Generated Art Gallery

You might have heard the name of Nike, Goddess of victory and you also might have seen her famous statue in the louvre, Paris.

But: there are other Nikes, not as victoriously and even not a strong person. The German artist Baldur Schoenfelder created his own version of Nike in 1981, which is a completely different type of statue. His version shows a bandaged head, without any ambitions of heroism or winning. To understand that, one should know that Schoenfelder lived in East Germany that time, behind the iron curtain and his hidden message was the lack of winners in these days at this location.

Thus the presentation of this work of art seemed to be quite a miracle, censors were not attentive and thousands of people could see and understand the message of this specific embodiment of a well know mythological figure.

If you are a painter or a photographer you may know the considerations which moment of a specific scene or event you should select to represent in your piece of art.

Peter Paul Rubens as a very productive artist paintend a lot of topics a lot of times, but each time from a slightly different prospective or time point .

One example are his scenes of The Judgement of Paris which you may find in several museums of the world. You might see the arrival of the three beauties, or the moment when Paris decides who should be awarded with the apple. We could also see him handing over the apple, or the following moment when one of beauties received the apple and the other two show us their deep disappointments.

As museum visitors we could try to imagine the full story when looking at such artwork. It’s easy if we know what happened before or after the displayed scene. If we don’t know that we may look for hints in the painting. E.g. we can see weapons in some of Rubens “judgements”, pointing to the Trojan war which resulted from the judgement and Paris’ award for his decision.

Painters or photographers may think in advance what will be the right moment. And if you can’t decide immediately – as Peter Paul Rubens you always have another chance to take a different point of time or of the story in a another shot or painting.

“Generated Art” may sound a bit stupid as all works of art need to come out of something. Everybody will confirm that this is true for a painting. But it is true for a piece of conceptual art as well, as even this needs an idea, a description, a path of distribution and more.

A very specific topic of generated art deals with products which result from computational processes.

This has a long tradition: as early as 1800, creative artists such as Justinus Kerner, Alexander Cozens, or George Sand allowed chance to take control over their works.

In the 1960s, Vera Molnar, Frieder Nake, and other computer pionieers used algorithms to research variations of creative processes. Later, Gerhard Richter calculated the design draft for the windows of the Cologne Cathedral by an algorithm which specified colors according to his predefined rules.

Nowadays with graphic programs one may create images in several variants originating from only a few rules. Now, the artist’s act consists of designing such rules and specifying valid works of art.

This page shows some results of such computational processes after creation and selection.