2d:null 2e:["$","title",null,{"children":"Assignment #9 | KarlieDoesNotExist | Observable"}] 33:T5dc,md` ## Notes on ### [Generative Practice. The State Of The Art (2010)](http://digicult.it/digimag/issue-057/generative-practice-the-state-of-the-art/)
## 1. Visual complexity
An agreement that the dynamics/behavioural complexity, in comparison with visual complexity, is more central to generative art. **Jeremy Levine**: An important distinction between **visual complexity and behavioural complexity** – which is the dynamics of a complex system. **Leonardo Solaas**: the relationship between generative art and complexity is one of affinity, but not one of necessity. "Generative" can also go along with "simple", "linear" or whatever we conceive the opposite of "complex" to be. **Marius Watz**: Obviously (visual) complexity is an aesthetic choice, but in the **scientific sense complex systems** are central to the practice of Generative Art. **Mitchell Whitelaw**: Often the visual complexity in generative art is actually visualizing a part of this form-space by overlaying or combining a range of forms into a single outcome. This isn’t really complexity in the sense of structure or dynamics ("complex systems") ... but it works to convey a sense of variety and potential that is central in generative art.
Jared Tarbell’s **Invader Fractal**

`34:Tfb5,md` ## 3. Human, Non-human, Post-human Generative Art is about the various possible forms of creative collaboration between a human and a non-human. ** Leonardo Solaas: ** From an aesthetic point of view, generative work is always assailed by **two** more or less symmetrical temptations:

Pursuing a straightforward **imitation of traditional art**
- Harold Cohen’s Aaron
- Lots of today's machine-learning-based artworks
Giving up to the pleasures of **mathematical harmony**: a classicist Pythagorean aesthetic that degenerates very quickly into a sort of digital kitsch
- [Computational geometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_geometry)
- Countless renderings of a pure mathematical system (or rely on a mathematical system)
  As generative art leaves behind a childhood full of fractal toys among Lindenmayer trees, and reaches, if not maturity, at least some kind of confident youth, I regard it as its biggest challenge to find aesthetic venues that are not just **uncritical imitation of art as we know it, nor imitation of nature for the sake of it**.
  Differential Growth (?); L-systems; Fractals
  
  *Screenshots from Thomas Leung's [presentation slides](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UsUdXGH6NerEeB9mrulE76lVS-ig1Aaa/view), thanks!*
Beyond the above two forms (or beyond aesthetics?):
- Randomness, chaos, complexity: [inconvergent](https://inconvergent.net/generative/)
- Automatic systems showing complex behaviours (dynamics), self-organisation, etc.
- Materiality + randomness: (some of) Pe Lang's analogue "generative" installations, etc.
- Interactivity: Boundary Functions (1998) — Scott Snibbe, [Very Nervous System (1986) - David Rokeby](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GALMmVZ49Pc)

There is something I'm not sure to what extent I agree with Leonardo Solaas:
"On one hand, the “human” in “post-human” is for me specifically the modern subject; **the illuminist man that subdues nature through reason and will. "** (isn't that a bit too human-centred??)

In posthumanism, limitations and fallibility of human intelligence are confessed, even though it does not imply abandoning the rational tradition of humanism. I think most philosophers would say, through reasoning and will, humans create frameworks of knowledge in our minds. The "post-human" era should be the time when the human mind can think outside the boundary of empirical existence. *How We Became Posthuman* by N. Katherine Hayles: Such co-evolution (the evolution of posthuman alongside the evolution of intelligent machine) according to some strands of the posthuman discourse, allows one to extend their subjective understandings of real experiences beyond the boundaries of embodied existence. "I think we are in dire need of a term for this thing that comes after modernism but is not post-modernism for **this new way of being in the world** that substitutes hierarchical structures for complex systems, control for self-organization, unity and universality for multiplicity and locality, and so on."
`35:T460,md`
## Potential ideas for the final project

### 1. Generative graphics + sound/music 👇🏻This is not an example of generative music, but the visual is pretty cool...
Takes some time to load the music, be patient...

“Music Makes You Travel” by Makio135

### 2. Generative calligraphy This might be a project with a very personal theme and emotional connotation. The idea is centred on an algorithm that imitates my dad's calligraphy style, without any machine learning process of learning how Chinese characters are constructed (not image-based). The algorithm will generate a series of calligraphy-like doodles, which form a piece of Chinese calligraphy work. I'll then try to persuade my dad to replicate this generated nonsensical calligraphy work with his hands. The two works will be presented side-by-side. ### 3. A 3D implementation of some algorithms discussed in the classes => a 3D generative animation
Reference: [flow/er](http://www.alexasirbu.com/work/flower) `36:[{"id":"1f24e034d1fff61b5023c17a366c554feb36e35845c18b1a0248bd15eadcd36b8209f1611741d851a2c0a6185ff42296f4287639ba64c206295439fc3563b9c9","href":"https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/1f24e034d1fff61b5023c17a366c554feb36e35845c18b1a0248bd15eadcd36b8209f1611741d851a2c0a6185ff42296f4287639ba64c206295439fc3563b9c9","name":"1.png","type":"image/png","lastModified":1636457424571.579,"size":3302583},{"id":"95e1953c8d3b7b7d74891a54b1d64a12114df5b631d3347f238860f00eb75d9243ee34a4f045951bd831987a4b1db39ac0be01f8725572c092c6e2a834672a03","href":"https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/95e1953c8d3b7b7d74891a54b1d64a12114df5b631d3347f238860f00eb75d9243ee34a4f045951bd831987a4b1db39ac0be01f8725572c092c6e2a834672a03","name":"2.png","type":"image/png","lastModified":1636457424263.27,"size":2700669}] 31:{"id":"0b9a5a90b9868352","slug":"assignment-9","title":"Assignment #9","thumbnail":"1615a36b986865309c22fe88ca3ed3d42e43d02df65926f73df2301ca0f829dc","access_level":"public","create_time":"$D2021-11-09T06:46:01.265Z","update_time":"$D2021-11-10T04:09:33.367Z","view_time":null,"first_public_time":"$D2021-11-09T12:06:10.174Z","has_unpublished_edits":null,"fork":false,"stars":0,"starred":false,"owner":{"type":"team","id":"b34c988451399e98","login":"wenrazhao2","name":"KarlieDoesNotExist","avatar_url":"https://avatars-next.observableusercontent.com/64edd542e55cff350a7503e5050267fb1768e8cc5052184b8a8cb49162d172f3","tier":"starter_2024"},"version":228,"publish_version":228,"role":null,"authored":false,"authors":[{"type":"individual","id":"302ba7635bb9b25d","login":"wenrazhao2","name":"KarlieDoesNotExist","avatar_url":"https://avatars-next.observableusercontent.com/64edd542e55cff350a7503e5050267fb1768e8cc5052184b8a8cb49162d172f3","tier":null}],"members":[{"type":"individual","id":"302ba7635bb9b25d","login":"wenrazhao2","name":"KarlieDoesNotExist","avatar_url":"https://avatars-next.observableusercontent.com/64edd542e55cff350a7503e5050267fb1768e8cc5052184b8a8cb49162d172f3","tier":null,"role":"editor"}],"comments":[],"custom_thumbnail":false,"trashed":false,"lapsed":null,"subscribed":null,"forks":0,"collection":null,"type":"notebook","body":{"title":"Assignment #9","cells":[{"id":0,"value":"# Assignment #9","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":3,"value":"$33","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":133,"value":"md`\n\n## 2. Autonomy\n
\n**Jeremy Levine**: Leo points out that the relationship between human and non-human systems are at the core of generative art. Can generative practice provide a **critical perspective on the growing autonomy of non-human systems**?\n\n**Marius Watz**: I suspect most artists working with code simply take the semi-autonomous nature of software process for granted.\n\n**Leonardo Solaas**: I spoke of generativity as **an attitude** because we could think of the elusive point of difference between trying to control the matter and, so to speak, releasing it to do its own thing. \n\nSet up a physical or conceptual device, kick it in motion, step back and watch it develop. There’s a **back and forth** with the autonomous system that repeatedly finds the artist as a spectator of his own work.\n\nAs for the **visibility of the autonomous system for the audience**, I think it is essential.\n\n
\n`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":115,"value":"$34","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":155,"value":"md`\n
\n## 4. An exhibition about generative art\n### (To think about this art form in breadth)

\n**Mitchell Whitelaw**: “Process as Paradigm” exhibition at the Laboral Center for the Arts complicates the association between code and generativity (unlike some earlier shows that foregrounded or fetishized code). It shows that purely material processes can be as rich or richer than digital processes.\n\n**Leonardo Solaas**: to plan it not in terms of artists or artworks, but in terms of the autonomous systems involved.\n\nGenerative artists are often amateurs in ***both art and science*** 😬😬, with all the good and all the bad that is implied in that condition.\n\n`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":179,"value":"$35","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"}],"files":"$W36","stdlib":"1","titling":"auto"}} 32:"$31:body"