Panel
1 : Extravagant Synthesis
Emergence,
autonomy and processes in electronic art.
"Matter rather than forms should be the object of our attention, its configurations and changes of configuration, and its simple action, and the laws of action or motion; for forms are figments of the human mind, unless you call those laws of action forms" – Francis Bacon
| Participants seated L to R in the video as follows: | ||
| Chair Panellists |
Peter
Morse (University of Melbourne, Australia) Jon McCormack; Maria Verstappen; Jon Bird; Rob Saunders. |
|
Starting points and additional material for the panel discussion...
This panel discusses the (potential) role of emergence in electronic art. Specifically what are the benefits for art of attempting to implement computational processes which result in emergent behaviour? How does emergence relate to the appearance of novelty or the concept of creativity?
Also of relevance are issues concerning the limitations of the digital / logical machine as facilitator for this kind of process-based art. Are physical media more appropriate tools for producing emergent properties and generative art than computational media? Is it at all reasonable to claim that the execution of a computer program could ever give rise to emergent or creative phenomena? How can this be decided?
"Digital computers have been around for so long that its easy to forget that there might be other alternatives, particularly when it comes to talking about process aesthetics (the vast majority of discussion about aesthetics does not include the computational - this in itself might suggest something). Cybernetics, for instance, looked at a variety of other ways that one might be able to create process-based, open-ended aesthetic experiences. Unfortunately, digital computers have become predominant primarily because of what Bernard Waits refers to as the "American Ideology" : the legitimation of technology as an ideology that ultimately is tied to "the maximisation of society's productivity and the most economic use of its resources."
Computers have been spectacularly successful in the service of this ideology, but in relation to other goals they have been more prosaic. Computation is based on what was once an obscure branch of mathematics and logic, that has now become a predominate metaphor throughout modern society. It could be beneficial to consider other alternatives, and speculate on what results they could have achieved if they had received the same financial and intellectual effort that computing has received."
from Jon
McCormack
"The Physics here are the most general features of natural phenomena: Cause, change, time, place, infinity and continuity. The science of nature (physis) physics, studies those things whose principles and causes of change and rest are internal. The end is an internal governing principle of the process rather than an external goal."
from Aristotle's treatise on Nature
"...the work of art may be conceptualized from a cybernetic point of view as a complex dynamic system which in certain of its aspects may be similar to the functioning of a developing organism."
"The emphasis of cybernetics
on process and change may have been one of the factors generating an increasing
feeling among artists that art should be regarded as a process rather
than as the production of static objects."
"Ascott has argued forcefully that the aim of art should be the process-oriented
one of producing further artistic activity in the viewer and that this
can be achieved by both the stimulation of art objects and also by certain
kinds of social interaction..."
from Apter,
Michael J., "Cybernetics and Art",
in "Kinetic Art, Theory and Practice, Selections from the Journal
Leonardo", Malina F.J., (ed). Dover, 1974
"It's undoubtedly one of the best pieces I've ever done. Sometimes everything just comes together and suddenly you've created this wonderful organism, and in this piece it happened."
from Steve Reich (on Music for 18 Musicians), liner notes, Nonesuch records 1998
"When a composer feels a responsibility to make, rather than accept, he eliminates from the area of possibility all those events that do not suggest this at that point in time vogue for profundity. For he takes himself seriously, wishes to be considered great, and he thereby diminishes his love and increases his fear and concern about what people will think. There are many serious problems confronting such an individual. He must do it better, more impressively, more beautifully etc. than anybody else. And what, precisely, does this, this beautiful profound object, this masterpiece, have to do with Life? It has this to do with Life: that it is separate from it. Now we see it, and now we don't. When we see it we feel better, and when we are away from it, we don't feel so good."
from John Cage, published in 1959, written in 1952 in Nyman, "Experimental Music p1
"In the music of both men what is heard is indistinguishable from its process. In fact, process itself might be called the Zeitgeist of our age."
from Morton Feldman of Boulez and Cage
