Welcome to Ars Ingenero.



In Latin, 'ars ingenero' means 'generative art.' Here, the title refers to art produced from mathematical formulae. Each of the following twenty-six pictures derives from calculations created by nonlinear functions. In effect, this art is a product of artificial life, or A-Life. The complex systems used to produce it develop self-organizing behavior in the digital realm in many ways like the life we experience in the biological realm; beginning simple and developing over quadrillions of generations producing a kind of evolution. The Program is called Alena (Artificial Life Evolving from Natural Affinities) developed by David Cope.

Thus, these pictures do not represent CGI (computer-generated images) as the term is usually meant. CGI uses algorithms to achieve particular end results that could not be produced by non-computational methods. Generative art involves the emergence of unpredictable outcomes. In other words, outcomes over which the user has little or no control except in choosing the starting conditions for their creation and picking the output I prefer to exhibit. In essence, this art originates from a computer rather than a computer acting as a tool to produce to a particular result.

Like any art, visual or otherwise, the images here are meant to evoke responses from viewers. Like any art, there exists no one-to-one correlation between intended and actual responses. Some viewers, of course, will react predictably by predetermining them as senseless simply by knowing their process of creation. They will decide that what they see results from random behavior, even when the opposite is true. Every color, line, and shape is completely determined.

The pictures here are JPEGs of around 800 Kbs. The originals are TIFFs around 14 Mgs. Thus, the level of detail presented on these pages represents but a fraction of that contained in the originals (not shown here due to the long load times for each image).



First picture.

Second picture.

Third picture.

Fourth picture.

Fifth picture.

Sixth picture.

Seventh picture.

Eighth picture.

Ninth picture.

Tenth picture.

Eleventh picture.

Twelveth picture.

Thirteenth picture.

Fourteenth picture.

Fifteenth picture.

Sixteenth picture.

Seventeenth picture.

Eighteenth picture.

Nineteenth picture.

Twentyth picture.

Twentyfirst picture.

Twentysecond picture.

Twentythird picture.

Twentyfourth picture.

Twentyfifth picture.

Twentysixth picture.