Editorial by Frieder Nake
Algorithmic Art
One might justifiably question the artists role in
images that are not merely assembled by the computer
in its capacity as a tool, but generated directly by it.
Where is the human input? Lambert, Latham and
Leymarie recently raised this question [1].
The core of their question is as old as computer art
(about 50 years). I prefer calling such work algorith-
mic art; although algorithmic art does not necessarily
involve a computer, this term is more distinctive.
When an artist uses digital computers today, she is
not going to say: Look, a new technique is available,
its complex, but I know how to use it, and look at my
computer drawings! Such a silly, proud attitude may
have been justified at an early stage of computer art.
I call this stage the McLuhan stage of algorithmic art:
the medium was still the message---which is to say that
the specific form of the medium was more important
than the content of the message.
In the early 1960s, when the story of computer
art began, people were asking what contributions to
a work were made by the artist, by the computer and
by the output device. They felt that if the computer
played a considerable role in generating an image,
then that image could not possibly be a piece of
art [2].
Leaving aside the fact that here I am comparing
human work to machinic operation, the artist only
produces a work. Beyond being produced, a work of
art must be acknowledged as such. Only society may
acknowledge a product of work as a work of art. It is
not the artist who decides. The artist finishes his work
and presents it to the public. Thus begins the works
transformation into a work of art. The result is open.
Marcel Duchamp said in 1957: The creative act
is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator
. . . adds his contribution to the creative act [3].
Duchamp saw a contribution by the spectator at the
time of the works creation. How much more is this
so when it comes to judging art.
Back to the case of algorithmic art! No computer
operates without software. The artist may use software
in her creative process. Either she has acquired it
from somewhere or she has developed it herself. If she
hasnt and is only using packaged software, her work
may still please people. It may be sold by a gallery.
Critics may react enthusiastically. But the state of such
108 LEONARDO, Vol. 47, No. 2, p. 108, 2014
work is that of the digital Sunday painters work. It will
not attain the realm of acknowledged art. How can I
defend such a position?
Algorithmic art starts with the development of an
algorithm. Thats human work. The generative process
ends in some material object, say ink on paper. Thats
the machines work. What the machine realizes is one
instance of a potentially infinite set of pieces. The art-
ist, however, has described a concept: the entire class of
those pieces. Depending on the expressive power of
the parameters contained in the algorithmic descrip-
tion, the differences in visual appearance of the pieces
may be immense. There is no limit to our descriptive
capacities.
There can be no question that for algorithmic art
the human artist is the originator and decision maker.
Only the marginal effort of running the algorithm and
outputting the result is contributed by the machine.
By submitting the algorithm to the computer (in form
of a program), the artist lets the machine do the man-
ual part of the work. The operations carried out by
the computer are of semiotic origin. Therefore, some
think the operations are mental.
Algorithmic art, we thus see, is computable conceptual
art. Algorithms are concepts in the special form of
computability. They are concepts that can be carried
out automatically and repeated indefinitely.
Algorithmic art is precisely described art with lots
of surprises. It is chaotic and rule-based. It is contra-
dictory in itself. The algorithm is a description from
which the semiotic machine generates something that
interests us to observe. Algorithmic art is abstract art
where the work itself has been abstracted away into
description. The art in algorithmic art rests in the algo-
rithm, the human contribution. It appears in the rela-
tion between the algorithm and its output.
Frieder Nake
Leonardo Editorial Advisor
Email: <nake@informatik.uni-bremen.de>
References and Notes
1. Nicholas Lambert, William Latham and Frederic Fol Leymarie, The Emer-
gence and Growth of Evolutionary Art, 19801993, Leonardo 46, No. 4, 367375;
p. 371 (2013).
2. Some museums bought it anyway.
3. Marcel Duchamp, The Creative Act, Lecture at the Convention of the Ameri-
can Federation of Arts, Houston, TX, April 1957.
doi:10.1162/LEON_a_00706 2014 ISAST