectural features which adorn our cities – massive mobiles and water jets – which rely on the same principles for their operation.
Hero of Alexandria is known for harnessing pressurized steam to drive simple life-like sculptures [4]. Later generative work was powered by forces more readily contained and controlled than the weather, gravity and cumbersome steam jets. With clockwork mechanisms came automata of varying sophistication and purpose: enormous machines driving animated characters hourly around medieval clock-faces; miniature clockwork figurines; wind-up robots and vehicles for children - the energy stored in a spring has been utilized to drive autonomous machines for centuries. Whilst these may well be classed as art with a lower case 'a', the connection with generative works of the present lies in their autonomous operation. This autonomy also links Generative Art practice to research in the field of Artificial Life.
Many artists have explored the idea of dynamics, most frequently movement.
The Futurists for one aimed to capture the process of movement in their
works [1, p283]. From Cubism too in 1912, Duchamp
transformed the process of a Nude Descending a Staircase into a
painting. His aim was to incorporate the temporal dimension into a static
image, a precursor for his kinetic works including his famous Bicycle
Wheel. Calder too directly worked around the concept of movement,
his sculptures a complex network of mobile elements [7].
The Op(tical) Artists produced the sensation of movement by tricking the
human perceptual system through optical illusions [8].
Process Art, based in Conceptual Art, emphasized the impermanence of materials
- decay being its main vehicle. Even early experiments with cinema might
be seen as falling into the category of process-based art. Although, as
a process, cinema is not usually perceived as "interesting"
and viewers look for content in the images, once the tom-foolery that
is a "movie" was fascinating for its own sake.
Whilst paintings are necessarily based around the perception or representation of movement through colour, shade, line, texture and illusion, the motivations of the Kinetic Artists were based around the incorporation of motion into their art as a means of expression. Dynamism was a feature they did not just represent, but one which they instantiated in their art. To this end they produced autonomous sculptures operated with electric motors and moving light sources, in part inspired by Calder's work with wind and hand-driven mobiles (see Tinguely [2, p251]), but also moving away from these to create displays on oscilloscopes, early computers and video monitors, utilizing light and sound in concert [5]. Kinetic Artists also dabbled in a form of 'wet' art. This involved the application of chemistry to the production of dynamic effects in solution which were then projected onto wall space.
The scientific study of Cybernetics also provided influences to some Kinetic
Artists arguably interested in more than pure "movement". Apter
[5] writes of three related areas in which he feels Cybernetics may shed
light on art, each of which is of relevance here: the idea of machines
as works of art; machines to create works of art; and art as a process.
The first of these ideas, he claims, was assisted in its acceptance by
the study of Cybernetics. This study helped to break down any misgivings
about the association of machines with art, perhaps by demonstrating the
close relationship between life and machines. In the context of art-making
machines, Apter briefly discusses the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition
held in London in 1968. Artists here exhibited a "self-consciously
cybernetic art". It was here that Tinguely exhibited his painting
machines for which both "the machine in action and the results of
this action may be regarded as art". Tinguely's earlier association
with the Kinetic Art movement had seen him constructing Balubas,
machines which came to be recognized as "organisms" driven by
electric motors whose "repetitive motions are transformed into gestures
of anarchic freedom" [2, p38]. His painting machines took this a
step further, his sculptures were now not only art themselves, they were
generating it. Other artists at Cybernetic Serendipity were exhibiting
works in which visual patterns, poetry and musical compositions were generated
by computer rather than directly by human hands.
The Experimental Music scene of the 50's and 60's is worthy of special mention in the context of generative art. "Experimental composers are by and large not concerned with prescribing a defined time-object whose materials, structuring and relationships are calculated and arranged in advance, but are more excited by the prospect of outlining a situation in which sounds may occur, a process of generating action (sounding or otherwise), a field delineated by certain compositional 'rules'" [6, p4]. In light of this, it is perhaps these artists whose work is most closely affiliated with Generative Art as it is understood here. The performance of a musical work is itself a process which is available for manipulation on-the-fly: by performers / audiences; by conductors; and (through specification of a procedure in the score for interpretation by the previously listed human elements) by the "composer". Perhaps it is therefore natural that generative procedures should find a stronghold in music.
It was Cage who, as a composer, first took seriously to the principle
of aleatory in his compositions, allowing chance and external influences
to dictate the way in which they unfolded. For example the Chinese text
the I Ching was utilized to answer questions about the progression
of his piece Music of Changes. Other composers including Brecht,
and La Monte Young also incorporated random and chance happenings into
their scores. Umberto Eco writes in an essay on randomness, mathematical
rule and Programmed Art, "They, in order to achieve poetry... have
realized the richness of chance and disorder, certainly not unaware of
the re-evaluation – made by scientific disciplines – of random
processes. They have accepted freely every suggestion which comes from
the material..." [2, p267]. This idea also found application in experimental
music of the 50's and beyond.
Apart from Cage's incorporation of chance into his work, others have utilized physical variation in properties of sound-generating apparatus for effect. In the work It's Gonna Rain, Steve Reich experimented with mechanical tape recorders looping simultaneously. Due to the differences inherent in their physical mechanisms, they gradually shifted in and out of phase with one another. He also experimented with phasing processes introduced by swinging microphones from cords across the face of the amplifiers to which they were wired (in order to generate oscillating feedback tones). Alvin Lucier, also fascinated by physical feedback processes, has composed Music on a Long Thin Wire which takes the natural oscillations of a tightly stretched strand of metal as its source of audio – again a process in which the inherent properties of the wire are harnessed, not dampened.
Not only may composers accommodate variation in mechanical processes for
their works. Where human performers are involved they too may participate
in a composer-specified process. For example, people may read texts or
sing at their own speed, produce a tone or interpret an instruction as
they wish, thus using the natural differences between people as a source
of novelty, rather than trying to stamp this variation out during rehearsals.
These ideas appeared in the musical works of Cardew including his The
Great Learning, and also stretched to the "music theatre"
of the Scratch Orchestra.
In Cardew's work, and many compositions of the Scratch Orchestra and Fluxus,
performers are given a score in the form of an algorithm. Sometimes the
individual performers follow their algorithm from start to finish, their
differences in interpretation and timing producing the dynamics of the
work. In other instances, such as for Cardew's Paragraph 7 of The
Great Learning, (a work which was performed at First
Iteration in 1999) the performers take note of each other's contributions
as the piece unfolds, and incorporate their observations into their own
contribution, thereby creating a complex tapestry of interactions which
result in a work of intricacy and variability, yet still within the parameters
laid down by the composer.
Much of the work described above was produced in the 1950's and 60's. Where is Generative Art at the end of 2001? To state the obvious, much art is now made on the computer. This is not necessarily to the exclusion of the more traditional practices of sculpture, music, painting, installation and so forth, and it is not only in addition or separately from these media either that computers are utilized. There is now the potential to create work which harnesses the corporeality of traditional media and fuses it with information and meaning derived from the digitally-represented structures which our computing machinery is so capable of handling. Whilst in itself this is not something new, what is perhaps more interesting is the realization that the computing machine need not be a passive bystander in the art-making process - the Cybernetic Art of the 60's is re-flying some forty years on with more sophisticated technology driving its wings.
The computing machine need not create static images or pre-computed audio.
Its immense speed and storage capacity may be used to contribute to and
create dynamic and expressive works of art which may one day be as interactive
as organisms, and as subtle and rich as the physical environment in which
we live. This is not a bell for the redundancy of Biology, but a chance
to supplement it with a uniquely human approach to understanding the everyday
marvel of life. Artists such as those participating in the Iteration
conferences, the Generative Art mailing lists, those creating countless
generative works for their web pages, for gallery installation, for electronic
art festivals or just for the fun of it, to some extent, these people
all view the world as a dynamic entity. They bring to their work this
understanding that the world is not only matter and form, it is process.
Please enjoy the Second Iteration : emergence CD-ROM and accompanying audio CD.
Alan Dorin
Chair, Second Iteration
REFERENCES
