Art, Emergence, and the Computational Sublime

Jon McCormack and Alan Dorin

Centre for Electronic Media Art
School of Computer Science and Software Engineering
Monash University, Wellington Road
Clayton, Victoria, 3800 Australia
jonmc@csse.monash.edu.au, aland@csse.monash.edu.au

Abstract
This paper looks at some critical and technical issues of relevance to generative art. In
particular, it examines the concept of emergence, looking at its historical origins and
salient issues surrounding its classification and meaning for developing generative art.
These issues include the hierarchy of levels associated with emergence, recognition
and ontology of patterns, prediction and determinism. Each of these are then related to
attempts to create emergent phenomena with computers for artistic purposes. Several
methodologies for developing emergent generative art are discussed including what is
termed in the paper “the computational sublime”. This definition is considered in rela-
tion to historical and contemporary definitions of the sublime and is posited as a way
for artists to suggest their work is more than the sum of its parts.

1. Introduction
As with a number of art movements, generative art draws from selected elements of Science
and Philosophy as part of its basis, and as a primary influence on its motivation. Naturally, these
“influences” are well known and widely discussed in scientific literature and from scientific per-
spectives. However, little attention has been paid to these influences from within generative art
beyond the fact that they are seen to be part of Science’s way of describing the world. If such in-
fluences are important to the art form, they need to be addressed from the perspective of genera-
tive art itself.
In particular, this paper examines the concept of emergence, with a view to using it as a basis for
developing strategies in generative art. The views presented here are influenced primarily by in-
vestigations in Evolutionary Biology, Philosophy of Science, Cybernetics, Systems Theory, and
Artificial Life. These frameworks are not the usual basis for forming a discussion about art, but
for generative art, they hold special significance, being the major foundations for developing art-
works and ideas. This is partly due to the nebulous influence of concepts such as emergence,
novelty, chaos theory, determinism, complexity, self-organization, and “natural” selection on gen-
erative works. If these are going to form part of the foundation of a practice, it is surely wise to
ensure they are well constructed – lest whatever is constructed on them may collapse.
No doubt, there are other important criteria for thinking about generative art. The purpose here is
to examine the concepts of art and emergence and propose possible strategies that the generative
artist can use to exploit these. At the very least, this may provide a way of creating and, in paral-
lel, critically evaluating generative art.
How might we think about generative processes in relation to an artistic practice? Oddly enough,
this question has been asked many times before in relation to Cybernetics and Artificial Life. Of-
Art, Emergence, and the Computational Sublime Jon McCormack & Alan Dorin

ten in these disciplines, less importance is attached to distinctions between Art and Science than is
attached to the philosophy used to approach the endeavour [36].

1.1. Art in Context

This paper addresses technical and scientific issues from an artist’s perspective. Fundamen-
tally, art is understood as experience in context. Consider some implications of, and qualifications
for, this definition. Firstly, experiences, though they may be shared, are ultimately subjective.
Secondly, art is always experienced in a certain context1, and this context of the experience may
determine the artistic qualities. Perhaps, for example, a supermarket trolley in a supermarket is
not art, but a supermarket trolley in an art gallery would be.
The above definition describes necessary but not sufficient criteria for defining art – how do we
determine art from non-art within the context of experience2? Collectively, perhaps there is no
such thing as non-art – any experience may have some artistic quality to somebody. Even if we
accept this, we can still make relative judgements about our “experiences in context” from a vari-
ety of shared bases. Shared bases are beliefs, the reference points, and knowledge systems com-
mon to groups of people. However, what is considered “good art” by one person or sub-culture
may not even be recognised as art3 by others. Even if some artistic qualities are acknowledged in
an artwork, these qualities may not incite the same modes of appreciation between different indi-
viduals or groups. Nevertheless, although the experience of art is subjective, people may still en-
gage critically with art, and collectively recognize particular qualities and languages in various
artworks. These shared bases are learned both formally (e.g. at art school) and informally through
social interactions. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the shared base for the theory and
practice of generative art.
To accept diverse cultural languages for art is not to deny the relevance of the biological origins
and psychological relations of art. A number of authors see features in art, basic abilities and de-
sires for art-making, that suggest it is a biological adaptation [6, 15-17, 29, 33, 45]. Some biolo-
gists see basic abilities and desires for art-making as adaptations because, for example, they in-
crease one’s social status through conspicuous consumption. This however, does not limit the
potential for art to offer significant “experiences in context”. Owning a Porsche to increase one’s
status through conspicuous consumption does not deny that a Porsche is a clever piece of engi-
neering4. It remains, however, disappointing that the majority of present-day contemporary art
courses do not include biology as part of their syllabus and that theories of the biological origins
of art are largely unacknowledged in contemporary art discourse.

1.2. Artificial Life

The idea of giving life to inanimate objects is a consistent fascination for humans. Domains of
enquiry such as Artificial Life (AL) suggest by their very name a kind of “Frankensteinian” fasci-
nation with mortality, a perceived reversal of entropy, and the super-human ability to breathe real

1
In this paper, we deny the ontology of platonic experiences.
2
Art can also reference non-experiential modes, or suggest that which cannot be experienced, however
while this may be its subject, it is still achieved within the bounds of experience.
3
A recent newspaper story states how an art gallery cleaner “dismantled and discarded” an art installation
by Damian Hurst, believing it to be garbage. The work was worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars”, yet
appeared to be nothing but rubbish to the gallery cleaner. New York Times, London, Monday 22 Oct 2001
(See: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/2001/10/22/FFX2WI063TC.html).
4
This is not to ignore the obvious political implications about wealth, status, and the ownership of “great
works of art” by a privileged few.

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life into inanimate objects. Such modalities may be either conscious or unconscious forces in the
AL artist’s creative impetus.
Different interest groups have different interpretations and visions for Artificial Life (Artificial
Lives as Bonabeau and Theraulaz call them [9]). The perspective presented in this paper is taken
from that of the artist wishing to engage critically with AL. Therefore, important and cognisant
ideas that compel the AL artist may centre, for example, on the concepts of control, inscape, the
sublime, novelty, aesthetics, phenomenology, determinism, causation, and ecology.
When we express our relationship to “the natural” through poesis5, explicitly or implicitly we ex-
press our concern about control. Nature is seen as a force that must be controlled, harnessed and
tamed. This belief is reflected in popular notions of nature as “the chaos”, the uncontrollable
force, and is exemplified by its effects and their consequences (death). For example, the act of
gardening is often quoted as a metaphor to describe aesthetic selection6. In some sense, gardening
is about mastering the uncontrollable – harnessing nature and manipulating it for aesthetic pur-
poses (from the perspective of the gardener). The issue of control translates from the biological
garden to the digital garden; in the case of aesthetic selection, it becomes even more acute – the
digital gardener selects what will “live” and what will “die”.
Important also, is AL’s original claim of broadening the definition of life and offering new or
novel forms of life not currently observed in terrestrial biology – “life-as-it-could-be” [25]. Much
of the life-as-it-could-be mode of investigation has been dismissed by scientists because it is ill
defined [9] – if we were to create life-as-it-could-be that was significantly different from life-as-
we-know-it, how would we recognise it as life? It is also easy to misinterpret life-as-it-could-be
as simply a search for the novel or bizarre – how far can the phenomenological definition of life
(particularly in an art context) be (un)reasonably extended in a postmodern view of the world?
Indeed, AL techniques form part of the broader category of generative art – art that uses some
form of generative process in its realization.

1.3. Generative Art

A basic definition of generative art has been proposed previously [18]. To briefly summarise,
the terms genotype and phenotype are borrowed from Biology as analogous representations of a
productive methodology. Generative art practice focuses on the production and composition of
the genotype and the media in which it produces the phenotype. When run, interpreted, or per-
formed, the genotype produces the phenotype – the work to be experienced and the realization of
the process encoded by the genotype.
Generative art usually involves poeisis, which suggests that it should reveal the world in ways
that nature can’t – hence technology seems a possible, but not necessarily unique, vehicle to
achieve this aim. Implicate too, is the act of creation, but it is poignant to ask in a critical context
what is being created, what is being revealed, and what is the difference between the two?
The role of the artist in a developing a generative artwork often involves creation and manipula-
tion of the genotype and the developmental and (pseudo) physical process systems that “unfold”
it into the phenotype.

5
Poeisis is the process of bringing-forth via human hands, of revealing the world in a way that could not
have occurred by natural processes (which are the processes of physis).
6
Evolutionary artist, William Latham says “The artistic process takes place in two stages: creation and gar-
dening. The artist first creates the systems of the virtual world…the artist then becomes a gardener within
this world he has created;” see [42].

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2. Emergence
In this section, one of the central concepts for developing and understanding generative art is
examined: emergence. Emergence is an all-encompassing term, with a nexus of barely related
meanings in different domains, making it a difficult term to clearly define, let alone understand.
Since the term's early use, almost every author has provided his or her own sub-categorization for
different types of emergence. There is little consensus between individual authors, much less
between disciplines. Debate continues as to the merits of the concept in a number of areas, pri-
marily trying to decide if emergence is a linguistic, epistemic or ontological construct (for a com-
prehensive overview and historical review see [5, 7]).
The common non-specialist interpretation of the term emergence refers to revealing, appearing, or
‘making visible’ an event, object, or the outcome of a process. In an art context, emergence also
encompasses novelty, surprise, spontaneity, agency, even creativity itself – aspects of emergence
we will examine more formally in this section.

2.1. History and Overview of Emergence.

Emergence has its origins in the nineteenth century studies of physical, chemical and biologi-
cal systems. John Stuart Mill drew a distinction between “two modes of the conjoint action of
causes, the mechanical and the chemical” [28]. Influenced by Mill, George Henry Lewes recog-
nized Mill’s fundamental differences between heteropathic and homopathic effects, calling them
emergents and resultants respectively [26]. As described by C. Lloyd Morgan [30], emergent
evolution (emergentism) describes the “incoming of the new”, that is, emergence is defined as the
creation of new properties. Emergentism was a philosophy about the nature of the universe and
the way material elements combine to make structures of increasing complexity become increas-
ingly complex. When the complexity of material configurations reaches a certain level, genuinely
novel properties emerge that have not been instantiated before and could not have been predicted
[4].
The oft-quoted example of Mill’s (from Morgan) relates to molecular chemistry: Carbon has cer-
tain properties, sulphur has certain properties; when the two are combined the result is not an ad-
ditive mixture of the two but a new compound (carbon disulphide), some of the properties of
which are quite different than those of either component – hence the interpretation that the whole
is more than the sum of its parts. Morgan, referencing the work of Mill, Lewes and psychologist
Wundt’s “principle of creative synthesis”, saw emergence as a phenomenon that occurs in many
different systems or hierarchical levels including molecular interactions, life, mind, and self-
consciousness. This concept of emergence has been described as “that reasonable aspect of vi-
talism which is worth to maintain” [21], that is, it removes vitalism’s non-materialist supposi-
tions.
Emergence and emergentism have continued to rise and fall in popularity throughout the twenti-
eth century. Important criticisms in Nagel’s Structure of Science [31] and Hemple and Oppen-
heim’s “Studies in the logic of Explanation” [23] saw emergence as a strong philosophical con-
cept wane for many years. A key criticism of emergence as a phenomenon is that its usefulness as
a classification method is limited because it tends to ignore the specific physicality of the individ-
ual systems – how similar is the emergence of new properties of carbon disulphide from its
atomic components to the emergence of consciousness from cells?
The idea of separating phenomena and processes from substance nascent in emergentism became
formalized in the systems-theoretic approach, in the 1940’s. Systems theory manifested itself in a
number of areas, such as the Philosophy of Bunge, Bahm, and Laszlo; Information Theory of

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Klir; Biology of von Bertalanffy, Thom and Waddington, Cybernetics of Weiner, Ashby and
Rosenberg [3, page 898] and today in Artificial Life.

2.2. Levels and Patterns

Emmeche, Køppe and Stjernfelt [21], give a detailed epistemic analysis of Morgan’s “creation
of new properties”. They differentiate between three different uses of the word “properties” – re-
ferring to primary levels (similar to Morgan, the borders between the major sciences), secondary
levels (sub-fields within the major sciences), and aspects of single entities. These classifications
suggest different types of emergence. In relation to the creation of levels, their gestalt view holds
that the higher level manifests itself as a pattern or as a special arrangement of entities at the
lower level.
The emergence of patterns is of concern to a number of authors. In the field of emergent comput-
ing, for example, Forrest [22] writes:
“In these systems interesting global behavior emerges from many local interactions. When the
emergent behavior is also a computation, we refer to the system as an emergent computation. …
Three important and overlapping themes that exhibit emergent computation are self-organization,
collective phenomena, and cooperative behavior (absence of any centralized control).”
What Forrest calls “interesting global behaviour” suggests two important issues in understanding
emergence – that of the possible, and that of the influence of the observer. As Forrest admits:
“The emergent phenomena of interest are often understood implicitly rather than explicitly. Cur-
rently, many emergent computations are interpreted by the perceptual system of the person run-
ning the experiment.”
How do we implicitly recognise “interesting” patterns? What is the difference between emergent
and non-emergent patterns? Dennett discusses the “reality of patterns” in [14]. Looking at how
agents distinguish a particular pattern from noise, he makes important observations about the in-
formation-theoretic content of a pattern in relation to its ontological status. Visual systems ev-
olved to distinguish pattern from noise, but the “level” of pattern recognition has evolutionary
constraints – a balance between the fidelity of pattern perception, its costs and payoffs. If we rely
on recognition of patterns to justify emergence in systems, could there be patterns that we as ob-
servers cannot recognise7, yet may still be “interesting” in studying emergent phenomena?
Information-theoretic approaches to understanding patterns in emergent systems have been stud-
ied (for example) by Crutchfield [12]. He recognises that “patterns are guessed rather than veri-
fied” and so seeks information-theoretic measures to obtain a more objective analysis of pattern
formation. Crutchfield defines intrinsic emergence, where the system itself capitalizes on patterns
that appear (i.e. the patterns exploit their own dynamics).
Our natural perception8 defines the concept of everyday things and objects (animals, plants, etc.)
that we have evolved to perceive at a particular level, in order to function in the world. Science
has added to this a means for us to “see” at other levels. Following on from Dennett, taking per-
ception to its ultimate end, if we could “perceive” the universe in a kind of gods-eye view or
“Laplacian inversion”, with the recognition of every single sub-atomic particle over its spatio-

7
Dennett often uses Wimsatt’s example that an ant-eater averages a collection of ants to their totality,
hence “sees” them a whole rather than as a collection of individual ants [44].
8
Meaning unaided by technology.

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temporal configuration, we would have no need for patterns or levels?9 These concepts are neces-
sary conveniences, developed as the result of pragmatic evolutionary pressures, to assist our sur-
vival within the limitations of being perceptual entities that are part of the world.
Compare to this, the view that it is impossible to interpret a lower-level explanation without using
some higher-level concepts to identify what is going on. That is, higher-level phenomena need to
be recognized as a basis to identify what must be explained at the lower level [24].

2.3. Prediction, explanation, determinism

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
— Kierkegaard, quoted in [13]
Since the coining of the term emergence by Lewes, a distinction is made between those emer-
gent properties that are explainable as products of lower level interactions, and those that are not.
What does it mean to be “explainable”? This is the crux of the issue and the basis of the reduc-
tionist/emergentism debate. Emmeche et. al. refer to two kinds of processes: those that cannot yet
be explained but are not, in principle unexplainable, and processes that are in some sense of the
word, unexplainable [21]. It is this second sense that usually provokes the reductionists into re-
taliation, because this implies that such processes are ontologically irreducible. Further, how are
we to know what will be explainable in the future? Hence, it becomes impossible to distinguish
between the epistemological and ontological senses of emergence.
Consequently, the idea that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts” may be expanded to give
form its own ontological status10 – the term “more” being a “specific series of spatial and mor-
phological relationships between the parts”. Matter and form, “opposing but not contradictory
points of view of the same reality.”
Central to a modern concept of emergence are the relevance of determinism and boundary condi-
tions. Von Neumann pointed out that physical laws are reversible in time, but that measurement is
intrinsically irreversible [32], for a contradictory view see [35]. Modern physics has shown that
even those systems that can be described deterministically are subject to a critical dependence on
initial conditions (for example, the three body problem). Polanyi [34] recognised that while
physics may be able to describe what is going on at a micro level, the macro emergent properties
cannot be predicted from the micro level physics, because they are computationally irreducible –
determined by boundary conditions at the macro level. That is, the lower level laws are unspecific
[9] with respect to the higher-level phenomena they may produce. Emmeche et. al. use the exam-
ple of the cell to illustrate this idea – “if you list all known chemical regularities and laws, it
would be impossible for you, on the basis of this list and without any knowledge of the biological
cell, to select those entities, regularities and types of behaviour which are specific to the biologi-
cal cell.” [20]
Thus, according to these views, Physics presents an immense phase space of possibilities, in
which it is impossible to determine exactly what will emerge at higher levels. Emergence can
only be recognised after it has occurred, since it cannot be predicted in principle.

9
Such a fanciful proposition raises numerous difficulties, particularly given the fundamental uncertainty in
measurement of sub-atomic particles.
10
That is, non-subjectivist features.

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2.4. Emergence for Generative Art

“Most electronic artists are looking for an out-of-control quality that
will result in their work actually having outcomes that they did not an-
ticipate. If the piece does not surprise the author in some way then it is
not truly successful in my opinion”
—Rafael Lozano-Hemmer quoted in an interview with Heimo Ranzen-
bacher. [40]
The richness of emergence in the physical world serves as a great source of inspiration to gen-
erative artists11. Artists are often looking for surprise, novelty, agency and that “out-of-control”
feeling in their work, what Ashby describes as Descarte's Dictum: how can a designer build a
device which outperforms the designer's specifications [2]?
Artists can get away with much more than scientists can where emergence is concerned, since Art
is not bound by the same obligations as Science. But in gaining such freedom, the artist also ac-
quires new problems because, in general, the search space lacks reference points12 and becomes
potentially vast. Given that true emergence defies prediction, how can one begin to design works
that do have outcomes that were not anticipated?
Langton’s life-as-it-could-be seems like an excellent starting point for developing the concept of
art-as-it-could-be – emergent creative behaviour in artificial systems. However, given the prob-
lems discussed in previous sections, achieving life-as-it-could-be seems difficult, life-as-it-could-
be creating art-as-it-could-be even more so. Moreover, if we are going to find it tough to recog-
nize life-as-it-could-be, surely art-as-it-could-be will be unrecognisable, incomprehensible, or just
plain uninteresting.
The idea of autonomous systems making art might seem appealing, but how does it relate to our
“experience in context” definition of art? Bowerbirds might be considered autonomous systems
that make “art”, but such activities remain principally of interest to biologists, not art critics. The
creation of evolving agents that develop their own artistic practices should not be confused with
the goal of widening the scope of art for human appreciation.

2.5. Creating Emergent Art with Machines

“But you know, all pictures painted inside, in the studio, will never be
as good as the things done outside.”
— Paul Cézanne in a letter to Emile Zola, 19 October 1866
Today, generative art is often implemented on a computer13. Thus it is poignant to consider the
limitations and possibilities of computation for creativity, and of the computer as an “art ma-
chine” if we want to create emergent works. As discussed in section 1.2, some of AL’s goals (e.g.
emergent behaviour) are not dissimilar and there is much in biological and AL literature discuss-

11
From here on, when we refer to “art” and “artists” we are primarily referring to generative art and those
who make it.
12
By reference points, we mean events, relations and epistemologies that form the basis for developing a
particular work. Science has the physical world and the scientific method as possible reference points.
Normally, conventional artists will have their own personal reference points and those from art theory, but
with works that attempt genuine emergent properties, these may not be appropriate, particularly if the artist
does not wish to simply mimic the reference points of art or science.
13
“often” does not necessarily imply the best. Some generative artworks have used other physical entities
to set up process-based works with considerable longevity and critical success (see [18] for examples).

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ing the limitations of using symbol processing machines to make, for example strong AL. This
could be a suitable starting point for examining similar issues in generative art.
Pattee distinguishes between simulation – as a metaphorical representation of a specific structure
or behaviour that we recognize as “standing for” but not realizing the system being simulated
(weak AL) and realization – a literal, substantial replacement of that system (strong AL) [32].
Computers are symbol-processing machines and while they are capable of simulating physical
systems and phenomena, a symbol processing simulation is not a priori grounds for a theory of
what is being simulated.
This raises an important question in relation to computer-based generative art works. If they are
simulations, their basis must come from simulating something known. Most current generative art
works are developed in this way (they tweak the conceptual space in the terminology of Boden
[8]). Since new emergent phenomena cannot be predicted, we must depend on the simulation of
known emergent systems, or on intuition and heuristics based on existing systems in order to
guess which particular configurations of micro properties will result in emergent macro-
phenomena. Computation has a smaller phase space than that of Physics, what is practically com-
putable, even smaller. Increasing computing resources has two simultaneous implications for this
practical space: it enlarges its size, giving more potential configurations, and yet it increases the
speed at which this space may be searched. This recent advance in search speed often makes
searches that would be impractical to explore in physical systems possible in simulation.
This begs the question – is generative art made on computers just tweaking the simulation of ex-
isting systems, or is it exploring the phase space of computation in a genuinely novel way? Is our
starting point in developing ideas about generative art based in the simulation of reality? Alterna-
tively, do we begin with the more constrained possibility of exploring the symbol processing
space of computation in general? The latter, while conceptually interesting, seems much more
difficult in terms of locating a starting point. Nature – life-as-we-know-it – provides numerous
starting-points that can be tweaked, subverted and distorted in our search for novelty (e.g. repli-
cation, evolution, fitness, form, matter, etc.). Computation is abstract and un-grounded, inevitably
needing to be made concrete through some interpretation14. To date, these interpretations pri-
marily reference the metaphors on which their processes are based.
Simplistically, some of these problems can be avoided by embedding our system in physical re-
ality (e.g. by building robots or systems that interact directly with the world through measurement
and action). However, in this case, while we loose the difficulties of simulation, we do not re-
move the problem of predicting genuine emergence, nor do we remove the granularity of digital
computation. To reverse a common truism – a real system has the same or worse difficulties of
prediction as a simulation of it does15.
Artists and designers are always endeavouring to create works that are more than the sum of their
parts. The “more” in this case is specific to the context of the artist’s concerns for the work, rather
than to physical examples of emergence.
For example, Sanders defines: “Concepts derived from an existing knowledge base but which
demonstrate significantly different properties are called emergent” [37]. However, such a defini-
tion seems too broad. By this definition, an image on a television may be considered an emergent
property of phosphor dots excited by electrons. This definition does not distinguish between sys-

14
Although one can imagine an uninteresting conceptual art work that consists of a process running on a
machine with no directly perceptible output.
15
For example, many evolutionary robotics systems spend much of their development time in simulation,
as it is faster and cheaper than developing real robots.

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tems in which there is no interaction between components at the micro level and those in which
there are both interaction and process relationships at this level (this is the difference, for exam-
ple, between a television image and a cellular automata simulation). Hence, this preferred defini-
tion is more specific about the category of phenomena it purports to distinguish.
Cariani refers to factors outside the frame of reference of the computer program in what he calls
“emergence relative-to-the-model”. This gives us an insight into one of the possible roles for em-
ergence in generative art, where the “emergence” is not in the simulation itself; rather how it
changes the way we think and interact with the world [11], and discussion in [20, Chapter 6].
British artist, Richard Brown, in developing his artwork Biotica, “wanted creatures to sponta-
neously emerge from a primitive soup, rather than craft them by hand” [10]. Such goals are simi-
lar for many AL artists and researchers alike who seek to develop self-organizing systems that
lead to emergent phenomena. Self-organizing systems encode some form of physical (or pseudo-
or meta- physical) relationships, including basic laws of how entities operate within the (simu-
lated) physical system. The “trick” is in the selection of local rules that determine the nature of
the resultant behaviour and the careful selection of initial conditions – this can prove illusive. By
Brown’s own admission, the work “did not produce any surprising emergent results”. Adding
complexity to the rules and simulated physical phase space of Biotica resulted in a more complex
system, but not in results that created new levels of surprise, agency or novelty.
Sim’s virtual creatures [38] on the other hand, do indeed produce novel and surprising results,
but are they truly emergent? Sims designed a specific low-level infrastructure to support his con-
scious goal of creating block-like creatures that discover, via competitive evolution, solutions to
specific goals (following lights, competing for objects), rather than spontaneously emerging. For
open-ended evolution, much more consideration needs to be given to designing the environment.
For genuinely new symbolic information to arise in the genome, the entire semantically-closed
organization (genotype, phenotype and the interpretation machinery that produces the latter from
the former, including the whole developmental process through which an adult phenotype is pro-
duced) – needs to be “embedded in the arena of competition” [41].
In a design sense, it is possible to make creative systems that exhibit emergent properties beyond
the designer's conscious intentions, hence creating an artefact, process, or system that is “more”
than was conceived by the designer. This is not unique to computer-based design, but it offers an
important glimpse into the possible usefulness of such design techniques – “letting go of control”
as an alternative to the functionalist, user-centred modes of design. Nature can be seen as a com-
plex system that can be loosely transferred to the process of design, with the hope that human
poiesis may somehow obtain the elements of physis so revered in the design world. Mimicry of
natural processes with a view to emulation, while possibly sufficient for novel design, does not
alone necessarily translate as effective methodology for art however.

3. Methodologies of Generative Art

Emergence, while part of the generative artist's impetus (as detailed in section 2.4), is too
broad a goal in a general sense, due to a lack of reference points (unless we wish simply to mimic
existing systems). What is needed are some reference points suited to creating generative works
that aspire to some genuine sense of emergence. In this section, we discuss a number of method-
ologies that either might be, or have been, used to produce such emergent qualities in artworks.

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3.1. The role of subversion

As discussed in section 2.5, computational phase space is too large to serve as a starting point
alone for developing an artwork. Thus, it seems that the majority of generative art works have
drawn from the palette of existing technical procedures and subverted them in order to expose
some interesting, novel or previously unconsidered feature of such process, or to re-interpret the
process for the artists own ends (tweaking the conceptual space). For example, in the works of
Australian artist John Tonkin, evolutionary processes are subverted, and used by the artist to ex-
pose political and social concepts of evolution and its implications [43].
Other approaches may be to visualize, sonify, or create in unusual or context dependent ways,
systems that revel the process in hitherto unknown ways. There is no doubt that subversion and
the irrational play an important role in contemporary art, seemingly much the anthesis of the
standard scientific mode of practice, or that of the teleological engineer. However, generative
processes in particular, often appear most strongly to deny this conventional mode of thinking,
providing a deeper connection with the seeming irreducibility of a strong emergent process.

3.2. Symbol Manipulation, Mental Models

Consider how the generative artist might think about the relation between the world, the com-
puter program, and its outcomes. The diagram shown in Figure 1 captures aspects of a particular
way of working, but one we believe general enough to be useful. Relationships between the gen-
erative artist, the computer, and the world, are expressed in terms of concepts and information
flow. There are two key sets of concepts held by the artist: how the world works and how the
computer works. In order to program the computer with a view to implementing aspects of how
the world works (e.g. emergent behaviour), there must be a translation between the concepts of
how the world works and how the computer works. Knowledge of how the world works is in-
formed by the world. In developing concepts of how the world works, and implementing simula-
tions on the computer, the computer simulation may inform us how the world works as well16.
THE WORLD THE WORLD
COMPUTER COMPUTER
out in
Experience of Experience of the Intent expressed Experience of Experience of the Intent expressed
the world computer simulation as programs the world computer simulation as interaction
of the world of the world

ARTIST USER

informs informs
Concepts of how Concepts of how Concepts of how Concepts of how
the world works the computer the world works the computer
works works
informs informs

Figure 1: Development Mode. Information flow for Figure 2: Experience Mode. Information flow for the
the artist (with the intent of authoring a generative user interacting with the computer, working in the
artwork) interacting with the computer working in the world. The lighter shaded lines indicated weakened
world. The red lines show key information flows. channels of information flow.

As the figure shows, there are two feedback loops operating. Concepts about how the world
works inform concepts about how the computer works reciprocally. Concepts of how the world
16
Of course, we make no assumption of the accuracy of the simulation, beyond its intent to simulate some
aspects of the world, thus what the computer informs us about the world may possibly be incorrect or irrev-
erent.

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Art, Emergence, and the Computational Sublime Jon McCormack & Alan Dorin

works must be mediated by concepts of how the computer works before they can be implemented
as a program run on the computer. The output of such a program may inform both concepts of
how the world works (as this is what the simulation or artwork is attempting to achieve) and how
the computer works.
There are many observations we can make from these relations and feedback loops. As an exam-
ple, consider the mapping or translation of concepts about the world to the more limited domain
of the computer. Many AL simulations map concepts about the world to the purely symbolic do-
main of computation (birth, death, life), even the concept of the world itself is reduced to a finite,
Cartesian, possibly discrete representation. If such representations go on to inform concepts about
the (real) world, then clearly their usefulness may be limited.
Consider also, how we might achieve Cariani’s relative-to-the-model emergence [11] and how
our assumptions in Figure 1 will be different for the user/viewer of the artwork. This is shown in
Figure 2. Some of the information flows are shown in a lighter shade to reflect the possibility that
their effects may be diminished in the experience of the artwork. In this case, the feedback loops
become minimal or disappear, meaning we may have to work harder to achieve emergent behav-
iour. One important way this can be obtained is by strengthening the connection between the
user’s interaction with the model and their concepts of how the world works. To achieve relative-
to-the-model emergence, engagement with the computer needs to suggest that the work is more
than its design intended it to be – it must be informationally open. For artworks, this might be
achieved in a number of ways:
• through interaction (a feedback loop) with the work in real-time, where continuous re-
assessment of the work suggests (for example) dynamics beyond the physical or virtual
elements that compose the work;
• through suggestion of the sublime by an apparent vastness – that the simulation’s repre-
sentation of the world is more broad than the user’s concept matching of the same phe-
nomena. This is the subject of discussion in the next section.
A more problematic area is that of the user’s concepts about how the computer works, what it is
capable of, and so forth. Naively, people may find some things the computer does impressive be-
cause the computer is doing them (rather than a person for instance). We are fascinated and
amazed in many cases, that a mere machine can produce things of seemingly un-machine-like
qualities – technical prowess, even qualities we only associate with, for instance, nature itself. Of
course, such assumptions reveal huge gaps in our analysis of both the world and the machine.

3.3. The Computational Sublime

The sublime has a long and well-explored history in art, particularly in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Kant distinguished the mathematically sublime and the dynamically sublime.
The mathematically sublime brings to our attention that which we can conceive of symbolically
(through mathematics), but cannot experience sensorialy. The dynamically sublime suggests the
incomprehensible power of nature. An important aspect of the sublime is the tension created be-
tween pleasure and fear – the pleasure of knowing that we can be aware of what we cannot ex-
perience and the fear that there exist things that are too vast or powerful for us to experience. In
relating nature and aesthetics, the sublime formed a major critical and philosophical approach in
western art in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (for an overview of the relation of the sub-
lime to nature see [39, Chapter 7]). Bourke and Kant argued that it is possible for artworks to
suggest the sublimity of nature – to suggest by experience of the artwork that which we cannot
experience in totality.

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Art, Emergence, and the Computational Sublime Jon McCormack & Alan Dorin

In recent times, the postmodern sublime has contrasted beauty as a form that can be apprehended
against the sublime, as that which is unrepresentable in sensation [27]. As discussed, emergence
in computation is unrepresentable, in the sense of the product of elements interacting in ways that
give rise to properties that cannot be predicted. Artworks that seek to give a sense of the processes
of nature in machines, seek to give experience to that which cannot be experienced in totality –
only suggested through a dynamic interaction.
Therefore the concept of the computational sublime is introduced – the instilling of simultaneous
feelings of pleasure and fear in the viewer of a process realized in a computing machine. A duality
in that even though we cannot comprehend the process directly, we can experience it through the
machine – hence we are forced to relinquish control. It is possible to realize processes of this kind
in the computer due to the speed and scale of its internal mechanism, and because its operations
occur at a rate and in a space vastly different to the realm of our direct perceptual experience.
An example of a work that subverts standard technological processes and suggests the role of the
computational sublime is that of the Dutch artists Erwin Driessens & Maria Verstappen [19].
Their work, IMA Traveller subverts the traditional concept of cellular automata by making the
automata recursive, leading to qualitatively different results to those achieved through direct
mimicry of technical CA techniques in other generative works. IMA Traveller suggests the com-
putational sublime because it is in effect, an infinite space. It offers both pleasure and fear: pleas-
ure in the sense that here inside a finite space is the representation (and partial experience) of
something infinite to be explored at will; fear in that the work is in fact infinite, and also in that
we have lost control. The interaction is somewhat illusory, in the sense that while we can control
the zoom into particular sections of the image, we cannot stop ourselves from continually falling
(zooming) into the work, and we can never return to a previous location in the journey. The work
creates an illusion of space that is being constantly created for the moment (as opposed to works
that draw from pre-computed choice-sets). The zooming process will never stop. That there is no
real ground plane or point of reference suggests Kierkegaard’s quote of section 2.3 – you are al-
ways going, but only from the point of where you’ve been.

4. Conclusions
Generative processes offer a rich and complex area for artists to explore. This paper has only
touched upon a few issues, and ignored many of importance. The concept of emergence, though
constantly changing and often criticised, is a recurring philosophical theme that evolved to super-
sede the vitalist philosophies of the nineteenth century. This philosophical theme links a number
of schools of thought in the sciences of the twentieth century – Systems Theory, Cybernetics, and
Artificial Life. If such a theme could be expressed succinctly, it would be as a philosophy of pro-
cess – the inclusion of both mechanism and matter as fundamental properties of the universe.
It is important however, to consider the fate and usefulness of both Systems Theory and Cyber-
netics. Systems Theory was a cultural reaction to reductionism and highly specific modes and
languages in Science. Cybernetics (as defined by Ashby) was a theory of machines, but it treats,
not things, but ways of behaving [1]. Today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, while
both these disciplines still have their proponents, such a holistic approach is not the predominate
methodology for training scientists.
The longevity of Artificial Life is yet to be determined. As the stepchild of Systems Theory and
Cybernetics, AL, once again, is hedging its bets on the process philosophy. The real payoffs and
long-term goals of AL, such as the creation of artificial systems that we can confidently call alive,
have yet to materialize. AL may not have the same escape hatches as AI did.

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Art, Emergence, and the Computational Sublime Jon McCormack & Alan Dorin

Generative art draws from the philosophies of the process-based sciences. Its potential is rich: art-
as-it-could-be, artworks that are autonomous, genuinely novel, emergent, active, self-renewing
and never-ending. Yet, while many innovative generative artworks have given us glimpses into
these possibilities, such lofty goals remain intangible at present, and with no guarantee of success.
It remains for future generations of generative artists to determine if any of these goals will be
achieved.
This paper has discussed some modes and methodologies for generative art to explore – the role
of subversion, mental models of understanding for the artist and audience, the computational
sublime. We do not suggest that these are the only issues for consideration, and inevitably, art-
works will be judged not only on the themes explored here, but also in terms of the more com-
fortable and fashionable theories of the electronic and new-media arts, and contemporary art in
general.
Generative art seeks to exploit the out-of-control nature of nature, but to achieve this in a genuine
sense, the artist is obliged to acknowledge that control must really be relinquished – still a very
difficult thing to do, and a challenge to the conceptual processes of developing an artwork.
We have also acknowledged that computation, as it exists today, may never be able to give us true
emergence, the likes of which we observe in the world around us. As a number of authors have
shown, the dialectic of simulation and realization, of life-like and life, are still fundamental issues
that, as yet, remain unresolved.

5. Acknowledgments
Parts of this paper were developed while Jon McCormack was a visiting researcher at COGS,
University of Sussex, UK – a stimulating environment for thinking about emergence and artificial
life. Thanks in particular go to Dr. Phil Husbands at COGS for supporting this visit.

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