I call works of art “algorithmic art” if they are generated by algorithms running on a computer.

When I began, I only used professional inks on high-quality paper. Later, some were done as silkscreen prints. Today, they are either dynamic or interactive installations, or high-quality digital prints.

Hard to answer in short. I see the future, on the one hand, in the old traditions of graphic art. But, in speculating, I also see it in large, dynamic installations in public spaces. The first path is the recognition of algorithmic art as the same as any other kind of art; the second is the futuristic path. And, of course, algorithmic and digital techniques will be used in one way or another by the majority of artists, for certain purposes. How might this influence, or even reshape, imagination and creativity? The digital principle already plays a role in trivializing certain aesthetic processes. For serious aesthetic production, algorithmic work (“programing”) will play an even more important role. There will be no movie without some algorithmic components. What about imagination? The existence of the digital principle, in some parts of culture, leads to algorithmic thinking. This will, in consequence, lead to an algorithm-based form of imagination. There is nothing radically new about this, because imagination develops with the means of production. Our special contribution is that works and processes are now based on computation. Therefore, everything grows a computable double.

Since 1969, I have worked exclusively with computers, and therefore with the logic of programing languages, to create art. The dialogue with the computer is an integral part of my work and a fascinating spur to my imagination, which culminates in a process that I call high-speed visual thinking. This radical approach leads to otherwise unobtainable results. I also see it as a physical and intellectual extension, an important aspect of the process of creating my art. On the other hand, I consider my artistic goal met when a finished work is visually disassociated from its logical content, when it can convincingly stand as an independent, artistic, abstract entity.

The material aspect of my work can be seen and understood in different ways. The code, the essential and basic component, is the non-visual, abstract logic of my work. Computer and mechanical drawing devices visualize this logic in different materials (including paper, canvas, and laser cut-reliefs, which I call Laserglyphs), creating representations in more-or-less classical art forms. Another kind of visualization is real-time, non-repetitive moving images, in which my programs run on a computer linked to an LCD screen. Each aspect represents a possible form of materiality for my art. I sometimes compare this idea to the three states of aggregation: ice, liquid, and steam. Therefore, the idea of digital art encompasses different states of materiality, which is to say its representations.

We do not know which artistic developments and trends will guide us in the uncharted territories of the future, but we always will build on past experiences to develop new ideas that will shape our thinking and social behavior. The integration of algorithms into artistic expression is no exception; they reflect human intelligence and are here to stay. From my own experience, I can say that working with algorithms for fifty years has transformed my thinking and imagination profoundly. I also understand that knowledge is irreversible. Since, by definition, “art” reflects the time we live in, I am convinced that, in the future, many artistic expressions will continue to embrace algorithms and new technologies in astonishing ways.

Art that is made when the computer uses its own logic to create.

One should say that the computer or algorithm uses me to realize the materiality of its spirit.

In the future, no one will question why people use computers to make art, because it will be the norm. We believe that we created computers, yet it is them that created us, and everything unfolds without anyone noticing this.

I began to work with computers when the first Macintosh was introduced, in 1984. You could use this new technical device very intuitively, and the visual language was a very simple one, like pictograms—I liked that. It was clear that it would change the way images were generated and distributed. It was a paradigmatic shift.

When I started to work with digital tools, there were very limited options to get the image out of the computer; there was no large-scale printing or 3D sculpting whatsoever. The situation now is completely different. Today, more or less every production process is based on digital information. Over the years, my work was constantly expanding in a way that was closely interconnected with technical progress: in the 1980s, digital drawings and painting-like pieces; in the 1990s, spaces with silkscreen modules; and later, building facades and large-scale computer animations. Virtual spaces became real architecture.

In the early years of the World Wide Web, there was the hope for a very democratic, non-hierarchical medium that might give everyone access to information and knowledge. Over the years, we have learned that these new technologies have led to big international companies with almost a monopoly on the new information industries. Social media is changing our notion of democracy in a radical way. To use the computer means to be somehow linked to all this social and economic development, and perhaps to make particular processes visible.

As an artist, I’m doing art. Computers and technologies are merely tools to process and make artworks, in the same way that a person who works at a company, bank, or hospital might use them. Nothing works without computers and technology in contemporary society. I do not think it is unusual for us to use computers and technologies in art, as that would imply that we do not operate within contemporary society. The essential aim for businesspeople is the business itself; for artists, it is the art itself. Thus, emphasizing or categorizing “computing” in relation to art is misguided, or even misleading. To me, art is art.
In addition, I am primarily a composer. As a composer, playing with numbers and mathematical structures is quite natural, since Pythagoras discovered pristine mathematical relationships between sounds and numbers. Mathematics existed long before philosophy emerged in Western culture (Socrates, Plato, etc.). I am very conscious of what I am doing based on that fact. Music is, in essence, purely about mathematical structures and operations. Sounds are a property of the natural phenomena of physics. Music gives artistic life to sounds through mathematical operations. Be aware of the fact that mathematical operations, including computations, do not necessarily require actual computers or technologies. Computers and technologies aid us in mathematical operations; I create art in the same way.

My work is about combining the perceptual qualities of light with sequences created with code. The visual manifestation of computation is what my work is all about. Light allows me to engage the physical world, enabling the work to transcend into the realm of “art.”

I consider myself a sculptor in the way I use materials and engage space to create communal experience. It is important to me to drag the digital off the screen and out into the real world. It is quite powerful and surprising to see how audiences respond to these unique hybrids.

It is exciting to see the broad level at which artists are using new technological tools. We have never had better ways of manipulating sound, image, and light. I like how software is becoming an everyday tool for artists and look forward to the day it is no longer categorized as “tech art,” just art. It is also thrilling to create public artworks that engage tens of millions of people, pioneering new formats on a vast urban scale.

I consider the computer a tool that can give rise to art, and thus I do not use the term computing art, in general. Without a doubt, the computer is uniquely powerful to model and respond to contemporary conditions. I lament how rare the strong application of that power is within contemporary art. Ideally, the divisions between computer science and art academies might shrink and allow for more fruitful exchange and collaboration in time.

I typically produce portraits of found sites or, more recently, collaged and overlaid scenes and objects within sites. These works take the form of software, which executes the world of the work over an annual orbit. This is an entirely constructed, simulated scene, made up of code, model, and texture. These simulations can be considered sculptures of a new sort, and they exist often in the public domain as LED walls supported by monolithic cubes. The works are not presented as surfaces or screens, but as objects which strongly intrude upon the scene—as the digital does within culture and society. In that light, I typically insist on a tangible sculptural presence for the works in the world. Outside of that, the works very specifically engage with materials such as gasoline or carbon dioxide and represent them in physically accurate ways, albeit manipulated. Simulation allows a novel relation to the physics of smoke, for instance, and this aspect provides a wonderful site for experimentation.

Every artist responds to the realities in which they find themselves. And those realities now are strongly technically mediated. The health crisis of Covid-19 seems to accelerate this process. I suspect that artists will make greater use of the technologies in which they are immersed. Getting back to my first response, the degree to which this is a media response, as in producing video or image, or a more technical one, as in modelling the world, depends on the degree to which artists access computer coding. I imagine that virtuality and simulation will have a strong role to play in imaginations of the future, and arts education can likely frame that imagination through the degree to which it gets past image to something more technically fundamental.

I have been coding since I was twelve years old, so almost forty years. For me, it has become a form of meditation. From the beginning, it was a way to organize my thoughts and understand the complexities of life using algorithms. My first computer was like an oracle: I could ask it questions. My favorite subject was probability, from gambling to game theory. I began my formal relationship with visual art as a painter. I later understood that drawing and painting, for me, existed in the same mental space as writing computer code. After a while, I was able to replace the traditions of classical art with pure code.

I have always had a purist approach to the potentials of using computers to make art. Even though I could not define what computer art was, I knew I wanted to use the computer to make something that no other art form could create. I did not want to use the computer as a glorified virtual paintbrush; I was not interested in simulating existing media. My initial challenge was moving from the world of traditional art media (which are essentially physical objects, like paintings or sculptures) into the purely conceptual, immaterial universe of code. In the early 1990s, I turned to video projection as way to give the audience access to my digital ecosystems of language and thought. I am extremely interested in the idea of the cave and prehistoric art as a starting point for all visual art. Digital art is a continuum; the cave is now virtual.

I strongly believe that contemporary artists have a responsibility to take “ownership” of emergent technologies. The increasing complexity of digital society creates a wide chasm between users, technology, and society. Artists should colonize, subvert, and utilize these platforms to create a “philosophy of the phantasm.” Virtual reality, in some yet-to-exist form, is a potential future for artists. I hope there will be more chances for a new generation of artists to learn more about code and how to use it. Current academies of art are generally falling behind in their responsibility to equip students with the relevant tools to react to digital society.vant tools to react to digital society.

I like to use the word “software” to discuss my work. Software is the medium of the work, in the way that video, film, and paint are media. Software can be found within a web browser, and it can be an application running on any kind of computer. Game art and net art are both categories of the larger domain of software art. There are many other types of software art as well, from audiovisual performances to interactive installations.
I use the word “code” too. Code is a type of writing that creates software. Just as notes or sounds are composed to make music, code is used to compose software. Learning to code is learning to think about systems.
Software is a unique medium in a few ways. It has a different relationship to time. It is a medium that can be performed, and it can perform itself. Unlike a painting that changes in the eye of the viewer, software is more like a dancer: it is continuously in action. Unlike film and video, which display a sequence of frames in the same order, software can both generate new images live and display them in any sequence. These are the mechanics of software, which create kinds of experiences that are different than those other media offer.

Software is a conceptual medium that exists as an idea without form, but it need to be paired with physical elements to be experienced. Software often generates light, either through a projector or a screen. Light is material, but in a different way than other, more physical, media. Software can also be used to control physical media. Nearly everything that is “robotic” has a software element that brings in information from the world and controls the motors. I use software as a visual artist, but others use it for different ends. Software can generate sound and music, and it can compose text.

If you look back at the history of software as used by artists, we see the conceptual groundwork laid for more than one hundred years, at a minimum. In the 1960s, artists began to work with software directly. They wrote code to create new software as a part of the process of creating their work. The first media that software touched were drawing and film. Now, software is deeply embedded in photography, video, and sculpture. Even painters use it to sketch. I think and read a lot about how the introduction of photography changed painting in the nineteenth century and how they influenced each other. I think emerging machine-learning code and the hardware that supports it might have an impact of this magnitude. I cannot see it right now, and I do not know how machine learning will influence the future of the visual arts, but it feels like a major shift. I have been working with it for the last three years now. Additionally, the Internet and the World Wide Web continue to evolve. They have the most potential for reshaping art distribution, which will likely have a strong impact on creativity.

Michel Bret:
I started as a painter in the 1950s. Having studied mathematics, the computer was already essential to me when I met, in the 1970s, the pioneers of digital art in France, like Hervé Huitric and Monique Nahas. From then on, algorithmic thinking guided my research. This took the form of a language and a compiler (anyflo.com), which I offered to artists whom I considered active and important in the field. It was no longer a question of creating objects (works), but systems that allow for creative work (meta-creation).

Edmond Couchot:
I prefer to talk about digital art rather than computing art, a term that puts too much emphasis on the machine. For me, in my practical and theoretical work, digital art is much more than a technology; it is a real vision of the world, even a kind of philosophy. Interactivity, for example, which makes it possible to participate in the creation of art, totally changes the relationship between the author, the work, and the spectator.

Michel Bret:
The so-called immateriality of the digital is only a delusion: algorithms are neither more nor less material than the waves of nerve impulses traversing our brains and controlling our actions, and machines are obviously as material as our bodies. Art, whether traditional or digital, produces signals that we receive through our sense organs, and which act on our neural networks causing sensations, emotions, and feelings. Conversely, I have used, in most of my interactive installations, artificial neural networks, trained by unsupervised learning, capable of generating unpredictable, yet coherent artificial behaviors (improvisation).

Edmond Couchot:
The algorithms that work inside computer systems are not immaterial; they are elements of a virtual language. However, the specificity of the virtual is not in immateriality, but in potential. The virtual acts on the real, and the real acts on the virtual. This is why the (real) breath of a spectator can act on (virtual) dandelions that appear on a screen.

Michel Bret:
With artificial intelligence, the artist’s role will no longer be that of a demiurge, the sole deity of creation. They will have to deal with other intelligent, sensitive creatures in the form of machines. For example, cinema will certainly become interactive. The theater will stage artificial and human actors together. Dance will integrate acrobatic robots. Literature, and even science, may be written by robots. These new speakers will aim not to imitate humans, but to invent other imaginaries, to which we will become sensitive.

Edmond Couchot:
Digital technologies are set to spread to almost the entire sphere of human activities, including intellectual activities, if the world does not destroy itself. Few activities will escape digital technologies. But in the field of art, we will still be able to paint with brushes and pigments. At present, much of the research in the performing arts (dance, theater, concerts, opera, puppets, etc.) is concerned with the integration of robots and artificial human beings (avatars, virtual actors) in works where they are brought into contact with natural humans. They are thus part of the tradition of automaton shows, which date back to the Greeks. These works draw our attention to the emergence of a new human species, a kind of co-species, and teach us natural humans to live with them.

In my digital art practice, I dedicate a lot of space to the exploration of generativity. The computer is an extremely rigorous tool. If you ask it to repeat shapes, it will repeat shapes. If you introduce variables, the computer will create thousands of combinations. The introduction of randomness into a highly organized structure will create shapes we never imagined.
With generativity, the artwork can change at any time. It is very different from video that repeats itself in loops. A generative artwork has no beginning nor end. Most of my works are also interactive. Through sensors, I develop intuitive shapes of interactivity, those which are easily understood by the public. This physically involves the body and its mobility in space. Interactivity frees the viewer to explore all the possibilities of the artwork.

Today, reality and virtuality constantly interpenetrate. The entire world is connected via the Internet, a huge, instantly transmissible database. New technologies have sparked economic and social upheavals, initiating new ways of organizing exchanges, new forms of language, and new concepts of space and time. It became obvious to me that virtuality was the best medium to transcribe the world that we live in and the immaterial aspect of notions such as networks, flows, and urban sprawl.
Most of my artworks are based on the concept of immateriality. If I work with light, I explore how I can transform physical space and architecture with this medium and how I can modify the physical and mental sensations of visitors. I try to create immersive, multi-sensory installations that give visitors a new and unusual aesthetic experience.

Technologies are evolving all the time. Graphics cards are becoming more and more powerful, opening uncanny scenes of imagination. Also, the quality of video projectors improves each year, allowing us to create bigger and more immersive installations.
In the coming years, I imagine that artists will become more interested in the possibilities of AI, in all creative fields: painting, drawing, sculpture, music, cinema, architecture, design, and graphics.
If we look at the history of painting since the end of the nineteenth century, we have seen a series of experiments that have gradually shifted painting toward minimalism. Digital artists push their art toward an aesthetics of infinity. On the other hand, with 3D printers, digital universes can exist physically. You go from the virtual to the real almost directly and instantaneously. It is a revolutionary process in the world of sculpture.

We see our art practice as strongly linked to the history and development of computing art. This history is not that long, and several of the early pioneers are still alive. In the past fifty years, computer art has changed a lot. In the 1960s, this type of art mostly was practiced by engineers who had access to mainframe computers and could program these machines by themselves. When we entered the field of computer art in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, it was still in its infancy. It was a small, tightly knit community of computer art pioneers who shared the same vision and enthusiasm. However, the art community was strangely skeptical about this new form. They didn’t believe that computer art would become a real art form unto itself. For production, our access to computers was very limited in the early 1990s. One had to work at a dedicated research center to get access to high-end graphic computers. We had to program them ourselves, and most of the interface technology had to be constructed in-house.
Around the year 2000, media art changed again, as computers became more accessible and affordable. The spread of the PC, DIY culture, and open-source communities enabled more artists and engineers to join the field as well. Many media art festivals opened, and university programs teaching media art were founded. By 2020, computer art has become mainstream, and there is no doubt that artists can use digital technologies in the same way as any other material or method.
In our own art, the use of computer programming and interface technology is a constant. For thirty years, we have been creating interactive systems where the interaction parameters lead to an open-ended artwork. We are interested in artworks that are constantly changing and developing, those that the public engages. We are inspired by Peter Weibel’s concept of Virtuality-Variability-Viability and Umberto Eco’s idea of the Open Art Work.

We are very interested in overcoming the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds. In many of our works, we develop intuitive interactions where a concrete motion or physical movement of the participant leads to a digitally translated outcome. One such example is our first interactive art work, Interactive Plant Growing, from 1992. Here, the visitors’ physical touching of real plants in the installation leads to the growth of digital plants on a large projection screen. There is no computer technology visible; it is the plant that becomes the interface to the digital world. The plant captures the participants’ bodily tension and translates this into the digital realm. In another installation, A-Volve, from 1994, visitors create shapes on a touch screen. These shapes then “come to life”: they live and swim in a large pool filled with real water. Participants can touch these “creatures” in the water and help them reproduce. Here, the physicality of the water and the digital nature of the creatures blend together. In Flies in the Sky from 2017, we use augmented reality to connect virtual and physical space. Today, this hybridization of analog and digital worlds has become common, as our lives are increasingly augmented and the boundary between the two disappears. This is a vision that early computer art pioneered, shaped, and predicted.

We now see digital technologies spilling over into all aspects of our lives. From banking, medicine, shopping, transport, business, and industry to design and art, almost all aspects of our lives are becoming augmented and connected to the Internet. Ubiquitous computing has become our reality. This also leads to the generation of massive amounts of data. Here lies an important area for art and creativity: how will we use these data responsibly, and how can we design creative systems that make us aware of our daily interactions? By linking sensory technologies and media art, we have the power to propose meaningful, humanistic systems that help human creativity and make us more aware of our environment, our interpersonal relationships, and our connection to nature. There are so many areas we need to tackle as media artists, and this is just the beginning.

From the perspective of my work, “computing art” means using the computer as both a tool and a collaborator. When working with AI models, the human artist is acting as a curator of the machine’s experience, and it is the nature of that experience that defines the outcome. In other cases, working with the computer is more like simply outsourcing part of the art production to the machine, which has a historical analogue to an artist working with human assistants.

The digital/physical dichotomy in computing reminds me of the mind/body dichotomy in Western philosophy. It is interesting that this dichotomy is less of a concern in Eastern thought, perhaps in part owing to the level of abstraction that is inherent in Western systems of writing, encouraging the ideation of abstract realms entirely separate from the physical world. This dichotomy animates many of the discussions regarding AI and future technology, with futurists like Ray Kurzweil anticipating a time when he can totally upload his consciousness into the digital realm. I am not sure I agree on such a distinction in either philosophy or computing. I understand computational work primarily as physical and material.

There is a rapidly growing movement of artists working with AI, and this will certainly continue to grow as the technology becomes increasingly accessible. The “machine imagination” of AI networks has already shown itself capable of generating possibilities beyond the human imagination (at the very least beyond my own imaginative capabilities!). There are also some ambitious projects in the AI community trying to create an entirely autonomous AI artist, and it will be interesting to see how that develops.

I appreciate the use of the term computational rather than digital in this context—it adds clarity to the role of technology in my art. Even though I use technological tools to make all my art, I do not do so because of some infatuation with this new tool, but rather because of its ability to compute. In my art practice, I am focused on two main issues: the construction and perception of the image and the viewer’s participation in the creation of the piece. This form of explicit, dynamic interaction requires the work to be ever changing and to exhibit an awareness of the presence and preferences of the viewer and their surroundings. Computational tools very effectively provide for this kind of awareness and flexibility. I of course use computation in the creation of my art, but the more important element is the presence of these tools within the work’s presentation.

It is easy to make the case for the materiality of computation in my art. For my physical pieces, the majority of which are mechanical displays, you can see the one-to-one translation of a computational entity, the pixel, into a material representation. In these mechanical, kinetic pieces, I explore the many material embodiments of various computational abstractions. But this use of materiality is not confined to my physical pieces. Indeed, even as they are manifested on a flat screen, many of my software-based works present ideas of materiality and try to create a visual, sometimes volumetric representation of algorithmic notions, such as pixels, genetic algorithms, choice, scale, and digital order.

Defining art as something dichotomous to science and technology is a very contemporary notion. Looking back a few centuries, we find artists engaged in scientific explorations and technological inventions, and vice versa with scientists and art. I believe that, with the ubiquity of computational and technological tools, we are witnessing a resurgence of this integration. Many of the technological and computational tools that I use were developed by fellow artists. Looking at the education of some leading artists, you will find they have a background in science and engineering. There is no doubt in my mind that, in the near future, computation will become just one more tool in the artist’s toolset, and that art implemented via computation will not require specially curated exhibitions.

I have never worked without computers. In the early 1980s, I began building sculptures that incorporated microprocessors to control their behavior. For me, it is important that “computing art” uses computers to enable capabilities that are not possible through other means. This usually entails using their power to quickly manipulate vast amounts of data or their ability to integrate multiple inputs to make decisions in real time. The final artwork should not be the static result of computer processes, as with graphic images, but rather the embodiment of an active, dynamic process, as in the case of a robotic, kinetic sculpture.

My works comprise both algorithmic elements and material constructions. I consider the algorithmic portion to be the actual artwork, even though no one can see it. The material instantiation of the sculpture makes visible the algorithm, much like one would introduce smoke into a room to expose an otherwise invisible laser beam.

Electronic and computer technologies will continue to evolve at an almost unimaginable pace. Their use in art will seem as ordinary as choosing to work with paint. Computers will be more accessible to more people and artists, especially those without technical training. As computers displace high-level professional jobs (e.g., doctors, lawyers, airline pilots), the essences of human imagination and creativity will become more obvious, as they will be among the few traits with market value.

Computer art is not a genre, a category, or a movement. To me, there is not, strictly speaking, computer art or digital art. There is just an art that adheres to the times, art of a world that is constantly changing, with its questions, its doubts, its memories, and its tools. The computer is just one more tool. The digital is just a new, common language. Its real strength, its virtue, is its universality, the ability to bridge the most distant fields of research and bring human beings together. The artist’s role is to tame this language, to make it universally creative—not a vector of consumerism.
For many years, my artistic approach has been to bridge art and science. It is a third way that is situated between traditions and futuristic hypotheses, without deference to the past nor fascination with technological progress. It is a world of links, a transverse space. For me, the only thing that matters for an artist is the intention behind each action that they premeditate, each manipulation that they make, each breath that they produce, each tool that they use. The intention that produces a work of art is as important as the formal result.
The non-standard and the extra-ordinary, in this sense, are the only criteria which must be considered in a work of art. This is true regardless of whether the work is classical or digital, or whether the tools that generate it are primitive, highly technological, or technically hybrid.

Generally speaking, in today's art, there are no longer any boundaries or styles. Contemporary art must be a mixture of all sources of inspiration (transcultural, intergenerational, etc.) and the result of all available tools (archaic or high tech).
The material and formal dimensions of my art reflect considerations of techno-aesthetics. They are arrangements in which the fictional and the functional coexist, where the real and the virtual are in harmony. These installations recall both the aesthetics of the laboratory and those of the studio, spaces “between.”

New technologies are only interesting if they both help us understand and apprehend reality and activate a new imaginary. With new technologies, it is necessary to create an art that excludes the demonstrative, the statistical, the normative, and the standard, an art concerned with the aesthetics of dreams and poetry. Technologies have to be “inhabited” by the sensitive, like the brush in the great tradition of Chinese painting. I am sure it is possible to imagine Shitao in dialogue with Alan Turing. My “Eye Calligraphy” project illustrates what the digital can do when operating with an abundance of sensitivity and high tech, while still referring to a traditional art.
Art, like the political and social world that we are going to create, must be the result of an interiority, of a depth of thought oriented toward beauty and collective harmony. You have to give depth to the screen. I often say that if art is useless, we must reflect, with a militant approach, on “the usefulness of uselessness.” This is why I can make art in museums, hospitals, schools, factories, or laboratories without discrimination.
The future of technology must be human. It must offer “body and soul”: a thoughtful body and a sensitive soul.

Computing art is art that uses computing mechanisms for its inspiration or working method. The computer is now a necessity in contemporary life, so this definition will most likely become more inclusive.

What I find most important is the conflict between the immateriality of the work’s appearance and its inherent materiality. Electroencephalography, for example, is generated by computer algorithms, but brain waves can only be detected by attaching a sensor to my scalp to detect my physiological information. Another example is the software on an iPhone. Its materiality is embodied in electronic parts, those manufactured by Foxconn workers in Zhengzhou or recycled from electronic gadgets in the junkyards of Delhi. I believe that only then is this a complete work of computing art.

In human history, cultural innovation has always been closely linked to technological advancement, so the use of technology in art will certainly become the norm. Technology, of course, must first serve the artist’s concept. Yet at the same time, its potentials and limitations can often inspire creativity, like how the accumulation of paint on a canvas can create texture that adds charm to an image.

We should make a distinction between computing to achieve something specific and developing code that generates novelty. Computers are extraordinary tools, even more so if we see them as thinking, creative entities. My project since 2001 has been to build autonomous robots able to create their own artworks. To achieve this, I use a bio-inspired algorithm that simulates the behavior of ants. The algorithm is not a sequence of orders, but a set of simple rules. The process is self-organized and emergent. Each painting is unpredictable and unique. Robots able to create their own paintings open a new field in the history of art: a generative and self-made art that is non-human, at least in part. I see myself as a creator of creators, not of objects.

In my robots, there is a performance component that is intriguing and attractive to viewers. In the end, we have a unique painting. The immateriality of the algorithm, which is information, gives rise to a physical artwork. The shift from immaterial to material is at the core of life. The inner algorithm, DNA, is the basis for the existence of all living organisms. Some people may see these expressionist paintings as the result of these robots’ labor. But in fact, they are naturalistic, since they are based on natural mechanisms. My work is applying natural mechanisms of creativity to art.

The current crisis reveals that we are totally dependent on digital technologies. They are our destiny and our most powerful resource for survival. But digital technology applications do not exist without art. In this field, the process of making something innovative demands a lot of creativity and artistry, in design, concept, content, use, and more. That is why most gadgets and applications are so attractive to the general public.
The art of today is inseparable from digital technologies. For example, the potential to combine art and artificial intelligence is very promising. Art is not constrained by functionality and is free to explore imagination without boundaries. Works that use advanced digital technologies, by me and my colleagues, are just a start. We are at the dawn of an explosion of creativity.

The role of technology in my work is not just a tool, but rather more like a collaborator. I am interested in developing intimate and experimental relationships with the technologies used in my projects. The systems we build in the studio can be compared to musical instruments, so every work is the result of experimental interactions with such systems/instruments. Computing is not merely a set of calculations, but also part of the subject that is critically explored in the work. My practice therefore revolves around technology and presents itself, on a general level, as a study of its role in the relational dynamics of man with his surroundings.

In my practice, the boundaries between digital and physical are very blurred. Works that are digital in nature, like videos, become very physical experiences when presented as installations—their physical manifestation is a crucial component of a correct perception of such works. Also, the role of sound and its deep synchronization with the visual aspect transform these digital artifacts into tangible objects. On the other hand, the physical works that I produce can also be considered digital, as they are the result of fully automated, computational strategies. My sculptures are not crafted via human labor, but through robotics means, so they are the result of my interactions with digital systems.

Apart from what technology might offer to artists in the future, which will undoubtedly be very exciting, I am particularly interested in how such technologies will change our perception of the world, and therefore how they will impact our imagination. For me, it is not about technology in itself, but about our relationship with it. I am curious how artists will disrupt technology that is made for a specific purpose and transform it into a tool for artistic expression.

Our creative tools change with the times, so for me, “computing art” is just a classification based on medium and technology. It is similar to how photography was subsumed into the category of fine art many years ago. Yet this classification is rather broad, akin to the simple category of “painterly arts.” Looking at it from the perspective of my work, it seems difficult to just use the term “computing art,” because my practice combines classical painting, photography, digital photography, and video, and its display at times incorporates installation. If one insists upon choosing a single art form to summarize my work, multi-media art would be closer.

With the ubiquity of digital media and technology in everyday life, we gradually transitioned from a materialized to a digitized age. We went from a time of live concerts to one of vinyl records, and then we quickly cycled through the CD and MP3 eras. More people have begun to eschew heavy vinyl records, instead preferring to stream music on online platforms, where files can be shared with ease. Perhaps some are unwilling to accept this, but the trend is inevitable. This premise raises the issue of the materiality of artworks and the distinctive qualities of digital media. For the first time, the materiality of art is presented with a serious challenge. I think this is just a matter of time—the slow process of humanity accepting this change. With digitally produced artworks, the most valuable aspect, for me, is their inner, spiritual communication with the audience. So what is the relationship between materiality and virtuality? I maintain a relatively open attitude toward this issue.

Technology is often a double-edged sword. New technologies create more possibilities for viewing and participating in a work. Yet at the same time, this overwhelming sensibility might put too much emphasis on the work’s experiential qualities, at the expense of a deeper spiritual exchange with the audience. Therefore, it is paramount to select technologies suitable to the work itself, and to determine the degree to which those technologies are conspicuous within it. As technological innovation continues apace, only works that use technology appropriately will endure; otherwise, they will be replaced in the next wave of technological advancement. My prediction is that many new forms of work will emerge, altering our modes of seeing and even our ways of thinking.

In my work, the computer is a tool, a tool that is very quick, efficient, and convenient to use. Yet the core content of my work does not really have anything to do with computers. I do not really know how to define computing art. I am only focused on the tools that I find useful. Isn’t it for art historians, critics, and researchers to define these categories and titles?

These works are like any other digital media, in that they can be duplicated, backed up, or exist in multiple. In our digital age, it is often easier to conserve and distribute this kind of work than it is with traditional artworks, and they will likely last longer. Only when the storage medium containing these works is destroyed are the works themselves also gone. In addition, as they are rooted in the material form of the storage medium, they will also follow the natural principle of “formation, existence, destruction, and emptiness” [the four states of phenomena in Buddhist cosmology].

My personal view of technology is that it is merely a tool, one that is used naturally by people born in this era. These tools offer me new paths to obtain information more quickly and from a broader range of sources, making my work more efficient and intuitive, nothing more than that. Therefore, when it comes to working with these tools, I do not need to take myself too seriously. I do not resist their help, nor do I chase after them merely because they are trendy. I do not force myself to use them just to brand myself as a fashionable artist working on the cutting edge of the era. In the same way, I like everything that gets to the core of my practice, not just the tools I employ in the creative process.

Today’s “computing art” was long ago disentangled from any specific device or operational method. If we see data and media as unified, then “everything is a stream” (a mantra for practitioners of responsive programming). Computing art is art made with an understanding of the above description.

I think you can say that there is a materiality to these works, or you can say that there isn’t. For me and many others, it is no longer a matter of concern to discuss whether these works are material or not, or, to put it another way, the problem has already been solved. When we explore materiality today, it is more rooted in the value that we attribute to material. This value component is what many artists are exploring in their work—how to thoroughly understand the value of these digital existences, and how to endow them with value.

We can no longer discuss technology and art separately. Especially in the simplified Chinese discourse, we often tend to discuss technology and art as a binary. Yet imagination and creativity are the products of cooperation made possible by human empathy. Discussions that take art and technology as two objects that merely reference one another over the long term end up obstructing our pursuit of imagination and creativity.

Whoa! It’s difficult—I have never thought of defining computing art.
Perhaps it is using computers to make art.
The computer as a tool, or even an assistant.

This is a theme that I have been exploring recently—the materiality of digital works.
People simplistically differentiate digital and physical works, perhaps thinking that digital works are virtual? I believe that digital works also have their own materiality. The drawing project I am working on now considers this topic. By controlling the conversion of parameters in a machine, I take drawings in a virtual state on a computer and make them into physical artworks with a real materiality. This process surprises me. The work is first seen on a computer through the backlight of the monitor, and the naked eye sees only one result (color). When the work enters material reality, with the involvement of natural light, it transforms into a singular object that can only be observed by the human eye. A photograph cannot capture it exactly, or rather, a photograph would only be the product of what the machine sees.

I have this way of imagining imagination. For me, imagination is an image layer superimposed on reality.
When we humans observe the world with our physical eyes, we see the real world on a material level, yet the projected content received by each person is different. The moment I spot the image layer atop this reality, that component that is only visible to me, I know that this is my imagination. Now I can use new technologies to realize this image layer and show it to people outside of myself. This is how I believe imagination and creativity are used.

Works that incorporate algorithm-based technology into their creative/production process to a certain extent.

In an age when technology has seeped into all aspects of our lives, materiality, in a general sense, no longer refers only to a specific kind of physicality. When the technical platforms for art making, archiving, distribution, and display become homogenous, the Greenbergian notion medium-specificity becomes hazy. “Media are not just tools or machines,” notes art historian Sven Lütticken, “but also layerings of [their] conventions, and memories [that] haunt us.” In many instances, the materiality of computing or algorithmic art is fluid and unstable, allowing it to take new forms in different fields and spaces, and to restructure frameworks and attain new materialities within these different forms. This art is temporary and transient, yet also permanent at the same time (differing from the physical deterioration of traditional materials). With our graphical video in this exhibition, visually the work has a kind of “hollow” materiality on the level of the simulacrum (for example, the physical simulation of an infinite loop of waves in the fish tank on the screen).

On the one hand, big-data algorithms may exacerbate exploitation in the attention economy. It can group and direct attention, fundamentally controlling people’s imaginations. Algorithms lock us into a kind of spiral or cycle, sealing everyone into their own information bubbles. Our world-picture collapses into what is in front of our eyes, and we can only see our own reflections. On the other hand, will there be a singularity for art and technology? After such a singularity, technology will itself become imagination and creativity, marching toward a future that the human mind cannot understand or engage.