I also love generative art ... mostly .... and I've made quite a bit but .......
The problem I have is generally when it appears to me it didn't require much effort. Making a program that draws random dots, random rectangles, random lines, is almost a rite of passage for new programmers. A lot of generative art looks like hardly many more steps beyond that. Draw 100 rectangle each slightly smaller and rotated from the previous and you get a beautiful spiral.
I know my own rarely take more than 30 minutes each. I just take some existing generator and start tweaking. If I get something mildly pleasing I save it. But I rarely promote it because I feel at some level it was farted out, it was a sketch, a doodle, not a "work" of art.
Of course I know effort is probably not a valid criteria but still, it's sometimes hard not to see what appears to be low-effort generative art as barely more than the random dot/line/rectangle exercise most programmers do early in their learning. Like instead of 100% random colors use HSL and only vary the values 10% from some initial value and suddenly it's "art". (pick light blue and it's snow on the ground, pick light brown and it's sand, pick green and it's grass, pick red/orange/yellow and it's lava). It makes it hard to know when it crossed the line from learning to code to "art".
Of course like I said I still appreciate generative art but for some reason my own block is that I need to perceive effort. It can even be simple but I have to look at it and think something like "That was simple but took a long time to find the right parameters to get it to look that pleasing".
Let me add, it's a pie in the sky dream of mine to have/run/start/manage a kinetic interactive art museum the size of the Exploritorium in SF with constantly new exhibits much of which would be generative art.
The problem I have is generally when it appears to me it didn't require much effort. Making a program that draws random dots, random rectangles, random lines, is almost a rite of passage for new programmers. A lot of generative art looks like hardly many more steps beyond that. Draw 100 rectangle each slightly smaller and rotated from the previous and you get a beautiful spiral.
I know my own rarely take more than 30 minutes each. I just take some existing generator and start tweaking. If I get something mildly pleasing I save it. But I rarely promote it because I feel at some level it was farted out, it was a sketch, a doodle, not a "work" of art.
Of course I know effort is probably not a valid criteria but still, it's sometimes hard not to see what appears to be low-effort generative art as barely more than the random dot/line/rectangle exercise most programmers do early in their learning. Like instead of 100% random colors use HSL and only vary the values 10% from some initial value and suddenly it's "art". (pick light blue and it's snow on the ground, pick light brown and it's sand, pick green and it's grass, pick red/orange/yellow and it's lava). It makes it hard to know when it crossed the line from learning to code to "art".
Of course like I said I still appreciate generative art but for some reason my own block is that I need to perceive effort. It can even be simple but I have to look at it and think something like "That was simple but took a long time to find the right parameters to get it to look that pleasing".
Let me add, it's a pie in the sky dream of mine to have/run/start/manage a kinetic interactive art museum the size of the Exploritorium in SF with constantly new exhibits much of which would be generative art.