Generative Art by Shannon Ribbons
A brief explanation...
Generative Art has probably been around for tens of thousands of years in one form or another. The agent of chance, or randomness, is employed in altering the arrangement of various materials, resulting in new 'compositions'. Long ago the result might have been used to interpret the moods of gods or the secrets of nature, with sticks, bones or entrails enlisted as raw materials.
Our techniques for predicting nature are a little more sophisticated now, but the fascination with chance and its glimpse into the forces of chaos remains. Given new status by the Dadaists at the beginning of our brave Century of industrialisation, the idea was carried forward until I bumped into it at the Tate Modern. And I got to thinking ...
The images in this book consist of photographs and drawings that have been manipulated by an agent of chance and randomness. More specifically, I returned from the exhibition and proceeded to write a script that I could run on my computer. I was interested to see how much variation and diversity I could achieve from a fairly limited set of images, and whether the results would have any discreet value or would simply demonstrate their position in some iterative sequence.
I was surprised at the results. And thousands of viewings later, I am still amazed at how the script manages to produce so many different compositions, many of them reminiscent of landscapes or studies that could have been designed intentionally. As each composition is created, it lasts for a few seconds on my monitor screen, then is lost forever - completely unrecoverable.
Unless ...
Unless they are captured, and stored. And then, placed in a book perhaps - a collection of strange places and moods that flickered briefly into existence as a result of chance and were snared before disappearing forever ...
A screensaver version of the program can be downloaded from www.ribbonsart.co.uk - and I created a small book from which this intro is taken, which can be bought here
If you have Flash enabled a version of the software will load below, generating unique new images, for ever....
