1a. I think that mathematics, particularly mathematical proofs, exhibit effective complexity. Technically, there isn’t much disorder (or any at all), but they show a flawless transition from complexity to simplicity, or vice versa. They can be incredibly complicated, but still beautiful. Below is a picture of a proof of Euler’s identity, which is often called “the most beautiful proof in mathematics.” I guess on a scale from total order to total disorder, this would definitely be on the total order side, but there is still a great deal of variation from one proof to another, such that some don’t even look like math anymore.

1b. As much as the Problem of Meaning intrigues me, I think enough of my classmates have answered it the same way I would have to warrant me discussing another problem. So, I will talk about the Problem of Uniqueness, another question which has bothered me in the past. Before I was even exposed to computer-based art as I know it, I was shown prints: pictures carved into a piece of wax, metal, or wood, covered in ink, and then pressed onto paper after paper. This made me a little uncomfortable. No matter how good the art was, the fact that it was mass-produced made it feel less real to me, and certainly less valuable then something that was painted by hand. I remember just a few years ago I saw a rack of 20 copies of the same painting in a “World Market,” and I said “Wow. Before I saw how many there were, I thought it was a real painting.”
So, even before I was presented with this question in the reading, I guess I had an answer: to me, mass produced artwork is less valuable than one-of-a-kind artwork (even if there are slight variations in some generative art), if for no other reason than supply-and-demand economics. That being said, I don’t want to negate the actual artistic thinking that goes into writing the code or carving the initial print block that leads to the mass-produced art–that act can be incredibly creative and skillful. Rather, I think that the actual “art” in this scenario is the code or the block rather than the pieces that get generated. When a musical is performed every night, the true art is in the writing, direction, choreography, and design rather than the individual performance. Similarly, each piece of generated “art” is but a child of the original artwork, like a poster of a Picasso painting. While they can be beautiful, I think their intrinsic “value” is reduced by their quantity.

1a. Crochet was first used to replace flimsy paper classroom models of hyperbolic planes in 1997. By following a fairly straightforward pattern, anyone could crochet themselves an awesomely weird, wiggly, yet orderly (in a non-euclidean sense) shape. What two sisters from Austrailia found, was they could imitate the look of coral by varying certain elements of the hyperbolic algorithm and create an infinite amount of organic looking yarny shapes. These  crocheted coral reef sculptures still lean towards order, but the wide variation of shapes from small tweaks to the pattern give the end result a slightly more disorderly outcome. Crochet Coral Reef website

1b. Making meaningful art is hard, especially in art school where you’re expected to juggle 4 or 5 projects at once and all of them are expected to be equally profound and meaningful. Meaningful work touches people in a lot more ways than just a pretty picture. It’s not so hard to paint a nice and meaningless bowl of fruit just as it’s not so hard to write a generative program that produces infinite images of fruit arranged differently in a bowl. The problem of meaning isn’t just a problem for generative art, but art in general. There are ways to make any type of art meaningful, it just takes a lot of thought, creativity, and ingenuity from the artist.

1a. Effective Complexity

I think Tokyo’s Shibuya Cross is an interesting example of effective complexity. This pedestrian crossing system is orderly yet chaotic. There are traffic laws and order when looking at the urban planning from above; we recognize the intersection, light signals, and an indicated pathway for people to walk from one street to another. Yet as many as 2,500 people navigate across every time the light changes, creating chaos yet somehow avoiding deathly collisions.

But if everyone crossed with their smartphones (as humans naturally do), then the system becomes even more complex:

1b. The Problem of Uniqueness

Does it diminish the value of the art when unique objects can be mass-produced? (Gallant 2016)

Digital generative art introduces a completely new problem: rather than offering an endless supply of copies, it provides an endless supply of original and unique artifacts.

 

The arguments surrounding the idea of human touch and an artist’s uniqueness in products, digital or analog, really excites me. Studying product design, we’ve had discussion about designing products and forms that lie on the spectrum between emotive and personal, to cold and machined. Basically understanding when a product looks like there was a human behind it (personal touch, possibly imperfect, individualistic), or a machine (looks like it was meant for the masses, too perfect, utilitarian).

So far in my design education, I’ve been making everything by hand so all my products are uniquely mine, a signature if you will. As much as I can say with pride that I not only designed the product but I made it with my own hands (yay for human touch), it is a tiring process. For me, I find the idea that an algorithm can create unlimited unique products to be extremely helpful and efficient for the design process. As much as I would enjoy thinking and designing originally, there have been so many instances where I get stuck and can’t iterate off a concept. I don’t want to sound like I’m lazy and that I want a robot to do my job for me. But I think as systems and problems become more complicated to design for, being able to iterate to an unlimited degree is efficient in the design process. It’s almost scary to think about a future where robots can make creative decisions, and may replace designers and artists though that it still quite a ways in autonomous technology. But ultimately, I think this is an emerging field where we can’t even visualize the potential and power of limitless iterations. When it comes to the value in unique products created algorithmically, I think that will be up to the user and audience. Whether something was created by a machine or human, I find it extremely gratifying and appreciative that it is one of its kind. But who knows, if everyone started to say, “I have a one of a kind iPhone ” it may become mainstream and less valuable really quickly.

 

 

1) when I think of effective complexity, or even just order and disorder combined in a powerful way, I remember this particular poem that I once read about three years ago. I can’t remember the name of the poem, the artist was pretty unknown as she was just a high school student, but I remember her work being complex in that it expressed cohesive thoughts through using a very bizarre and amusing word choice which added to the disorder. Because I cannot remember the name of this artist, I will talk about another work which illustrates order and disorder in a similar manner, but I just felt the need to at least mention the work of this artist who’s work I read three years ago. Someone else who seems to do something similar is James Joyce in The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I happen to still need to finish (I made it like a quarter of the way through the book and never finished it, but I do plan on doing that at some point!) here are some excerpts from the beginning. His word choice is very reflective of the perspective of the main character during a specific moment in time (in this case, as a very young child), and it seems like he is pulling complete gibberish into his writing, but it is actually very thoughtful and expressive.

2) The problem of intent is an important problem to me, and is something I have been thinking of while I’ve considered trying my hand at artistic practices that can be achieved through coding as well as artistic practices in other mediums. Towards the end of last year is when I really started questioning my intentions- I mean, I decided to go to college as an art major for crying out loud. To be so deeply embedded into art culture and the art world and whatever else I might be getting myself into, what was I planning on doing while being in that position? I began to think about how artists can have a significant impact on their environment, and I thought about how I wanted to maybe do something that benefited humanity somehow. I thought that using my art to help society would be valuable, and right now I’m in a position where I’m asking myself “Okay, so with what I’m doing right now, with my interests, what am I willing to communicate with my work/ actively implement in order to help others?” It’s a question I’ve still been thinking of, and I also want to preserve the elements I find valuable in my work such as ridiculous characters I might make, humor, stuff that metaphorically screams weird noises in your face, the personal connection I have with my work, while attempting to accomplish this goal. It’s something I’ll have to find a sweet balance of, it’s there.

 

Something I like that exhibits effective complexity is grocery stores. Between crystalline lattice and the the total randomness of gas particles, grocery stores lean heavily towards total randomness (maybe a 70/100, where 100 is random and 0 is ordered). Regardless of what grocery store you go to there are infinite possibilities for where isles are, how they are oriented and how fruits and vegetables are displayed. Every grocery store is different from the last but at the same time, one can easily forget that they are in a Giant Eagle in Pittsburgh and not the WalMart in Virginia.
Here is a screenshot of image search “grocery store interior”:

Galanter effectively articulates what I’ve felt about a lot of generative art. In relying on things beyond our control as artists to make work– to remove ourselves and our hand in some way from a creation, and to remove our subjectivity– is an inherent statement. Generative art, I’ve always thought, isn’t usually focused on the artist’s rendition of something beautiful and it’s not usually focused on the craftsmanship and labor of creation. Generative art, then is in a direct conversation with more traditional art forms and must inherently take a sarcastic point of view. But then again as I am exposed to more forms of generative art, I think that the interpretation can perhaps replace these ideals of beauty. Also, combined with other methods of working, the inherent impersonal nature of generative art can be used to make a different statement. In all, I think about both sides of the argument and inherently the generative nature of generative art is quite postmodern, but the way artists pick and choose how to use it and in what context to display it broadens the statement the art can make.

1A. I enjoy using Arduinos. It’s pretty complex when you analyze all of its components, but it’s also very orderly. If there isn’t electricity running through a pin, that pin is turned off. There isn’t too much disorder when it comes to running electricity through wires.

1B. The Problem of Authenticity – I see art as a form of expression of myself. I’m not sure what to make of art that I make and only afterwards think of a meaning for. If I accidentally create something I like, I’m unsure whether or not it’s expression of myself. When it comes down to it I’m the one that decides whether or not it’s art, so I would still feel ownership of it even if it’s even accidentally generated.