Cellular Automat’Art as Part of Algorithmic Art

112 Artists’ Statements It has been wonderful knowing my work is on the computers of students in Singapore, businessmen in Japan, a librarian in Norway and retired military personnel in Georgia. There is a feeling of unfettered freedom in reaching so many people, so directly. Although I have tracked at least 50,000 downloads, only a small percentage of these downloads leads to actual registrations. One does not get rich selling this way. Unfortunately that is the nature of selling shareware. I remember seeing a TV news segment where the head of a software company was being interviewed. There they were, my pictures on the monitor on his desk. I wondered if he had registered. In the future the concept of intellectual property rights might actually begin to take hold. Right now the Internet is the “Wild West,” with proprietary rights still in a struggle with the concepts of freedom and availability. Both are valuable and make strong claims. Digital artists need not be the only ones selling their work on the Web: it offers a financially viable and highly visible forum for artists who use more traditional media to sell their work [4]. Whether art can survive the loss of context traditionally provided by museums , galleries, curators and critics is something that will be answered over the next few years. Whether the public will need the affirmation of gatekeepers to feel comfortable with new art is another issue. To revert to the rigid hierarchies, arbitrary decision-making and cliquish nepotism of the old artworld paradigm would be the loss of a huge opportunity. However, stripping gatekeepers of their hegemony does not fully resolve all the problems. Some art is distinctly inaccessible , in fact it is actively off-putting as part of its strategy. This type of work might be the trailing beneficiary of a wider interest in art. In the new forum, such work might be perceived as sexy and cool. Lively discussion boards about art could arise on the Web. It might become hip to find a great artist on the Web and let people know about it. If there is a reversion to the old paradigm of the gallery-museum-collectorcritic -curator, it would mean that the sale of art would continue to be the high-end Shopping Mall of High Culture . A real change requires of the public a trust in, even a welcoming of, the ambiguities that are anathema to the popular culture but remain the flesh and blood of the fine arts. References and Notes 1. See Desktop Pictures ; Paintings ; Dreams Project . 2. See, for example, David Pogue’s MacWorld Secrets and the British MacWorld magazine. 3. The registration itself is handled by the Kagi registration service. 4. Ebay is already featuring higher-priced “collectibles ” that are truly in the realm of fine art: for instance, I saw a John Cage piece in the midst of Middle Americana illustrations. CELLULAR AUTOMAT’ART AS PART OF ALGORITHMIC ART Bernard Caillaud, Arts et Science de l’Art, Le Bas Brieux, 14220 Les Moutiersen Cinglais, France. E-mail: . Web sites: , , . Manuscript received 14 December 1998. Accepted for publication by Roger F. Malina. Since the early 1990s I have been working on algorithms that describe cellular automata [1]. This scientific concept emerged in the middle of the twentieth century and since then has been partially annexed in the fields of music composition and the visual arts [2]. The latter seem especially to have retained the interactive and entertainment aspects of this concept when simulating biological behaviors and forms. I consider cellular automata powerful virtual machines for visual exploration and consequently for plastic creation, which is far from any modeling of reality. I published the first statement of my research in 1994 [3]. Two-dimensional automata are generally defined on theoretical infinite surfaces and therefore require the conditions for the creation of a torus structure to be displayed on a limited surface . These conditions create a continuity between the opposite limits of the surface of the screen [4]. One can then obtain the classical pictures that are published in many books. Personally I have chosen to work on non-torus surfaces (torus conditions missing), insofar as they lead to...