Interview with Philip Galanter, Generative art is as old as art
The generative systems we create as artists are far simpler than the systems we encounter in everyday life. But by creating these comparatively minimal systems we can discover truths about the world that might otherwise be masked by the relative chaos of the day to day… From the point of view of the audience, however, the generative process was over by the time the work was presented.
It was as if I was showing animal skeletons or dinosaur bones and asking the audience to imagine what it was like when these creatures were walking the earth. Now I am trying to create systems that reveal themselves as processes before the audience. Metaphorically, I want to show living breathing animals and not just bones.
His paper What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory. His site also has a great Generative Art links page.
