low-level generative art


On Nasty Nets in '06, Marisa Olson linked to the generator page where the above was made. Her error message read "In the future, all web sites will be generators." Jon Williams questioned that prediction recently on twitter in light of Zynga style games where you don't do much generating but use pre-set character templates.

It's like the devolution of model kits from elaborate balsawood parts that had to be cut with a knife to 1960s glue-and-paint kits with hundreds of plastic elements on trees to the kits of the '70s and '80s consisting of a handful of snap-together parts. Ultimately, though, it's just degrees of lack-of-choice. Even 3D and paint programs that yield elaborate personalized results start with someone else's menus.

Am prejudiced against all of it from years of making unique, quirky objects that a handful of people might theoretically view together in real space but am trying to overcome this. Snobbery is what artists have in lieu of barrels of cash (or Simoleons).

Generators haven't gone away: see downfall generator (hat tip Jon Williams).

Update: Also via Jon, the Generator Blog, where you can Warholize and Jesufy yourself, or make fake iPhone text, or spew loren ipsum consisting entirely of hipsterspeak (some popular art blogs use this). In view of all this variety the next stage will be a generator generator, if one doesn't exist already.