Randomness, Rule, Program: How the issues of generative art take shape in prealgorithmic music

Overview & Synopsis

Although the 1960s marked the birth of computer art, numerous examples in art history outline issues that still inform the practice and theory of generative art today. This is particularly true in the field of music, the first art form to fully embrace the computer.Algorithmic music, which emerged in the 1950s, is part of a path that stretches from Greek antiquity to integral serialism, a path in which the intertwining of music and mathematics, which has been the object of many different approaches, recurs as a leitmotif.Other themes of particular interest to generative art also punctuate this path: the programmatic nature of the score, the recurrence of combinatorics, the generative dimension of the isorhythmic process or of Steve Reich's phasing, the different views of randomness, from the Musikalische Würfelspiele to John Cage or Iannis Xenakis, the formal and systematic components of serial music, the computational and algorithmic ones of set theory, the relationship between micro and macro, element and structure, or the opposition between inspired genius and objective aesthetics that runs through 20 th century art.On the one hand, the prodromal precedents of algorithmic music shed relevant light on the entire field of generative art. On the other hand, by placing generative art in a historical perspective, they contribute to the recognition of its full belonging to the artistic field.