Generative Arts & Literature: an overview

Generative Arts & Literature:an overview SM2220 CIL core: a concept-driven studio class Linda Lai Spring 2007

This course has TWO main purposes: 1. to re-view the key features of 20th modern & contemporary art practices & to tie these features to what we call “generative art” and “generative literature”; and 2. to focus on the idea of generative systems and trace the histories of related practices, and manifestations in the practice of digital new media

This course has THREE parts Part 1: Overview of modern & contemporary art & generative practices in arts and literature: rule-driven methods and generative systems + creating an open-ended “book” OR an objective of generative structure + realizing a simple visual work via Actionscript Part 2: In-depth study of the works of the OULIPO group (Potential Literature) and other examples of experimental literature, and their relevance to computer-based art work: relation between ideas + transforming & adapting an OULIPO work into a digital work Part 3: Advanced generative systems (Complex systems): “cellular automata” and “self-organization” in concept and simple programming

Conceptual issues also cover: *In-depth and critical analysis of our language habits and language as conventions. *Different modes ofrule-driven creativity: automatism, chance, and generative methods *The relevance of simple mathematical constructions to creative works

I. Modern & Contemporary Art

Questions raised by Modernist art practices(Modernism 現代主義) ↓ Mimetic functions of art ↓ Representation/signification value ↓ Expressive quality ↑Exploration of concepts ↑ Consideration of the tool and its uniqueness ↑ (Medium-specificity) ↑ Event / performative emphasis ↑ Emphasis on structure ↑ Design quality of work / art work as a design ↑ Rule-driven creativity: process & discovery

Questions raised by Modernist art practices(Modernism 現代主義) ↓ Mimetic functions of art ↓ Representation/signification value ↓ Expressive quality ↑ Exploration of concepts ↑ Consideration of the tool and its uniqueness ↑ (Medium-specificity) ↑ Event / performative emphasis ↑↑ Emphasis on structure ↑ ↑ Design quality of work / art work as a design ↑ ↑ ↑ Rule-driven creativity: process & discovery

Generative Art Rule-drivenness… Chance Automatism Algorithms Series Trans-genre

Generative Art: an initial case for review Gego(German born female artist residing in Venezuela) Lines …planes …objects …environment Triangles… Squares… Spheres Triangles into nets Triangles forming circular planes Triangles into cylinders and tubular structures Triangles forming spheres Squares into sheets Squares into nets Square as frames…

Generative Art: an initial case for review Gego(German born female artist residing in Venezuela) Anti-sculpture… “I still dislike the word ‘sculpture’. They are not sculptures.” (referring to her works) Dictionary definitions, she pointed out, describe sculpture as any assembled objects. She felt such a definition does not sufficiently cover her works – mainly jointed pieces and structures. Her intention was not only form and volume, but transparent structure. ***She emphasizes she never made sketches of her work…

Special features emerging in 20th-century art practices Open-endedness of Modern Art ↓ Emphasis on spatial interiority ↓ Process-oriented-ness (for both readers & authors) Inter-media dialogues encouraged

Open-endedness of Modern Art • The absence of a (clear-cut) beginning and end forces our contemplation and reception to focus on the spatial interiority of the work in question. • By spatial interiority, we mean how internal components commune among themselves, thus giving predominant priority to the process of narrative/structural unfolding.

Open-endedness of modern art: Examples: music by Meredith Monk, Boulez, John Cage, Jackson Pollock Spatial interiority Process-oriented-ness (for both authors and readers)

II.Generative Art/Generative Systems:visual arts, literature & (computer-)automated art

What is Generative Art? Generative Art performs the idea as process.

What is Generative Art? Generative Art performs the idea as process. Rules as constraint produce a somewhat automatic process. Rules are used to ensure the next possible step forward. GA begs the question of what’s possible & what is virtual

What is Generative Art? Generative Art performs the idea as process. Rules as constraint produce a somewhat automatic process. Rules are used to ensure the next possible step forward. The intricacies of a GA work often lie in the rational relation between each two steps + the leaps-and-bounds differences at the end of a sequence of operations.

Generative Art? To generate = to produce, to bring into existence, to bring forward, to present to view or notice… Generative = capable of producing Generative   procedural, serialist

Generative Systems? …a system capable of functioning with generative forces… …a system that imposes a structure on something that is very lively, viable and fluid…

Generators …a unit (part) of the system that is capable of generating (producing) more units…

Generators What does it mean to say that something is (serves the functions of) a generator? e.g.: when is an apple just an apple? when is an apple a generator?

Generators A generator can be thought of as a unitcapable of producing… Anything can become a generator when… *it is turned into a principle for more productive activities… *it is studied for its ability to push forward the production of the next possible members…

Generators Generators can be… A key word An object A name A graphic element (point, line, shape etc.) A fragment of a story A narrative A dramatic structure …….

Generators Generators can be… Visual… Aural… Verbal… Structural… …

THREE phases of procedural evolvement towards a complex system [1st phase:] Design of structuring device: rules +procedures [2nd phase:] Spatial extension + establishment of networks [3rd phase:] Genetic code of artificial units

rules + procedurescreator/artist  reader/user Rules… • something to be acquired/learned (by the users/receivers/participants) • Something enabling (allowing more complex tasks to be carried out)

rules + procedures Rules… • Based on sources that are outside of the work itself

rules + procedures Rules map out procedures… e.g. Serial methods

extension + networks Exchange of languages (esp. between visual art and literature) Visual and linguistic elements are turned into generators of a conscious and reflexive creative process Practice of collaboration

artificial objects Celestino Soddu: A generative project is “a concept-software that works producing three-dimensional unique and non-repeatable events as possible and manifold expressions of the generating idea identified by the designer as a visionary world.” [see introduction to the Generative Art Conferences]

artificial objects KEY emphases in Soddu’s quote: • What is possible (as opposed to what is actual): -possible worlds, possible space, possible vision... -work is the designer’s visionary world -calls attention to the amazing, endless expansion of human creativity

artificial objects KEY emphases in Soddu’s quote: (2) Design + Non-repeatable/unpredictable events “design”: carefully planned structure “non-repeatable/unpredictable events”: enhanced degree of complexity due to the use of the computer. 

artificial objects KEY emphases in Soddu’s quote: (3) The basic characteristics of computer – as tools for storage in memory AND automated executive of tasks – are turned into the core creative factors.

artificial objects In all three cases, There’s a shift of emphasis – from more humanistic input in the creative process to the act of conception, leading to the design of rules and procedures

artificial objects Generative art brings back the human creativity that computer had killed in the beginning of the computer era: Computers become… “tools that open new fields and enhance our understanding of creativity as an indissoluble synthesis between art and science.”

Generative Visual Arts TWO kinds of generative systems in 20th-C art history (Diane Kirkpatrick): • Close generative systems: [e.g. conceptual art] in each work a closed analytic structure is set up which becomes a generator for exploration

Generative Visual Arts TWO kinds of generative systems in 20th-C art history (Diane Kirkpatrick): (2) Organic generative systems: A work begins with creating one word or idea and uses that to generate the next, and the next and so on…(creating generators)

Generative Visual Arts: work examples Josef Albers: (1) “Homage to Square” series (1950s) Frank Stella: (2) “Protractor Series” (93 paintings based on 31 canvas formats each with 3 compositional types) Sol LeWitt: (3) “Squares with Corners Torn off” (1975) X (4) “Modular Open Cube”

Generative Visual Arts: work examples Dorothea Rockburne: (5) “Set” (1970) – inspiration from Mathematics (6) “Radiant and Fields” (1971) – concept of units becoming more complex X (7) “Drawing That Makes Itself” (1973) X Jennifer Bartlett: (8) “Rhapsody” (1975-76)

Generative Visual Arts: work examples Doug Huebler: (9) “Duration Piece No. 6” (NY, 4/1969) – photo series X (10) “Location Piece No. 6” (1970) X (11) “Duration Piece No. 7” (12) “Location Pieces No. 7”

Generative Visual Arts: work examples Sonia Sheridan: (13) mono-prints series based on one image (1963-64) (14) “Unwind the Wheel of Time” (1979) – eight drawings X

IV. Experimental Literature: “multiplicity” / “assemblage”

“Reader-as-author” [A] text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not…the author…. To give writing its future…the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author. --Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”

“Reader-as-author” • reader-as-author • author-as-reader • multiple authors [Deleuze] assemblage (idea of single author, single belief, 知行合一and transcendental self overthrown)

The Infinite Possibilities of “Conceivable Books” We must make a careful distinction…between systems and texts. A system (for instance, a linguistic system) is the whole of the possibilities displayed by a given language. In this framework it holds the principle of unlimited semiosis…. The system is perhaps finite but unlimited. …In this sense certainly all the conceivable books are comprised by and within a good dictionary. …If conceived in such a way, hypertext can transform every reader into an author. -- Umberto Eco, “Afterword” in The Future of the Book, ed. Geoffrey Nunberg (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press), p. 302

The Infinite Possibilities of “Conceivable Books” • A finite system can produce the infinite. • Structural linguistics: langue and parole

Deleuze & Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus / Rhizome Writing is the assemblage of the un-attributable multiple, as the measure of something else.

Deleuze and Guattari (in A Thousand Plateaus): “A book has neither object nor subject; it is made of variously formed matters, and very different dates and speeds. To attribute the book to a subject is to overlook this working of matters, and the exteriority of their relations. … In a book, as in all things, there are lines of articulation or segmentarity, strata and territories; but also lines of flight, movements of deterritorialization and destratification. Comparative rates of flow on these lines produce phenomena of relative slowness and viscosity, or, on the contrary, of acceleration and rupture. All this, lines and measurable speeds, constitutes an assemblage.”

Deleuze & Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus / Rhizome • “There is no difference between what a book talks about and how it is made. Therefore a book has no object. As an assemblage, a book has only itself, in connection with other assemblages and in relation to other bodies without organs. We will never ask what a book means, as signified or signifier. … We will ask what it functions with, in connection with what other things it does or does not transmit intensities …”

Deleuze & Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus / Rhizome “A book exists only through the outside and on the outside. A book itself is a little machine; what is the relation of this literary machine to a war machine, love machine, revolutionary machine, etc. – and an abstract machine that sweeps them along?”

Generative Arts & Literature: an overview