Enriching Aesthetics with Artificial Life
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Reference
Alan Dorin (2005). Enriching Aesthetics with Artificial Life. In A. Adamatzky & M. Komosinski (Eds.), Artificial life models in software (pp. 415-431). London: Springer-Verlag.
DOI
Abstract
Artificial Life is studied largely as a means of furthering our understanding of biology and of complex adaptive systems in general. Whilst it has demonstrated potential in a number of fields, in particular as a means of solving engineering problems, Artificial Life techniques have also been applied by some in the art community. The field promises to continue to enrich artistic practice and our approach to contemporary aesthetics, even as its initial flash of popularity wanes. It is this continued application to aesthetics which the present paper begins to address. The techniques of art based in Artificial Life form a subset of generative art. This is an artistic practice which adopts an aesthetic of process. By this it is meant that although the final outcome of a work may depend for its appeal on the aesthetics of an image, sound, sculpture or other form, the process which generates it is also significant. The generative artist is responsible for setting up initial conditions and a process to act upon them. The work which unfolds is the result of this series of changes. This is analogous to a biological phenotype (usually an organism and its behaviour) being the result of the physical and chemical interactions which govern its development from a genotype (its genetic material as stored in DNA). Hence, there are conceptual connections between generative art and Artificial Life as well as practical ones. Generative/process-based art is no longer treated as a fresh field for aesthetic exploration. Fascination with its possibilities seemed to fade sometime after its heyday in the late 1960’s. This of course was the time of the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition in London, Jack Burnham’s text Beyond Modern Sculpture and much other activity linking art and computer technology in innovative ways. Recently artists involved in Artificial Life have re-trodden some of the ground cleared by their predecessors in cybernetic art, and have cleared some new space for themselves. Now that Artificial Life is also unfashionable, perhaps a serious assessment of its past and future contributions can be made whilst side-stepping the hype which initially accompanied the field.
The first section below begins by discussing the sense of wonder people often feel whilst contemplating nature or simple physical systems. This is then related to the tradition of the sublime in aesthetics. The paper then discusses means of employing Artificial Life techniques to explore the computational sublime such that a computational system emulating the physical world’s capability to generate complexity and novelty might be devised.
Extended Abstract
Bibtex
Used References
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