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abstract
What I am proposing is the creation of a visual universe that produces it’s own bottom-up patterns -– engineering instead of reverse engineering. Rather than create rules that try to explain things already present in the universe, I will create the rules that generate the universe. Instead of applying or modifying rules of Aesthetics that try to explain visual communication, I will create a universe that generates it’s own visual communication, which in turn creates it’s own aesthetic.
The process of Emergent Aesthetics will use Agent-based modeling, where the agent can be anything – square, rectangle, circle, polygon (these “simple” shapes serve as a beginning step in conceptualizing the actual process). These agents will be ruled by visual properties, essentially giving them aesthetic traits (color, shape, dominance, etc.). These traits can then interact and react to their environment and the agents around them. Thus, competition, fitness, adaptation, breeding, mobility, and complexity become important and uncontrolled factors in the environment.
Aesthetic Agents create their own Form or composition based on the traits programmed into them and by competing and interacting with other agents for aesthetic dominance. This generative, emergent process is open to many variations and iterations. It does not attempt to redefine design or the concept of aesthetics, nor does it attempt to study or reflect current design and anthropological practices. Rather, it is a direct attempt to create something completely new – to create a world that generates its own aesthetic, its own visual anthropology, and its own sense of understanding.
This is an investigation into the possibility of creating a situation where design (visual decision making) can define itself. The visual agents, and their evolution in the artificial environment, can become objects of study. “Ugly” and “Beautiful” can be looked at as traits of relative fitness or non-fitness in an evolutionary model. What we consider beautiful might not be what the agents or the environment “thinks” is beautiful.
While this is a conceptual piece, the opportunities for both pragmatic use and intellectual study are many. The idea of generative, evolutionary art questions our sense of what is “beautiful” and interrogates how we look at and understand our aesthetic universe.
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