How does it feel to make generative art?

I’ve recently been having a strong sensation that I am finding generative art, rather than creating it. Even so, when I asked other generative artists how the process feels to them, I expected that most would say it mostly feels like creation.

Generative artists - does it feel more like you are creating the art or finding it?
— Amy Goodchild (@amygoodchild) September 22, 2021

I was completely wrong! In fact, only a handful of people who replied felt that way. Most said either that the feeling tends more towards discovery, or that it's both discovery as well as creation. Many also had really interesting takes or metaphors to describe how their process feels to them so I pulled the answers together into this article.

n.b Please feel free to email or DM me on Twitter if you’d like your quote removed!

"Finding it - Discovery and experimentation is one of the most fulfilling parts of generative work."

Chris Reid - Generate Collective

"I feel like I am a wildlife photographer trying to capture the best moments of some wild thing that keeps changing / evolving (that I created)"

zach lieberman

"It is both for me. Finding, creating, tinkering, discussing and adding a touch of play and experiment"

IllestPreacha

Happy little accidents

Lots of replies talked about being surprised by results - and how being surprised is something that we enjoy.

"When I’m making generative art the surprises are often more fun, and make me laugh more."

Funkelngeist

"Expectations and reality rarely line up, but I always enjoy the surprises between the two. Definitely feels like discovery/finding"

Chris Lesage

For me, sometimes surprises happen when my code is running exactly as I intended, but somehow produces results I didn't expect. Other times, in the hallowed tradition of Bob Ross, pleasant surprises come from mistakes.

In the two works below, the first one is doing what it’s supposed to, and surprised me with how brush-like the effect turned out. The second one is using a similar algorithm but I'd accidentally introduced a bug which offset everything and produced a moiré effect.

Best Laid Plans

Neel Shivdasani stated another take super clearly -

"I look for one art and usually end up finding a different one"

Neel Shivdasani

This describes my favourite process really well, and it's something I've documented in other blog posts. I start with an idea, like an image in my head, a concept, or a set of steps and then let the process take me wherever it goes.

For example, with 'No Apologies', I was planning to create some vividly coloured moiré using a common technique of offsetting circles using Perlin noise. The first results were not what I was looking for. The colours combine when they converge, so the whole thing was actually kind of muddy. I went on to animate it instead and realised that if I played around with the order the circles are drawn in, then each colour seems to ooze and fade through in turn. Definitely something I felt like I "found".

Creating with no roadmap

Other times, we set out without knowing what we're looking for at all.

This crystalized for me during Genuary. Some prompts inspired a clear idea to work with, but with others I just opened Atom and started experimenting. After only a week, I noticed I often preferred the experience and results from the second method.

This gif depicts that feeling of creating when you’ve not chosen a destination... but somehow you’re managing to lay down your track as you go.

"Basically this (but slower - unless there's a deadline looming)"

Memo Akten

The "code golf" prompt - where you challenge yourself to write your program in as few characters as possible (see Piter Pasma's recent work “Skulptuur” for an absolutely mindblowing example) hit this one strongly for me.

Usually I write my code with the goal of making it as readable and understandable as possible - character count be damned. As a result, I had no idea what to do with this prompt and just set off writing some loops and drawing some shapes. They turned out to be some of my favourite results from the whole month.

balance, dance, collaboration

I've talked a lot recently about how much generative art feels like a feedback loop or like collaborating with the computer. It's a back and forth, an iteration. I have an idea, the computer does something half (or wholly) unexpected which gives me a different idea, I try that, it sparks something else... and on.

Several people mentioned this as well -

"Yes and yes. I find there is a feedback loop that swings between discovery and intention."

Jacob Joaquin

"It's a dance with the medium, I see it just like any other digital tool. It's not like creating traditional art. There's a question whether it's art at all, which is part of the fun. Much like found objects. I like to feed the machine and see what it spits out."

Stephen E. Dinehart IV

"I'd like to add how collaborative the process can be - I really do think of the computer as a co-creator. As if the marble was constantly evolving and changing before the sculptor, and deciding whether to pursue new directions, or not. A feedback loop unique to the medium."

lucastswick

"It's kind of like I'm the director and the system is the actor. I give guidance about what I would like to see from them. Observe their performance, adjust my prompt, try again. The actor can play the scene in infinite ways."

Roope Rainisto

This piece, ‘Time Flies’, (below) started with a simple idea of having animated things emerging from the mouse, and developed to the final piece after iterating over the results I was getting.

At one point, I discovered that moving the flow fields I was using forward in the z-axis would cause the wisps to quickly turn in small loops, which was not something I would have predicted.

Sometimes we are a creator!

Not everyone was fully on the "it's a discovery" train and actually for me as well I do sometimes feel strongly feel like a creator.

"Creating. The surprises I get are not that unexpected as I shape the code in small steps."

Zoltán Szalay

"Usually it feels like i'm finding it, but on occasion i'll have a specific visual or pattern in mind and i'll try to model/create it."

canvas.51

Here are a couple of pieces where the final piece ended up pretty much where I intended and the process was more about finding the right geometry or code to produce the result I was picturing.