0) In the first place, I disagree with the idea that the medium has its own message… generative artists (or corporations, or the cultural system) are those who shape the medium aesthetic, social and political forms.
So what interests me in generative art is: a) inter/trans disciplinarity and scientific knowledge that shape simulation and how all this is embedded and communicated with useres (readers, public); b) interaction, because generative and emergent processes are (or should be) open systems, that means that all its elements (artist, programmer, user, public, etc…) should interact freely and upon equal foundations.
It seems to me that the key factor (maybe the message) is the “openeness” of the generative system, its ability not to create more artworks, but to develop and share the generative capability for all the elements of the system. Finally, this question how knowledge is shared (say, feedback) and the role of software and interfaces inside a creative process. Now it seems to me that generative art software just produces generative images but not a true generative or emergent environment because software and interfaces weaken feedaback (they hide knowledge and information, thus, in my opinion, generative art is related with hacking, free software, media activism, etc.).

1) In my case the goal of generative art is not to produce more images or art, but is to develop the process itself. Only this is really interesting to me. Its not that I don’t like generative imagery, but I feel that these images are just instancies of the process, they are not important even if they are necessary elements of the system. So the real thing is emergence and creative freedom and how I, as an artist, share this experience with users (readers, or public). I do not exist as an author in the traditional way, even if my design is not arbitrary: determinism is inevitable (and also useful), but it must not disturb or limit user freedom. The problem for me is how to develop a true generative interaction that does not interfere with users. It’s the contradictory dynamic between the freedom of infinite designs and the deterministic tools we are using and programming that is aesthetically interesting and challenging. Besides, isn’t this what conceptual art stated many yeras ago?…

2) Generative and algorithmic images cannot be classified as abstract in the same way we speak of abstraction opposed to figurative or representational visual languages. Generative images are not in a strict sense the visual representation of the generative process and its scientific an technological tools: as algorist artist Roman Verostko once said, these are not images, they are a sort of reality by itself. But these entities cannot be truly understood and appreciated if the process which they are built upon is not communicated, and its knowledge and design properly shared with users during the construction of the image. If we read generative art when the image (or sound or animation) is already built, we are left imbued in the same context of traditional avantgarde (and here I read an interesting contribution about the death of art…). On the second hand, without a wider discourse that should include science, technology and aesthetics, technology becomes just a special effect and it deserves all the criticism that media critics launch over techno art (simulacra, eyecandy, etc.).

3) Because emergence needs open systems (by definition), they obviously develop new conceptual spaces through the interaction between the artist/programmer, the scientific knowledge embedded into algorithms, and the concot of users creative and cultural experiences that a generative design must take care of.
And we should allways remember that these aesthetic problems have been already studied and questioned and have a long cultural tradition: first of all Heidegger aesthetics, then H. Hesse, T. Mann, Musil, Benjamin, Borges, Calvino, Eco, Vattimo, Danto and many others starting more or less than 60 years ago. But digital technology does include something new: interaction and simulation. These elements and they aesthetic structures are in my opinion the true core of the generative/digital art problem and of its social and cultural meanings.

I am having real trouble making work that is both interesting and within the form.

Swarms are done.

But Richard Serra has been showing the same simple object for 30 years. Generative work is similarly powerful and similarly blank.

It’s possible to hack the culture like Serra, to erect a wall of art-critical blather, present the blank awesome effect and let it lie, but it’s worth noting that there’s only one Serra (Christo! Shut up!)– he’s got economics working as a barrier to competition. Our blank & awesome effect gets turned into a button in Flash.

Generative art is the art of atoms, of cells. This evokes physics, rationalism, biology, evolution, atheism, sociology. That’s most of what my culture is thinking about right now.

We can do better than McLuhan when defending ourselves. “The medium is the message,” gah, I have sooo many problems with that. I haven’t identified myself as a new media artist since I got screwed over by VRML 97.

My plan is, quit coding and think for a while.

To me, the core of using generative strategies is a matter of moving all or parts of the creative process from dealing with every nut and bolt of the piece at hand, to dealing with material on a meta level. There might be a number of reasons for doing so, and of the top of my head I immediately think of:

- introducing stochastic processes to expand the possible material.
- the amount of (control) data required grows to big to be able to deal with in detail.
- creating infinite processes, an infinite flow.

Within contemporary music, the work of Xenakis is a primordial example of the first two points, as this quote from Formalized Music might illustrate::

“… the collision of hail or rain with hard surfaces, or the song of cicadas in a summer field. These sonic events are made out of thousands of isolated sounds; this multitude of sounds, seen as totality, is a new sonic event.”

I’m not sure if it’s worthwhile to consider “generative art” a specific category of its own in the long run. Instead I would believe that generative strategies is and will stay an inherent part of a lot (but not all) new media art. It might be more or less prominent and important, ranging all the way from being (at) the very essence of the work to be mainly a means to some other end.

I have no problem agreeing that the questions raised by Golan are well worth considering, but another question seems even more pressing to me when dealing with generative art and new media art in general: How do it relate to contemporary art practice in general?

One potential pitfall of new media art is that it gets so involved with it’s own problems and discourses that it becomes detached from a wider and more general art context. In the final panel debate of the conference HC Gilje asked why so much generative art looks the same. This is a criticism that a few years ago also could be voiced towards a lot (but not all) of the video art works created using Nato. One possible answer is that there’s a tendency towards being so immersed in the technology used that you forget to consider your work in a broader perspective. Once you start working on images with an artistic content, you not only have to relate to discourses of generative or new media art, but also start relating to the tradition of visual arts in a much broader sense. In addition to genre-specific discourses you have to start addressing issues of form, material, color, content, context, history, etc. in a much wider sense. Maybe the new media art scene sometimes should put a little less emphasis on “new” and “media” and more on “art”?

Yesterday I attended a lecture on the “end of art”, the position taken by many critics that states that since it is no longer possible to be avant-garde, art has lost its ability to criticize and stand outside society. It is an almost farcical debate, rendering artists incapable of action. The quest for “more than pretty pictures” is valiant, but I would be think twice about ascribing more intrinsic value to a social-realist work than to a work of pure abstraction. I think what Golan is addressing is a need to look more closely and with a critical eye, so that work which seems interesting at first glance remains interesting also after the tenth viewing.