Generative Design: Beyond Photoshop: Life and Oblivion is the hardest volume to come to grips with in Friends of ED’s 4x4 series—the familiar Photoshop content of the other 3 books in the set gives way to a concern with programming as art medium.
      Programming as art was something only beginning to get a grip in the traditional art world in the late 1990s, and is to be found in just a few places on the Web. I was lucky enough to be at some of the first shows of their type at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) in London back then. The programmed digital art on show was eye-opening, but trivial. Like that work, the projects in this book hint at more interesting possibilities yet to come.
      Generative Design’s 4 authors can best be described as software artists, people who make art that is also software, or who create software as art. Adrian Ward has developed a product named Auto-Illustrator, that playfully creates randomized artwork in the style often known as sharding, composed of elements that resemble shattered glass or plastic scattered over a field. Watch where you tread!
      lia (lower case only, and all the name that has been supplied) began as a painter and then graduated to Lingo programming in Director, and still does most of his/her work in that program, with his/her chapter of the book being the mathematical generation of Spirograph-like imagery.
      meta, another programmer/artist of indeterminate gender, uses a mysterious Macintosh programming product named Max and another named Nato.0+55, which apparently acts as a conduit between Max and QuickTime. According to meta, Max “… is a form of programming that is of a higher level than languages such as Java or C++, and as such is much more approachable to those who have little or no programming experience, or simply dislike coding in such an abstract manner.”
      Definitely worth checking out. Adrian Ward tells us elsewhere in Generative Design that British electronic band Autechre is a major user of Max and its audio add-ons.
      Lastly, Golan Levin describes his path from visual artist finding, and losing, software engineers to realise his visions to software artist programming in Java and C++ after undertaking an MIT Media Laboratory course with legendary Professor John Maeda. Levin also demonstrates the use of Maeda’s Design By Numbers (DBN) programming environment, following it up with a leap into Java. Not for the faint-hearted!
      Generative Design: Beyond Photoshop: Life and Oblivion opens a Pandora’s box that an upcoming book on Flash and mathematics from Friends of ED explores further. I am not so sure this stuff has a direct application in any of the commercial assignments you might be undertaking any time soon, but it does wonders as a reminder that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The Book:

• Title: Generative Design: Beyond Photoshop: Life and Oblivion
• Authors: lia, Adrian Ward, meta, Golan Levi
• Publisher: Friends of ED
• Published: 2001
• Pages: 262
• Illustrations: Colour
• CD-ROM: No
• ISBN: 1903450470
• Rating: 4