Organic forms spread out across the screen, at times explosive, at times hardly noticeable, fascinating the observers. »One of the privileges of Generative Art is that the artist himself is surprised by the results over and over again,« Marius Watz¹ states in the following interview.² Since the mid-1990s, the Norwegian artist has moved back and forth between everyday culture, design and, not least, art. He has designed advertisements, was a guest at the Transmediale, and shows his work, which he calls »maximalist visual hedonism,« in classical museums.

[b]Franz Thalmair:[/b] What is your narrowest definition of an algorithm?

[b]Marius Watz:[/b] An algorithm is a series of clearly defined working steps that culminate in a result.

[b]Thalmair:[/b] How is current Generative Art different from the early generative experiments of the 1950s and 60s? Has a conceptual development taken place?

[b]Watz:[/b] The two movements are closely related, but the cultural background and the conceptual framework are different. In principle, Generative Art is still today all about exploring form. In contrast to the 1950s and 60s, the current protagonists are influenced by developments like electronic music, cyber culture, the demo scene or the Open Source movement.
I believe that the scientific principle of complexity, as counterpart to a reductionist view of the world, has a central influence on the current scene. In addition, the digitization of media and the flow of information on the Internet or via mobile communication technologies are decisive. This view of the world leads to a differentiation between the physical and the virtual: both concepts are »real,« but the latter is accessible and can be formed by using software.

[b]Thalmair:[/b] Computer art pioneer Frieder Nake says that the traditional artist is concerned »with the one drawing. The programmer describes the pattern of all drawings.«³ Are you searching for a metaphysical core?

[b]Watz:[/b] Generative artists try out a sort of technological mimesis. But instead of drawing a naturalistic image of the world, they focus on details that are inherent in nature: physical processes or kinetic models that as a rule go unnoticed. That does to a point demonstrate something transcendental.
If you think about Brion Gysin’s »Dream Machine,«⁴ for example, some artists may be attracted by such metaphysical aspects of generative systems. I think, however, that this »divine« model – similar to the death of the author prompted by autonomous systems – is a beguiling fallacy. Even if Nake were right with his differentiation, an algorithm still only describes one single class of possible drawings and not the Platonic idea of the drawing as such.

[b]Thalmair:[/b] You say that Generative Art points out to the observer through the complexity of the systems what is »sublime «⁵ between the ones and the zeros. What do you mean?

[b]Watz:[/b] In art, the sublime alludes to experiences that take place beyond what can be measured and described. The task of formulating such experiences using aesthetic solutions traditionally fell to artists. In Generative Art, the sublime can be discovered in its inherent infinity of parametric systems. But it also refers to the interaction between observer and work, this critical moment of perception when a mere series of numbers develops into a perceptible system. That is a sensual process that goes above and beyond pure verbal description. Generative Art understands the brain as a device for recognizing patterns and is founded on the brain’s ability to recognize a picture’s complex structures and development process.

[b]Thalmair:[/b] Some artists maintain that not the result but the concept, the algorithmic code, is the work. Where do you see the artistic value of programming environments like Processing⁶ or Context Free Art⁷? In their use or in themselves?

[b]Watz:[/b] Processing and Context Free emerged as programming tools for artists and designers. Auto-Illustrator⁸ by Ade Ward is an example of software that is at the same time application and a work of art. The Software Art movement regards software as a cultural and a political phenomenon, whereby the code and its role within our society are criticized. Generative Art on the other hand uses software as a material from which art is made and rarely criticizes the nature of software as such. What interests me in Generative Art is the relationship between software used »live« which generates endless results, and the fact that as an artist you have to create original work. But that is the art world’s dilemma, where value only arises out of scarcity.

[b]Thalmair:[/b] Must generative practices necessarily be defined within the art world or isn’t this a more general cultural phenomenon?

[b]Watz:[/b] That depends on the author’s intention. The fact that the application of generative systems has increased considerably certainly doesn’t mainly depend on artistic practices. Technological experiments, architecture, design and many media art projects harbor generative aspects even if they don’t deliberately contribute to the canon of Generative Art. I would limit the term »Generative Art« to works that expressly achieve an aesthetic result through semi-autonomous systems.
The visualization of information is a special case within the utilization of generative practices; it has garnered a great deal of attention lately from both the public and theorists. On the surface, visualizations are utilitarian design. But in reality, the observer perceives them first and foremost as aesthetic objects. Ben Fry’s visualizations, for instance, were shown at the Whitney Biennial – despite his insistence that his work should not be described as art.

[b]Thalmair:[/b] Are the aesthetics of your seemingly partly organic work associated with the personal vision of a »better« – synthetic – world?

[b]Watz:[/b] My works are abstract by nature; they draw on no system outside of themselves. My original points of reference lie in cyber culture and the excesses of 1990s electronic music, which have an intensely individualistic focus on physical experiences and on the techno-optimism of the early years as well as on the belief in a progressive hedonism. On a very personal level I try to communicate a sort of form as a process that is based on rules and at the same time is of an organic as well as mechanical nature. It is supposed to address the observers more on a visceral than an intellectual level. In my most recent works I try to depart from the two-dimensional image and to honor the simulated promise of a »real« space. My two-dimensional structures are expanded into generative 3D prints with tactile and architectonic qualities.

[b]Thalmair:[/b] What is your widest definition of an algorithm?

[b]Watz:[/b] In the widest sense of the word, an algorithm is the description of any process, whether natural or artificial, that follows strict scientific principles or people’s everyday, fuzzy but still logical decisions. I had my first urge to develop a complex algorithm as a child: I was standing under a street lamp and it was snowing hard. The snowflakes, falling to the ground in ever-changing spirals, gave me the feeling that it must be possible to describe the powers that provoke such chaotic but still traceable forms. Whenever I generate new work, I get the feeling that I am just about to understand that chaos.

 

Translated by Jennifer Taylor-Gaida

 

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