a brief explanation of my generative art paper, due early November

Everyone wants to know what 'generative art' is. I didn't know, either. In general, generative art will look to you like much of the abstract art that's been happening for decades. Your first reaction to art calling itself generative art is that the artist must have used a computer in some way, and quite possibly for everything. My explanation is that the artist has come up with ways to "defer" some part of the deciding or inspiration process, or part of the manufacture process to a machine, or program, or to chance. There is usually some form of repetition or iteration, given that computers do this so exactly and so well.

For my paper, my specific take on generative art is that I've designed a basic set of instructions for building sculptures by hand, much in the way you "build" dinner using a recipe or "build" a vacation using a map. In all of these, variations are likely and, as a Doctor might say, "not deleterious." The sculptures I will present as slides will be variations on that basic set of instructions. The important part of my presentation is to explain ahead of time which sorts of variations I've "allowed," and which sorts are either too small or too big to matter to me.

Variations that are too small, if I were using stew recipes as my art medium, might be that across six stew recipe variations I only change the number of pearl onions between 8-14. It is just too simple a variation, because in all likelihood, at five gallons of stew it just doesn't matter. Variations that are too big would change the recipe from stew to lasagna, cheesecake, and jello. These are certainly valid recipes, maybe even excellent recipes, but cannot be called "stew" anymore.

The substance of my paper will be describing how I made the instructions and how I chose the range of variations that suit me, and to show that these sorts of sculptures I'm making by hand don't have to happen in a computer.