CHANCE OPERATIONS AND GENERATIVE ART

Chance Operations and Generative Art

Chance Operations and Generative Art

Introduction

Intermedia is a term used to describe art forms that draw on several media and grow into new hybrids. Intermedia works cross the boundaries of recognized media, and often fuse the boundaries of art with media that had not previously been considered art forms (Packer, 2001).

Artist and composer Dick Higgins coined the word intermedia in a 1966 essay. Higgins, a former student and then-colleague of composer John Cage, described an art form appropriate to artists who felt that there are no boundaries between art and life. For a philosophy that denied the boundary between art and life, there could be no boundaries between art form and art form.

The interpretations that these artists gave to intermedia ran from the simple and primitive to the technically sophisticated. At one end of the spectrum, there were the folklore-based projects of John Cage and the poetry performances of American Emmett Williams (Kahn, 1999). At the other, there were Cage's technologically dazzling video proposals, the sophisticated book-print-installation works of American Alison Knowles, or Higgins' innovative radio plays and computer-generated art works.

Discussion

The intermedia concept was discernible in three artistic directions of the late 1950s and early 1960s. One direction emphasized engagement with technology. In an era when multimedia often meant separate and disparate art forms being presented at the same time, however, this was often a fruitless approach. In contrast, those artists who were exploring the boundaries of technology and art and examining the larger social meaning of information technology in a post-industrial society often made good use of intermedia theory (Higgins, 1997). In a powerful sense, these artists began to explore the generally unrealized dimensions of a world in which digital computer code and information flows would begin to render all media fluid, as digital control began to break down boundaries between separate forms of input, transmission, and output. Early examples include the electronic music of John Cage and Richard Maxfield and the early television experiments of Paik and Vostell. This direction blossomed in the art and technology programs of the 1960s and in the video art of the 1970s (Higgins, 1984).

The second direction emphasized simplicity, a tradition of conceptual exploration. Often anchored in Zen Buddhism or philosophy, this stream was typified by the event structures of George Brecht, the early concept art of Henry Flynt, and the neo-haiku theater of Mieko Shiomi and Yoko Ono. In the 1960s, this second direction entered another phase with George Maciunas' publishing program for Fluxus, the radical reductive films of Paul Sharits, and the expanded use of events and scores for objects, installations, and performances by Higgins, Vautier, Robert Watts, Knizak, Filliou, Friedman, and others.

The third direction emerged from the ambiguous and often-boisterous tradition of happenings pioneered by Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen, Claes Oldenburg, Milan Knizak, and others (Hendricks, 1988).

These streams were never as separate as some maintained, and they never constituted the single forum that others described. Rather, in overlapping and informing each other, they led ...