If you’ve seen any reality zoo/wild-life program you’ll recognize this. Five minutes into the show you’re confronted with a wounded, magnificent animal, held in captivity so its caretakers can nurture and feed it. And inevitably, after three commercial breaks, they release it, teary-eyed, back into the wild.
Choices, the core of generative art, the code making decisions instead of the artist. The artist relinquishing control.
What is choice?
Recently, during an online discussion about generative art, determinism, emergence, and the like, I felt like we were running in circles. The problem seemed to be different interpretations of “predictability” and it’s relationship to determinism.
From my very first steps with processing, I’ve always been fascinated by the division of space, volumes and surfaces. In retrospect, many of my constructs can be seen as explorations of this theme.
All images created by giving text prompts to the ML assistance tool, Midjourney (Terms of Service).
