I am thrilled and honored to announce that Artnome will be curating an exhibition titled Augmenting Creativity - Decoding AI and Generative Art at Nanjing University this November, 2019.

In preparing an exhibition in a country I have never been to and whose language I do not speak, I’ve been thinking a lot about translation and communication. Specifically, I have been thinking about the language of computing as an increasingly dominant and universal language which shapes all aspects of our lives despite only a small percentage of our population (developers and computer scientists) having any real fluency in it.

People with limited exposure to programming and training networks often assume creating generative art is a carefully planned, predictable, and linear process with a predetermined outcome, but nothing could be further from the truth. A common thread across the artists in this exhibition is a circuitous path of discovery, an addiction to surprise, and an ability to embrace and build on “accidents” or the unexpected.

There is, of course, no one “right” way to conceive of these surprises and the role that technology plays in the generative artmaking process. Some see code and networks as a just another tool. Others describe it as more of a creative collaborator. That each artist in this show has their own way of describing how technology augments their own creativity only serves to further individuate their work and brings a richness to the dialogue surrounding the exhibition.

Among artists, generative artists carry a unique burden of having to explain how programming and machine learning work without distracting their audience from their other artistic ambitions. Without at least some insight into computing and code, we as an audience cannot fully appreciate their artistry and craft.

The most engaging generative artists share the ability to seamlessly educate us on how their work is created and use that opportunity to reinforce their artistic objectives rather than to distract from them.

In his 2010 presentation at the Flash on the Beach conference, Jared Tarbell does a masterful job of using his artwork as an aid in explaining programming concepts. Tarbell starts by sharing his love of nature, something we can all relate to. He then explains how iterating or “looping” a simple command to create dots can empower us to recreate the same complex and beautiful patterns found in nature. He then uses the simple algorithm behind his famous 2003 work Substrate (which we are excited to feature in our exhibition) as an example.