Information Technology Reference
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Fig. 3.8
Frieder Nake:
Generative Aesthetics I, experiment 4a.1
, 1969
than an artist. An artist would have organised, well in advance, a production site
to transform the large set of the generated raster images into a collection of works.
This collection would become the stock of an exhibition at an attractive gallery.
A catalogue would have been prepared with the images, along with theoretical and
biographical essays. Such an effort to propagate the most advanced and radically
rational generative aesthetics would have been worthwhile.
Instead, I think I am justified in concluding that this kind of formally defined
generative aesthetics did not work. After all, my experiments with
Generative Aes-
thetics I
seemed to constitute an empirical proof of this.
Was I premature in drawing the conclusion? It was the time of
Cybernetic
Serendipity
in London,
Tendencies 4
, and later
Tendencies 5
in Zagreb. In Europe
one could feel some low level, but increasing attention being paid to computer art.
A special show was in preparation for the 35th Biennale in Venice, bringing to-
gether Russian constructivists, Swiss concrete artists, international computer artists,
and kids playing. Wasn't this an indication of computer art being recognised and
accepted as art. Premature resignation? Creativity not recognised?
I am not so sure any more. As a testbed for series of controlled experiments
on the information-aesthetic measures suggested by other researchers,
Generative
Aesthetics I
may, after all, have possessed a potential that was not really fathomed.
The number of experiments was too small. They were not designed systematically.
Results were not analysed carefully enough. And other researchers had not been
invited to use the testbed and run their own, most likely very different, experiments.
