#davidcope

[The above images are produced by the same code which I ran three times for exactly the same amount of time (3 seconds) in the Processing environment. They are all different and although I wrote the code, I had no idea what the final outcomes will look like. ]

Creative coding or creative data - the latest obsessions of the creative industries in the digital economy. Cannes launched a new Innovative Lion award this year dubbed “Creative Data”. Also intriguing sounding job descriptions and titles are popping up in top tech places or agencies e.g. ‘Creative Technologist’ or ‘Creative Coder’. The order or hierarchy of the art and science implied in these descriptions is still unclear. They could mean an artist who uses code as another ‘drawing tool’ or they could mean programmers who uses code creatively. The output is also unclear as these could be data vis or actual applications or an ‘art piece’ or a performance or all of those??

‘Generative Art’ provides a useful practice-research framework of operationalising and working through all of these questions in a more sustained way. It refers to both a category of art and a process. It involves, I think, approaching creativity with computational thinking. It can apply to visual or sound arts and a key feature is its emergent property. In the design world, it has been deployed productively with Casey Reas and Ben Fry’s Processing environment. The images above are produced in Processing: I wrote the code as a set of instructions about drawing randomised rectangles, circles and colour and Processing did the rest!

David Cope, a scientist-musical composer, uses its principles for his “experiments in musical intelligence”. He has a nice explanation for Generative Art which provides some food for thought: