Leave No Trace

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been gathering some links to various articles that have caught my eye and that may or may not be relevant to this blog. There’s an article on The Guardian’s website that introduces some elementary examples of digital art practices, then raises some interesting questions but frustratingly doesn’t even start to discuss them.

With painters and photographers we more or less know the provenance. But who should get the credit for art produced by algorithms or random means? The software program, the programmer, the computer or the person who pressed the button to start the program, or whoever had the original idea? Does the fact that you can endlessly change what you paint with Brushes make it any less a work of art than a traditional painting, which may have had lots of layers added before the artist was satisfied? Maybe, as Oscar Wilde said, art never expresses anything but itself. 

I realise that this article was written for the printed version of the newspaper, but it’s crying out for links to examples of the art being discussed. How about the Gallery of Complexification? Is generative art like this really art? Or is it just pretty pictures? Brian Eno, talented all-rounder that he is, is a hero of mine, but I’m sure he wouldn’t describe himself as a Fine Artist. What does that mean for his 77 million paintings? Does there have to be a concept behind the work, like Aaron Koblins’s Flight Patterns?