Assignment

Reading 3 (main reading assignment)

Select one of these articles:

Whitelaw, Mitchell. 2006. “System Stories and Model Worlds: A Critical Approach to Generative Art.” in Readme 100: Temporary Software Art Factory. Norderstedt: BoD.

Boden, Margaret and Ernest Edmonds. 2009. “What is Generative Art.” Digital Creativity, 20, No. 1-2: 21-46. You can skip section III, as highlighted in text.

Dorin, Alan, Jonathan McCabe, Jon McCormack, Gordon Monro and Mitchell Whitelaw. 2012. “A Framework for Understanding Generative Art.” Digital Creativity, 23, No. 3-4: 239–259.

Galanter, Philip. 2016. “Generative Art Theory.” In A Companion to Digital Art, edited by Christiane Paul. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: 146-180.

Read it and do the research about its topics and its broader context: what artworks and other texts it references.
Relate the themes addressed to your generative art study, to forthcoming generative art project you are developing, and to your broader creative work and interests.
Wrap it all up in a two-page essay, about 1000 words.
Include images, videos, links, bibliographic and other references.

Post it to the OSS Research category, and prepare for live presentation to the class by Week 11 (29 Oct).

Guest Talk

Vladimir Todorović

Generative Fiction and Living Things

LECTURE SLIDES

What is human, and some of the most elaborate fictional works on cyborgs (more sophisticated and pertinent than the later CyberPunk):
Ridley Scott – 1982 – Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick – 1968 – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

In this talk, Vladimir will discuss his creative and poetic approach to generative animations, and the necessary steps to complete them. While working with software, Vladimir spends a significant amount of time on designing, optimizing and tweaking systems that generate unexpected audio-visual material that is used in his films. He is interested to understand how the narrative spontaneously and slowly comes to life, and how it is influenced by the machine that the artist had designed. During the process of optimizing and exploring generative systems, the artist is waiting for the moment when the system will surprise him. Upon the completion of his projects, their narrative, as well as audio-visual forms become concrete, fixed, and no longer flexible. The software machine is ready to be terminated.

Vladimir Todorović is a filmmaker, artist and educator based in Perth, Australia. He works with new technologies for immersive and generative storytelling. His projects have won several awards and have been shown at various festivals, exhibitions, museums and galleries including HANIFF, Cottbus (28^th), Visions du Reel (49^th, 46^th, 44^th), IFFR (42nd, 40^th and 39^th), Cinema du Reel, Festival du Nouveau Cinema, BIFF, SGIFF, L’Alternativa, YIDFF, Siggraph, ISEA Ars Electronica, Transmediale, Centre Pompidou, The Reina Sofia Museum, and Japan Media Art Festival. His projects were financially supported by various institutions including Asian Cinema Fund (BIFF), MDA, NRF, ICA (Singapore), Mixed Reality Lab, KulturKontakt (Vienna), and Open Society foundation (Belgrade); and have been reviewed at Cinemascope, Wired, Indiewire, Neural, Turbulence, Electrosmog, Artmagazine, Channel News Asia, Film Business Asia, Reuters, World News Network, Res Magazine and on hundreds of pages on various social networks.

Work Study

Processing 5: Interaction.

Generative sketch consultations: will accompany and support your progress on generative projects.