If you want to understand art since Cezanne, and especially after 1945, you need to understand the modernist idea of the meta-narrative. It works like this -- prior to the loosening up of gesture in painting, the narrative was whatever was depicted. Maybe it was Washington Crossing the Delaware, or Napoleon Crossing the Alps. Pictures told stories directly. Beginning with impressionist painting, and following through to non-objective modernist paint, pictures told a second story -- a meta-narrative. This is the narrative of the events that created the painting. It answers the question -- what is the story of this artwork's creation? This leaves the viewer to deal with things like struggle, imperfection, and arbitrary residue (there are cigarette butts within some Jackson Pollocks). Did you ever visit MoMa and see Barnett Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimimis?
It could be a generative work of art -- but wait -- the vertical stripes where the masking tape was peeled away leave small amount of paint bleeding into the stripes. Why? It tells you something about how it was made. Cold geometric forms made with a human touch. Visit the Joseph Albers, Piet Mondrian and Ad Reinhardt paintings and there's arbitrariness and human touch in them all.
So, I would ask you -- what is the meta-narrative of this generative art? What is the story behind it? Does it inspire you? Do you feel like you are looking at art? Or a modern art-themed screensaver?
This feels too prescriptive. Can you really create such a sweeping narrative (of the meta-narrative) encompassing the entire world of "art" over the past 75 years?
The meta-narrative is great but it's not everything. Personally I'm not very inspired by the Newman piece, and the bit about the masking tape makes it only marginally more interesting to me - it doesn't necessarily tell a story, it just reveals the technique.
Here is a piece of generative art I made [1]. The story is that I saw these tiles on the clearance rack in Ikea, and I figured they could make some nice patterns, and when I laid them out I realized there were many good ones and I couldn't choose just one, so I made a program to simulate changing patterns. However, none of that comes through in the work itself, there aren't really imperfections or human touches, it's based entirely on simple rules. You might easily dump it into the screensaver category, but I find the endless patterns that emerge out of such a system to be compelling. Would be very grateful if you gave it a look and shared your thoughts.
I actually prefer your art to the art shown in the article. But, I would not call your artwork generative. However, it is programatic and animated. And could be easily created by the ideas of op art.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op_art
Op art, like your art, is created out of a fascination for illusory space and patterns. It's a footnote to modernist and geometric abstract painting.
The background you provide on the piece informs it well. And a viewer could deduce the piece was made by a fascination with simple formal relationships. This to me is the backstory, and the meta-narrative.
Thanks for the comments. My understanding was that generative was synonymous with algorithmic/programmatic. Was not aware of op art but I certainly see the connection.
I played with this a little more. And, it likely is more generative than my first impression. Especially the Spiral example that seems to transform the composition almost autonomously. Not sure how serious you are about it, but I think it's definitely some of the better programatic art I have seen, speaking from a fine art/academic perspective here. It's very reductive and simple, and deals with some very basic relationships in visually powerful ways. Best of luck. Good share!
The spiral mode was discovered entirely by accident, when I introduced a bug into the translation/rotation code. What you see when first entering the mode (or using the o6 preset) is pretty much exactly what I saw then. I sat there giggling uncontrollably; it was so bizarre and unexpected, yet compelling. In that sense I would agree that it is the most generative mode. From there I continued developing the tools to modulate and navigate it to find other interesting parts. I realized it was becoming a kind of fractal viewer.
I don't have a formal background in art, but based on what I have seen in this area, I do think the project is somewhat novel and worthy of interest, and I have ideas about how it could be adapted into an interactive gallery installation (each mode projected onto a different wall, each with a custom physical control panel). I have hesitated to share it so far because of a few issues on the technical side (untenable framerate on slower machines, UI is broken on mobile). I'm also not sure the UX is dialed, I want it to be minimal and somewhat mysterious, inviting the user to play with the controls, but not so cryptic that they give up before seeing what it can do, hence the somewhat inelegant tutorial bubbles (I started with a simple pulsing glow on certain buttons but people didn't even notice it).
If you have any suggestions or thoughts on these matters I would be all ears :) jamesrowen@gmail.com
I’m not an art history major, but why does a work of art require a backstory? Or a meta-story? Why is a screensaver not “real” art? It seems so limiting. That’s a beautiful painting and the painter is very talented, but there is no existential dread evident in the brush strokes, no social commentary on the intersection between class warfare and feminism, so it’s not “real art”. Who makes these rules?
It’s like when you hear a young pianist play Liszt perfectly or a Rachmaninov piece better than Rachmaninov did, and the critics say, “Well there was no emotion there, no struggle—she has a long way to go.” Bullshit! It was great! Why can’t art just be appreciated itself, without all this “story” baggage?
Of course, if you like it, that's really all that matters. But art history, and contemporary art, are not really determined by polling the audience for what's liked most. Instead it's determined by those who have made it their passion to understand what makes great art and drives great artists. And they are able to agree on what makes it into art history (at least the Anglo American version) pretty well, for better or worse.
Why can’t art just be appreciated itself, without all this “story” baggage?
I think art expresses something inside a person. Sometimes, people find it meaningful on its own. Sometimes they don't and understanding can be enhanced by "story" or whatever.
Kind of a case of sometimes words get in the way and sometimes words help bridge the gap between two minds.
/random internet stranger who didn't actually read the article, just your comment
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79250?artist_id=4285&l...
It could be a generative work of art -- but wait -- the vertical stripes where the masking tape was peeled away leave small amount of paint bleeding into the stripes. Why? It tells you something about how it was made. Cold geometric forms made with a human touch. Visit the Joseph Albers, Piet Mondrian and Ad Reinhardt paintings and there's arbitrariness and human touch in them all.
So, I would ask you -- what is the meta-narrative of this generative art? What is the story behind it? Does it inspire you? Do you feel like you are looking at art? Or a modern art-themed screensaver?