Generative Art

Generative art is work produced in whole or in part by an autonomous system: the artist writes rules, a program, or a mechanism and hands over details they would otherwise decide themselves. The idea predates computers: Kirnberger's Musical Dice Game of 1757 assembled phrases of music by rolling dice. From 1962, A. Michael Noll of Bell Labs in the United States made computer art from mathematical equations and programmed randomness; in February 1965 Georg Nees showed computer-generated images in Germany, and Frieder Nake exhibited the same year, often seen as the beginning of computer-generated art; the French artist Vera Molnár was another pioneer. In 2020 the Art Blocks platform joined generative art to the blockchain, and its artists must accept every output of their algorithm as a signed work. The New Taipei City Art Museum's Lobby Project is curated by Volume DAO, a collective rooted in generative and blockchain art; five artists take turns on the lobby's LED screen, and visitors can adjust a work's parameters from their phones.

Stay a while in front of the screen and see whether the image ever repeats; change a parameter from your phone and notice what changes and what never does.

Which parts of this work did the artist decide, and which were left to the algorithm?