algorithmic meditation: an exhibition Lowe Mill winter 2019

In this gallery I demonstrate the power of technology to seamlessly enter and accelerate the creative process, bringing modern computing to bear on our most universal and profound goal; the search for beauty.

Humans have always used our ever-improving tools for our artistic pursuits; they give us the control to compose our media and create art. The Information Age hasn’t changed this paradigm, it has accelerated it. We now have the power to realize our designs using precise machines. I use computers in another way; I teach them how to design their own art.

I have always explored two sides to my life, the analytical and the creative. The biggest lie I’ve ever been told is that those halves must be separate. I strive to use my technical knowledge to enhance my creative abilities, and vice versa. In this gallery I want to showcase the first of my “Meditative Algorithms”. These programs are designed to autonomously create kaleidoscopic art. Each arithmetically composed piece is unique, consisting of a radially-symmetric pattern and individual color scheme. These programs are coded in Java.

Automation is becoming increasingly prevalent in our lives. As more and more of our jobs and hobbies enter into the realm of the computers, we need to ask ourselves some very important questions:

In these pieces, is the programmer the artist, or is the computer?

Can we design our technology to enhance, rather than replace us?

Revisiting this work in 2024, after the widespread adoption of AI tools such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) and Large Language Models (LLM), I view the conversation as even more important. Generative AI tools like GAN and LLM in use today work by ‘training’ on existing data, which can be publicly available, privately owned, licensed, public domain, etc. It is my view that selling the outputs of, or access to, an AI tool trained on copyrighted artistic output that has not been licensed or purchased constitutes widespread theft and will hurt art and artists everywhere.  

‘Algorithmic Meditation’ doesn’t work like that. It’s not a trained AI. My code creates something from nothing, using the algorithms I write. There is, now more than ever, a wider conversation to be had about the use of GAN-generated art. I don’t have the answers about how AI tools should be utilized going forward. I do know that we need to start with ethically sourced training data that protects the ability of human artists to keep creating.