The Game of Life – Emergence in Generative Art

This essay is for the exhibition The Game of Life - Emergence in Generatiive Art, online at Kate Vass Gallery and is, in part, a tribute to the work of mathematician John Horton Conway, who passed away on April 11th, 2020, from COVID-19.
- Jason Bailey

For many people, it is hard to see the elegant connection that exists between art, math, and nature. Growing up, I loved studying art. I frequently sketched and painted from nature. However, I developed a math phobia early on and never saw what, for many, is the obvious thread between the worlds of art, math, and nature.

That changed when I started to write code in graduate school and learned about three new topics within a few weeks of each other:

These three interrelated discoveries completely changed my world view by showing me that much of the complexity we find in nature can be simulated and emulated using relatively basic algorithms.

This exhibition explores the idea of creating great complexity from deceptively simple algorithms or rule sets through the art of four generative artists: Alexander Reben, Manolo Gamboa Naon, Kjetil Golid, and Jared Tarbell. But before we jump into their art, let’s first define generative art, emergence, cellular automata, and the Game of Life.

Generative art is art that leverages a non-human, autonomous system which can help generate features in the artwork that would otherwise be left up to the artist to decide. In this exhibition, we are talking specifically about generative art written in computer code that includes elements of emergence or emergent behavior.

Emergence happens when two or more things come together to form something larger that has different properties than would be expected from the sum of the parts. Think of an ant colony. Each ant is pretty dumb, defenseless, and guided by very basic rules. But when combined with the many other ants in the colony, a new intelligence emerges at the colony level that allows them to adapt, defend themselves, and find food. The sophisticated emergent behavior of the colony cannot be predicted by understanding the limited capabilities of the individual ants. Flocks of birds and schools of fish operate in a similar manner, following a set of simple rules locally that result in complex behaviors globally. Emergence is not limited to our animal friends. Humans are a byproduct of emergent behavior, as is our economy, the weather, and traffic.

Artists, mathematicians, and computer scientists often generate their own complex emergent “ant colony-like” systems using a large grid of simple black and white squares called cellular automata. One of the most famous models of cellular automation is John Horton Conway’s Game of Life.

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