GENERATOR
14 - 29 September 2002

http://www.generative.net/generator/


SPACEX at the Liverpool Biennial
56 Wood Street, Liverpool L1 4AQ


Artists: Mark Bowden, Stuart Brisley, Angus Fairhurst, Alec Finlay, Tim
Head, Jeff Instone, Zoe Irvine, Sol LeWitt, limbomedia, Alex McLean,
Netochka Nezvanova, Yoko Ono, Organogenesis Inc, Colin Sackett, Cornelia
Sollfrank, STAR & monkeys from Paignton Zoo, Joanna Walsh, Adrian Ward

Organised by SPACEX and STAR, with support from the Afoundation, the
Institute of Digital Art & Technology and the National Touring Programme of
the Arts Council of England.


GENERATOR presents a series of 'self-generating' projects, incorporating
digital media, instruction and participation pieces, drawing machines,
experimental literature and music technologies. All work is produced 'live',
in real-time, with some elements continuing indefinitely. 'Generative art'
is a term generally used to refer to any practice where the artist creates a
process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a
machine, or other procedural invention, which is then set into motion with
some degree of autonomy, contributing to or resulting in a completed work of
art. After the initial parameters have been set the process of production is
unsupervised, and, as such, 'self-organising' and 'time-based'.

One aim of the exhibition is to frame the emerging art practice of computer
software programming within a context of conceptual art. Without a critical
awareness of how and by whom programs are written, much so-called 'digital
art' is effectively an unacknowledged collaboration with corporate software,
where the apparent freedom to manipulate data is entirely governed by the
pre-determined rules of the code. By writing their own code, in programming
languages like Perl, RealBASIC or C, software artists such as Alex McLean,
Cornelia Sollfrank, Joanna Walsh, Adrian Ward or Netochka Nezvanova, are
able not only to by-pass the media monopoly of corporate software but to
create their own generative algorithms that function within the basic
'grammar' of the computer operating system itself.

GENERATOR also presents a series of new commissions by renowned conceptual
artists. Sol LeWitt has made a new bookwork, entitled Chicago, which he
describes as "a serial variation using found postcards of Chicago, showing
the city during day and night". Co-founder of the Fluxus movement, Yoko Ono
presents a number of participation pieces, using simple scores with
instructions for participants to generate the work. In Angus Fairhurst's
piece Fainter and Fainter high street banks are called up and played back
previous calls, until the system becomes chaotic. He also presents two new
drawing pieces, inviting the audience to follow a simple set of instructions
to produce the work. Stuart Brisley's collaboration with Adrian Ward,
Ordure, presents a giant digital image of detritus that slowly turns to
dust, pixel by pixel, the more it is viewed, only renewing itself when left
alone. Tim Head presents two new code-based, digital works that continue his
exploration of the physical composition of the computer screen itself and
the nature of electronic space.

In both conceptual and software art, the 'concept' (or formal instructions)
is the actual material of the work, and the physical appearance or outcome
is thus incidental to the execution of the 'plan' or notation. As with
literature, the work is primarily concerned with the uses of language, and
thus not bound to objects or sites. GENERATOR also presents a number of
experimental text-based works. Jeff Instone's collaborative project with
Joanna Walsh, Oulibot, is an internet-based 'web-crawler' inspired by OuLiPo
(Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle), a group of experimental writers and
mathematicians who worked within literary constraints. Alec Finlay presents
Irish (2), in collaboration with photographer, Guy Moreton, and sound
artist, Zoe Irvine, a sequel to Irish, his collaboration with Sol LeWitt,
based around different translations of the same poem by Paul Celan. Colin
Sackett's prose work Essayes has been re-arranged according to the rule of
'extent' while the online version, extendedessayes, uses the same rule, but
invites contributions from the public. As part of the Vivaria project, the
research group STAR work with Sulawesi crested macaques in a live web-link
to Paignton Zoo, inviting monkeys to re-write the complete works of
Shakespeare online.

Other projects include Mark Bowden's Polymorph, a machine that acts as a
physical interface between mechanical and digital systems, presented in
collaboration with limbomedia, and Organogenesis Inc's Integument, a
step-by-step bio-tech guide to growing the surface area of your own body, in
vitro.


For further information please contact generator@generative.net

or

Tom Trevor at Spacex Gallery, +44 (0)1392 431786
Mike Hurst at the A Foundation, +44 (0)151 236 8006