//quo: How I Drew One of My Pictures: * or, The Authorship of Generative Art. Adrian Ward, Geoff Cox

"Digital artwork is not valued in the same way. It can be copied infinitely and there is therefore a
corresponding crisis of value. It has been argued that under these conditions of the dematerialised artwork, it is process that becomes valued. In this way, the process of creation and creativity is valued in place of authenticity, undermining conventional notions of authorship."

[...]

"Moreover, the output from generative systems should not be valued simply as an endless, infinite series of resources but as a system. To have a machine write poetry for ten years would not generate creative music, but the process of getting the machine to do so would certainly register an advanced form of creativity."

[..]

"The mathematical value 'pi' can be approximated as 3.141593, but a more thorough and accurate version can be stored as the formula used to calculate it. By analogy, it is more precise to express creativity formulated as code, which can then be executed to produce the desired results."

[...]

Ward/Cox quoting Walter Benjamin:
"'An author who has carefully thought about the conditions of production today... will never be
concerned with the products alone, but always, at the same time, with the means of production. In other words, his [sic] products must possess an organising function besides and before their
character as finished works.'"
[Walter Benjamin, 'The Author as Producer', in Understanding Brecht, London: Verso 1992, p.98;]


info:
How I Drew One of My Pictures: * or, The Authorship of Generative Art. Adrian Ward BSc & Geoff Cox MA(RCA)
Sidestream, London & CAiiA-STAR, School of Computing, University of Plymouth, UK
e-mail: adrian@signwave.co.uk & geoffcox@excite.com

[http://www.generative.net/papers/authorship/index.html]