Get lucky : cognitive aspects of generative art

This paper addresses the creative, cultural and cognitive aspects of symbolic and procedural thinking in contemporary generative art. Generative art is perceived broadly, as a heterogeneous realm of artistic approaches based upon combining the predefined elements with different factors of unpredictability in conceptualizing, producing and presenting the artwork, thus formalizing the uncontrollability of the creative process, underlining and aestheticizing the contextual nature of art. The introduction provides an overview of generativeness as one of the key factors of art making, outlines the characteristics of ludic, pseudo- or proto-scientific methodology that distinguish generative art, and focuses on generative principles in digital art. The main section includes several interrelated sets of contemporary generative art projects, with comments on the conceptual, technical and poetic qualities of their methodologies. The conclusion summarizes the specifics of symbolic and procedural thinking which is required for the development of generative art projects, and discusses its cognitive implications for creativity in general.Published versio