Computational Art

In these two short essays, I discuss the work of Elizabeth Vander Zaag (b. 1952, Ontario), one of the most prolific Canadian artists working at the intersections of art and technology since the 1970s. The two short videos included in the exhibition, Digit Goes to Hawaii (1976) and Baby Eyes (1984), are representative of Vander Zaag’s continued exploration of video, performance, and computer graphics, as well as her unique feminist sensibility, characterized by the use of humour and intimate narratives to investigate humans’ changing relations with technology. Both works are a window into the history of computational art on the West Coast of Canada, as artists gain access to emerging technologies through different networks.

Digit goes to Hawaii (1976) is part of the single-channel short video series Digit created by Elizabeth Vander Zaag (b. 1952, Ontario) and featured in the experimental television show The Gina Show that aired in Vancouver Cable 10 from 1978-1981.

In the video, Digit appears as three bright wavy lines overlapping each other on top of a green background (Fig.1). Using GRAX, a computer animation software developed by Jerry Barenholtz, Vander Zaag animated the lines by making them move slowly from "screen left to right" to the rhythm of the sound of ocean waves.  To achieve the green colour overlay of the video, Vander Zaag ran the animation through a colorizer built at the Audiovisual Department at Simon Fraser University (SFU).

As a video technician at SFU, she gained access to equipment, resources, and research on the latest developments in computer and creativity, including the work developed at the Sonic Research Studio, managed by Barry Truax, and the Kinesiology Lab directed by computer scientist Tom Calvert, where Barenholtz developed GRAX in 1978.  At the Kinesiology Lab, researchers were developing motion capture technology to represent human movement accurately. The achievement of an accurate simulation of reality guided the design of these systems. Vander Zaag’s parallel involvement with artist-run-centers in Vancouver (including PUMPS Center for the Arts, the Western Front and the Video In, now VIVO Media Arts) gave her a unique position to question this scientific focus and creatively explore the potential of computer systems to simulate reality, before the advent of the personal computer. 

In the single-channel video "Baby Eyes" (1983), Vander Zaag explores the potential of technology in mediating mother-child relations and the capacity of the computer to describe human perception.  Using Ko Nakajima’s Aniputer, a personal portable computer integrated with a video camera that allowed users to draw onto video images, Vander Zaag imagines how her baby daughter perceives the world.  The composite visuals and the use of overlaid graphics, a mixture of analogue and digital-born images, point to Vander Zaag’s interest in the reflexive capacities of video prevalent amongst video artists at the time.  These capacities included video’s potential to disrupt the act of viewing through feedback loops and to create and manipulate images via electronic signals rather than through chemical processes.

El artículo propone un análisis genealógico del tecnofeminismo en el campo de las artes electrónicas a partir de un corpus de obras contemporáneas que examinan el vínculo entre género y tecnología. El objetivo es indagar sobre los modos en que se presenta lo que llamaremos una política de la sensibilidad tecnofeminista con la intención de recomponer la trama de significaciones que ha quedado fragmentada por la construcción histórica hegemónica y patriarcal. Para ello, se retoma aquí la práctica archivística —una de las características del modo de hacer feminista— y los saberes específicos de artistas y teóricas que contribuyeron a la reflexión entre género y tecnología y, desde este abordaje, se presenta una propuesta de análisis para diagramar posibles estrategias de acción política en las artes electrónicas. A partir de una metodología semiótico-pragmática, se proponen los siguientes ejes para analizar el corpus de obras: sensibilidades tecno-estéticas, teco-materiales y tecno-políticas. Esta clasificación permite no solo identificar las relaciones y significados presentes en el archivo, sino también  articular una política de la sensibilidad que permita desmontar las narrativas patriarcales que han dominado la historia del arte y la tecnociencia.

O presente texto apresenta um panorama do emergente campo de investigações da História Digital da Arte, centrando-se sobretudo em publicações em língua inglesa desde 2012. Busca-se aqui definir a História Digital da Arte e suas conexões com as chamadas Humanidades Digitais; historicizar seu desenvolvimento, desde as iniciativas pioneiras até sua afirmação no campo acadêmico; e delimitar algumas de suas abordagens metodológicas recorrentes, nomeadamente análise espacial, análise de rede, análise de imagem e análise de texto.

The  paper  presents  a  survey  of  the  emergent  research  field  of  Digital Art History, focusing on publications in English language since 2012. It proposes a definition of Digital Art History and of its connections with the so-called Digital Humanities; a historicization of its development, from pioneering initiatives to its affirmation in the academic field; and a delimitation of some of its recurrent methodological approaches, namely spatial analysis, network analysis, image analysis and text analysis.

Cosa si intende per "Arte Computazionale"?
Perché l'aggettivo "computazionale" è stato recentemente associato all'ambito artistico, entrando nel lessico della critica d’arte contemporanea?
Il mio studio sulla storia del termine "computazionale" e sui suoi significati (da Aristotele a Ramon Lull, da Blaise Pascal e Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibiniz ad Alan Turing, da Norbert Wiener fino a Jeannette Wing e Stephen Wolfram), che esplora la cosiddetta “ars combinatoria” tra filosofia, scienza, letteratura e arte, è stato pubblicato nel volume “Neologismi nella critica artistica contemporanea: nuovi media, nuove tecnologie, nuove prospettive metodologiche", curato da F. Bertini e R. Inglisa con prefazione di Carmelo Occhipinti, per la collana "Lessico dell'arte e della storiografia artistica" della rivista "Horti Hesperidum" (pp. 103-146).
Iniziato dalla lettura del saggio introduttivo alla mostra “Re-coding” di Davide Quayola a Palazzo Cipolla (29 settembre 2021- 30 gennaio 2022), curata da Jerome Neutres e Valentino Catricalà, questo studio è corredato dalle interviste agli artisti “computazionali” Ugo Nespolo, Ernest Edmonds e Enrico Zimuel, in arte Catodo.

La pubblicazione fa parte della Collana "Lessico dell'Arte e della storiografia artistica" della rivista Horti Hesperidum, 2.

What is meant by "Computational Art"?
Why has the adjective "computational" recently been associated with the artistic field, entering the lexicon of contemporary art criticism?
My study on the history of the term "computational" and its meanings (from Aristotle to Ramon Lull, from Blaise Pascal and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibiniz to Alan Turing, from Norbert Wiener to Jeannette Wing and Stephen Wolfram), which explores the so-called "ars combinatoria" between philosophy, science, literature and art, has been published in the volume "Neologisms in contemporary art criticism: new media, new technologies, new methodological perspectives", edited by F. Bertini and R. Inglisa with a preface by Carmelo Occhipinti, for the series "Lessico dell'arte e della storiografia artistica" of the magazine "Horti Hesperidum" (pp. 103-146).
Beginning with the reading of the introductory essay to the exhibition “Re-coding” by Davide Quayola at Palazzo Cipolla (29 September 2021-30 January 2022), curated by Jerome Neutres and Valentino Catricalà, this study is accompanied by interviews with the “computational” artists Ugo Nespolo, Ernest Edmonds and Enrico Zimuel, aka Catodo.

This paper examines the ontological and phenomenological shifts in digital photography within networked environments, exploring the tension between the visible simplicity of digital interfaces and the invisible complexity of algorithmic processes. Through a series of artistic projects—Send Some Candids (2011), Being Seen Trying (2014), and A Thousand Kisses Deep (2015)—the author interrogates how digital images, once uploaded, transcend their singular origins to become dynamic, self-organizing entities. These works reveal how networked images acquire organic lives, evolving through algorithmic interactions, metadata associations, and user engagements that destabilize traditional notions of authorship, meaning, and indexicality.

The analysis situates digital photography within broader theoretical frameworks, drawing on Wendy Chun’s critique of software’s ideological underpinnings, Daniel Rubinstein’s concept of the “undecidable” networked image, and Jorge Luis Borges’ Library of Babel as a metaphor for the internet’s chaotic information ecology. The author argues that the digital turn disrupts Cartesian perspectivalism, replacing linear causality with paradoxical oscillations between visibility/invisibility and simplicity/complexity. Projects like The Cassini Conspiracy (2016) further illustrate how algorithmic processing and apophenia—the human tendency to find patterns in randomness—reshape interpretations of scientific and spiritual imagery.

Central to this exploration is the collapse of photography’s indexical relationship with reality. The paper contends that digital images are no longer mere representations but processes entangled with algorithmic imperatives, metadata, and network dynamics. Emergent properties, such as self-organization and instability in viral images, challenge dialectical approaches, demanding instead a non-linear engagement with paradox. The author ultimately posits that the networked image’s undecidability reflects a broader epistemological shift, urging a reconfiguration of artistic and critical practices to navigate the interplay of algorithmic abstraction and human intuition in an era of computational ubiquity.

Challenging Institutionalization explores the heterogeneous processes of PhD and postdoc supervision in the arts to formulate shared horizons. This publication consolidates the school's collective mappings into a constructive toolkit for researchers, supervisors, and evaluators, which will provide concrete pathways for pedagogical approaches to the societal and planetary urgencies of our era.

This abstract discusses "Science and Art," a book that outlines the historical and contemporary intersections of scientific progress and artistic expression. Structured into three parts, it first reviews the relationship from ancient times to the 19th century, identifying foundational influences like mythological narratives and technological stages. The second part examines 20th-century art movements that embraced scientific ideas, such as machine art and holography, illustrating their impact on artistic representation. The final part explores computational art in the digital age, where artists utilise programming as an integral part of their creative process, reflecting the open-source ethos. The essay concludes by advocating for a more inclusive view of art and science as mutually evolving and interdependent fields.

Time Mutations (Buffalo) is the second in a two-part series of exhibitions of new artworks collaboratively curated between the Media Art & Design Program at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the department of Media Study at SUNY Buffalo. The initiating exhibition took place in August of 2011 in Weimar, Germany. The exhibition explores the concepts, challenges, and potentials of the "broken timeline"-the linear and apportioned perception of time that electronic communications, digital editing, and global travel continually dismantles. In each of these works the concept of time as linear or location as static is challenged, manipulated or collapsed, giving way to alternative experiences and constructions of time, space, and place. Uneasy navigations of technologically mediated time, in which the subject feels adrift between the shores of absolute and relative space-time, are particularly germane to an interaction between institutions separated by language, nationality, and time zones, but connected by a deep historical investment in experimental media practice.

Die Demoszene ist eine internationale, offene Gemeinschaft der digitalen Kultur, die die kreative Nutzung von Computern zur Tradition gemacht hat. Demoszenerinnen und Demoszener entwickeln Computerprogramme (ausführbare Programmcodes) zur Erzeugung audiovisueller Animationen. Die als Demos bezeichneten Produktionen, die je nach Betrachtungsweise als Kunstwerk oder als digitales Artefakt eingeordnet werden, stehen im Zentrum der Szeneaktivitäten. Von Demos geht eine Faszination aus, die ein einzigartiges Gemeinschaftsgefühl in der Szene geschaffen und viel zu deren Etablierung als Tradition beigetragen hat. Grosse Bedeutung kommt ausserdem den Demopartys zu. An diesen Festivals für digitale Kreativität werden in verschiedenen Wettbewerbskategorien – genannt Compos – die neuesten Produktionen vorgeführt und durch das Publikum bewertet.

This study identifies alternative models for the production of AI-generated images to those currently used by mainstream AI platforms. Based on primitive computational art processes, these systems allow designers to gain greater control over the final visual result, while avoiding potential issues with intellectual property theft and breach of privacy. The article starts by analysing the level of artificiality that might be effectively attributed to each part of the creative process involved in the development of AI-generated images. It then moves on to discuss the extent to which individual actors intervene in each of these stages, with the aim of untangling the different subjectivities that would ultimately shape the meaning of AI-generated photographs, and identifying existing AI models able to offer practical solutions for every designer to retain creative autonomy over their AI creations.

This research paper is established on theory and critical artistic thinking on the ontology of computational image processing, underlying discourse of their representation-between their content and context. The research is located on the axis between the image analysis and synthesis processes developed on machine learning-based tools. Examining modalities for understanding the zeitgeist of computational imagery offered in algorithmic models is needed to align and locate our own position-to draw the line where human agency stops and automation begins. Also, to determine if there is such a threshold at all-blending the feedback loop between the user and the machine. Automation is a collective effort, and claiming back the totality of our agency rather than dispersion into particularisationto see a world in a grain of sand-we have to detect the structures of the network we are part of. This research extracts the visual aspect of the experience and agency in the production and contextualisation of automated image processing. In the pervasiveness of visual communication, visual culture should be equally important.

Procedural media possess traits that stand them apart from classical media, and lead them to foster a very peculiar set of relationships with their readers. Chief among these is how their procedural layer is discovered through a process of virtuosic interpretation, and how this allows for empathy and for the transference of their core mechanics from the computational system to the reader's mind. This paper focuses on how this process is developed, and how these media conduce to the dissemination of a type of aesthetic experience that is unique to them, but remarkably similar to cognitive processes that humans develop towards each other.

The usage of Computer Vision (CV) has led to debates about the bias within the technology. Despite machines being labeled as autonomous, human bias is embedded in data labeling for effective machine learning. Proper training of neural network machines requires massive amounts of "relevant data," however, not all data is collected. This contributes to a one-sided view and feeds a "standard of data that is not collected." The machine develops algorithmic decision-making based on the data it is presented, which can create machinic biases such as differences in gender, race/ethnicity, and class. This raises questions about which bodies are recognized by machines and how they are taught to "see" beyond binary "male or female" limitations. The study aims to understand how Amazon's Rekognition, a facial recognition and analysis tool, analyzes and classifies people of dissident genders who do not conform to "conventional" gender norms. Understanding the mechanisms behind the technology's decision-making processes can lead to more equitable and inclusive outcomes.

Deep Hysteria is a still image series that repurposes algorithmic bias in the service of unraveling a deep human bias. Artworks are generated using deep learning algorithms trained on still frames of thousands of YouTubers speaking to the camera. Generated individuals are then algorithmically gender-adjusted and the variations fed to Amazon Rekognition, a commercial deep learning based facial analysis algorithm (Amazon n.d.) that attempts to classify faces according to the subject's gender, age, and emotional appearance. Despite the marketing of such tools, reading emotions solely by analyzing a person's face is a feat that neither humans (Callahan 2021, Le Mau 2021) nor "AI's" (Crawford 2021) can reliably do. Further, these deep learning algorithms are themselves trained on data categorized by humans-so they reflect human biases. The side-by-side images in Deep Hysteria compare Rekognition's interpretation of similar expressions on more masculine and more feminine versions of the same face. The comparisons interrogate how humans perceive emotion differently, and often in alignment with stereotypes, when observing people of differing genders.

The text describes the research Geopartitura executed by the team MidiaLab Computer art research laboratory, that raises the thought about social artists and urban space. As a work of art it can be considered activist action. As a system, it is composed by software, database, locative media and mobile devices. The work was created to be performed as urban interactive cyberintervention, in order to interact with passers-by, a bias of social inclusion, transforming the urban landscape and its noises, at a dimension of open space for discussion. As active and engaged art, presents the artist as social citizen. introduCtion GeoPartitura is collaborative art that aims to stimulate the contemplation and thought of the participants through experience with computer art. People of all ages and social classes are benefited. The target audience of school community includes students, teachers, staff and parents. The target audience of urban community includes people who are informed about the activities

Este artículo es una revisión bibliográfica sobre un problema de imagen en el entorno de creación de arte computacional. Con los avances tecnológicos, especialmente en el campo de los gráficos por computadora, las imágenes computacionales se insertan en el campo del arte para comprender y discutir cómo pueden interferir en los asuntos de signos y significados. Con la tecnología computacional, las imágenes se convirtieron en generadas por máquina y los impactos de este fenómeno aún están bajo investigación. Este trabajo se basa en las discusiones presentadas por Edmond Couchot, Oliver Grau, Cláudia Gianetti, José Luis Brea, Vilém Flusser, Suzete Venturelli y Cleomar Rocha, y nuestro objetivo es presentar la estética de las imágenes computacionales actuales.

Photography is closely associated with "documentary" due to its ability to reproduce reality. However, the myth of "representation" as a mimic of reality encounters technological and socio-cultural differences. Walter Benjamin writes, "to renew the old world, that is the collector's deepest desire when he is driven to acquire new things." But to me, reality as it is only exists in the precise moment that the photograph was taken; after that, it becomes something else.

The article presents artistic works developed at the Computational Art Research Laboratory Media Lab / UnB, carried out as a team, under my coordination. The artistic and theoretical production sought to defend the idea that computational art is a new form of appreciated art, based on the assumption that it contains many of the components of a complete philosophy of an art form, which can be summarized in four basic references: one definition, an ontology, aesthetic characteristics, and the recognition of its status as art. What is currently called computational art is based on the observation that experiments in this domain involve more general common issues, in statu nascendi, to the artistic and technoscientific domains, which provide the structuring modes, the methodology and the programming techniques, introduced in the process. Computational art does not always use the computer, sometimes it is based on logical-mathematical operations only. However, computers had a profound impact on the arts, and in order to carry out a partial synthesis, based on a global theory of aesthetics today, a set of artistic works was selected that encompass the following subjects: the computer as an amplifier complexity (computational methods of creation); computational language; the developer artist; computational art as art of

Procedural media possess traits that stand them apart from classical media, and lead them to foster a very peculiar set of relationships with their readers. Chief among these is how their procedural layer is discovered through a process of virtuosic interpretation, and how this allows for empathy and for the transference of their core mechanics from the computational system to the reader's mind. This paper focuses on how this process is developed, and how these media conduce to the dissemination of a type of aesthetic experience that is unique to them, but remarkably similar to cognitive processes that humans develop towards each other.

Smart phones are ubiquitous; light, portable and indispensable. The spatial, perceptive and visual connections among scene, subject and photographer are different, compared to a regular camera. This fact enables the photographer to focus on different topics, try practices s/he has not tried before. Mobile devices change the way we create, edit, sequence and share photography. When you do street photography with a smart phone camera, one of the advantages is that people do not really understand where you aim at and what you photograph. They do not react as consciously as they would in front of a regular camera. The reason is; almost all people, including locals and tourists, own a smart phone and taking a snap with them is very common practice for all. Okabe and Ito (2006) argue that: "The camera phone is a more ubiquitous presence, and is used for more personal, less objectified viewpoint and sharing among intimates. It tends to be used more frequently as a kind of archive of a personal trajectory or viewpoint on the world, a collection of fragments of everyday life." Ease of use seems to make smart phone recording as one of the "sine qua non" practices of photography. There are many documentary photographers, reporters, journalists, professional photographers and even artists, film directors who take this apparatus seriously and use it. Some camera makers, like Samsung, are aware of the power of mobile imaging (described as "quantum imagery" by Fred Ritchin) and started to produce cameras 3G / 4G connectivity. Before the digital revolution, the percentage of the "amateur" photographers was relatively less as compared to the digital era. Shooting with film was more difficult as analogue processes allowed less room for errors. After the launch of cheap compact digital cameras amateurs generated more self-confidence in imaging since they were offered the possibility of fixing any mistakes by just erasing any faulty photo. The introduction of cameras into smart phones was yet another dimension at which people felt even more poised to take photos, since the tool is not a "professional" apparatus with which you are expected to create expert results. In the light of above facts, I think it would not be wrong to say that phone cameras give a personalized power to their users. Nowadays, with the possibilities offered by social media tools, regular people contribute to the making of their local and global histories with the "amateur" personal images they make, which partially shape their identities. This can defined as power of the individual, using visual imagination as a tool. This paper aims to discuss how mobile digital imaging alters the creation, perception and aesthetics of visuality. Contemporary photographic culture is definitely more intricately intertwined with popular culture as compared to photography in the 20th century and this should not be interpreted as a weakness but strength, when used consciously.

Creativity is stochastic and assumptive in nature. The importance of randomness in the creative process must not be ignored, underestimated, or intentionally disregarded in a condescending way. Notions of chance, randomness, or unpredictability are important, especially when it comes to artistic creation. In addition to these notions, serendipity can be seen as the expected contribution for making expedient discoveries by coincidence or by chance. To put serendipity into work, a need exists to accumulate a list of questions that need solving, acquaintance with already existing answers, and their use in daily life. Only when this knowledge is present, ‘chance’ can take its part in establishing the perfect milieu for the ‘problem’ and the ‘solution’ to find each other. If there is a great deal of knowledge accrued about the problem and the requisites for the solution, chance adds the final piece to the puzzle. Traditional ‘prescriptive, authoritarian and rather conventional’ aesthetic...

This generative art project and research take forms in the analogous analysis between western process philosophical thoughts and Chinese Taoist symbolism as an analytic-interpretive strand to investigate self-regulating moving images as automation of “creativity”, which evokes the Taoist aesthetic called “confusion”. The twofold virtual system of Tao-machine is bifurcated into two interconnected subsystems representing “Actuality” and “Potentiality” in which “Potentiality” is computed as the regulating syntaxes guided by the semantics in Taoist symbolic logic. The art project “Confused Objects” produced by Tao-machine, arouses the aestheticization of this convergent model of both western speculative process metaphysics and Taoist symbolism through a series of dynamic visual abstraction.

Artists and researchers have widely explored the use of computational technology in artworks. This technology has shown the potential for aesthetic expansion when applied to other creative fields. For the perspective of computational creativity, the use of programming to explore traditional techniques within the craft practice appears to be enticing, due to its vast possibilities of exploration, which goes, for example, from woven fibers to sculpted artifacts. But in these practices the characteristic that stands out is the iterative process of craftsmanship. In this paper, we discuss the poetic practices that explore traditional techniques through computational approaches. Using a Cellular Automata algorithm that generates crochet lace patterns, we use the generative pattern and its materialization to illustrate and visualize the poetic practices that use repetition and reproduction as the
base for their existence and survival.

This research is carried out to analyze how phone camera as a photo lab has helped in Graphics Arts Communication in the global society most especially in the field of Graphics arts and computer graphics. The research seeks to address how the use of phones has improved photo lab, by making pictures easily available in softcopy therefore enhancing graphics arts making representations worldwide through Art communication. Phone Cameras had eliminated the conventional photo labs that are usually static (non-movable & non-flexible) in the aspect of document and image creation. In Nigeria, it is a well-known fact that anyone who has a phone camera can take and print pictures from his or her phone. The objectives which gave rise to this research is to ascertain how the use of phone camera has been a successful photo lab in Graphic Arts, and to ascertain how valuable phone cameras are in Graphics arts communication. The research focus is on phone cameras as a means of creating photos without the stress associated with traditional photo laboratories.

This article reflects on the action of making art as an activity that is, and should always be an instrument of opening the doors of perception, of showing new poetic and aesthetic assemblies, of unveiling sensibilities, of fighting against stereotypes, of expanding sensory aspects and of intensifying the cognition of the lived moment. In this way, by emerging at the level of consciousness, these aspects can cause transformations. Such transformations will be effective if they are based on the techniques that propitiate the action of making things. In this context it is important to reflect on the outcome of this production thinking of how to present it to the public, in space and time. In the article computer art, architecture, drawing, and sculpture are considered as different aspects of the poetic reality enmeshed in them, aiming to make visible the potential latent in the body, in the materials, in numbers and their relationships, in interfaces inter-weaving body and machines,  among many related aspects.

Recent studies have demonstrated that algorithmic bias exhibited by neural networks can amplify human bias and stereotyping in the interpretation of online content. But since algorithms determine public visibility of user-produced media content, algorithmic bias also has a curatorial role in determining whether content is seen by the public at all. This visibility bias has the potential to impact and amplify public perceptions of social media platforms and their content creators in aggregate. The internet livestream art project, What the Robot Saw, inverts this algorithmic bias by curating clips from among the least visible current YouTube videos, while using neural networks to playfully reinterpret the content itself.  This paper describes What the Robot Saw and the cultural and social issues of neural net-based algorithms that surround it.

The PhD dissertation Cyberpunk and New Media Art: Digital Art and Performance aims to examine the literary and visual legacy of the Cyberpunk movement and to explore its ideas, concepts and methodologies in the context of New Media artistic practices. The goal of this work is to comment on a multidisciplinary level on the influence of Cyberpunk theory and aesthetics. Furthermore, it seeks to identify its practice in the construction of the creative mechanisms of contemporary digital art and media performance.
The Cyberpunk phenomenon is approached through the definition of its socio- historical, philosophical and aesthetic context as a science fiction genre. Likewise, New Media Art is defined through the characteristics of its language, its precursors, its pioneers and the state of the digital art currents. By focusing on the terminology and the creative expression of Cyberpunk and Media Art, this thesis sets off to examine the artistic results that emerge from their union. Special emphasis is given to the fields of virtual technologies, technology and mythology and the body as a technologically enhanced interface.

About five years ago, in March 2015, when confronted with a decline in user generated posts, as a younger crowd moved onto more visual platforms such as Snapchat or Instagram, Facebook launched "On this day". The feature, that allows users to scroll through posts, photos, new likes or friendships and statuses from over the years, was created with the intent of encouraging people to continue sharing their own intimate and collective experiences, thus re-ensuring the social media giant's main source of revenue: our personal content. The first ever digital natives have shown a special relationship with the past, present across media channels both in the on and offline worlds, and Facebook was only one more entreprise that knew very well how to profit from it. After the huge success

This visual essay, along with the Black Screens photographic series upon which it is based, has two aims. On the one hand, it is intended as a visual exploration of the increasingly central role that mobile phones have in our everyday lives. In a time when digital technologies are ubiquitous in urban settings of developed countries, the images reflect, visually, on what this pervasiveness looks like. The other aim is to present suggestions of how methods borrowed and/or inspired by art and street photography could potentially expand the toolkit of ethnographic inquiry.

In his forward essay for The Event of Art (described below) Mathieu Borysevicz writes about Lafia's early computational works wherein Daniel Coffeen in the follow up essay takes on his relational work , The Post-Media, Post-Relational Work of Marc Lafia

...Lafia's work foreshadow the instantaneous transmission of the image and the omnipresence of the social network that digital technology was ushering in. Marc was aware that the picture, moving from emulsion to code, would initiate an entirely new relation to photography, one in which our bodies, knowledge, and time would unfold. It was in this envelope of technological transition that Marc’s work found its solid ground. Yet while his interest is in the power of the image and its changing universal nature, he also constantly endeavors to make the image one’s very own. His pursuit is about the changing notion of subjectivity, of self, against the assault of representation.
... While Marc’s pursuits were very much informed by his meanderings in
deconstruction theory, his real creative impulse was dictated by his coming
of age with MTV. Variable Montage, Loops and Iterations, Computations and Permutations were some of his earliest and most mesmerizing exploits that came after the artist’s introduction to the programming software engine MAX/MSP.

...Marc would take his interest in recording to interrogate new modes of creating a personal archive and self-organizing computational system. Here recording is not only memory, and a data structure, but a permutational instrument and ever-changing horizon of iterations.

The Event of Art
(forthcoming Punctum Books, winter 2020) presents the work of art as a complex material and societal event. The event is multiple, a continual becoming of perception, being, materiality, participation, a coming to one’s own senses. The work of art is the event of becoming present to one’s embodiment. Lafia traverses and self examines how his early strategies of cultural reading of photography and film, of interface and network culture and social media transform to an investigation of materiality itself. His interest becoming the realm of the sensible and the sensate. Here he presents the idea of art as a medium itself, giving us wide permission to explore and examine our deepest feelings and senses, our world and its becoming.

On the field of Evolutionary Computational Art, artists frequently adopt a top-down process of creation, employing the algorithms only as a mean to express a previously conceived composition. In this sense, the present paper aims to discuss the use of Genetic Algorithms for the development of systems with greater level of emergence, running towards the increase of its effective complexity, understood as suggested by Gell-Mann. In this context it is presented the system Morphogenesis. It was developed as a Multi-Agent Adaptive System, built with Genetic Algorithms to generate movement, feeding, fighting and reproductive behaviors. All these behaviors are programed at the individual level, from which emerge the macro patterns of the groups, simulating the evolutionary process. The system analysis suggests that the fitness function should not be focused at the arrangements of the agents' genotype, but at the adaptation of the phenotype itself. It is expected that the use of algorithms that allow expressions closer to the evolutionary process has a greater affinity with the aesthetic notion proposed for the field of Evolutionary Computational Art. Hereupon, a qualitative exploratory study was conducted to compare the perception of the high effective complexity arrangements against random arrangements. Preliminary results show that the evolutionary process could be associated with a greater evaluation of intentionality of the compositions and could be also related with a deeper aesthetic evaluation.

The present paper discusses the thoughts that guided the development of the system Morphogenesis, presented in the field of Computer Evolutionary Art. It was developed as a Multiagent Complex Adaptive System, built with Genetic Algorithms and Swarm Intelligence to generate emergent behaviors, simulating the evolutionary process. It is presented a discussion about the levels of significance suggested by the Morphogenesis, the emerging discussions instigated by public and the author's statement for the poetic.

Language changes to satisfy the changing needs of society. We stand now at a unique time when further change seems inevitable. At the edge of reality and its virtual counterpart and at the end of philosophy (Wittgenstein) certainty (Richard Feynman) men (Hanna Rosin), history (Francis Fukuyama), capitalism (Frederic Jameson), democracy (Levitsky & Ziblatt) and postmodernism (Nicolas Bourriaud), I ask what is language today?

Our individual existence, our bodies, our minds, are embedded within and artificially augmented by technology; we interact with similarly extended others. These interdependencies pose urgent ethical and cognitive questions. When looking into these complex relations and ethical urgencies, claiming that the individual, society and technology are separated from one another, may feel counterintuitive. Separation however, does not imply causal isolation , or complete independence but instead that one system does not directly control the other, however eligible they may be to influence one another. Social and individual existence is tied to digital technologies. Informed by patriarchal power structures, their design and investigation both extends and creates new forms of oppression and alienation. As such, they become feminist agendas. Rather than refraining from participation in the technological sphere, radical-ised exclusivity can be used as an operable device to increase inclusivity – a conclusion derived from the text " Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation " by the group Laboria Cuboniks. In the recognition of one's own alienation, one can find identity and liberation; and by actively increasing alienation there isn't simply reconciliation with the exclusionary status quo but the freedom to construct a different world. With this focus, this paper examines the importance of acknowledging the social and political implications of programming, and the limitations of this acknowledgment within theory and the discursive spaces it happens within.

Millions of people around the world today use digital tools and platforms to create and share sophisticated cultural artifacts. This book focuses on one such platform: Instagram. It places Instagram image culture within a rich cultural and historical context, including history of photography, cinema, graphic design, and social media, contemporary design trends, music video, and k-pop. At the same it uses Instagram as a window into the identities of first truly global generation connected by common social media platforms, programming languages, and visual aesthetics. The book demonstrates how humanistic close reading and computational analysis of large datasets can work together by drawing on the work in Manovich's Cultural Analytics Lab with 16 million Instagram photos shared in 17 large cities worldwide since 2012.

Editorial for Unlikely issue 2 (2016) (http://unlikely.net.au/), which focused on the theme of artistic fieldwork:

This issue of Unlikely explores creative practice beyond the studio. What opportunities for the creation of new knowledge are “out there, in the field”? What new methods for artmaking are born when artists venture outside the art world - or indeed, take the artworld itself as field? How do documentation, reportage, and writing help make field work visible and intelligible? How do artworks define their own fields?

Decoding Chomsky challenges some of the fundamental assumptions of Chomsky’s ‘Linguistic Revolution’, the belief that linguistics is a “natural science” concerned with the underlying basis of all the world’s tongues. Knight offers  an account of the genesis of Chomskyan linguistics.He challenges Chomsky's  'compartamentalism', the separation between his 'scientific' linguistics and his life as a radical activist.He suggests that Chomsky's 'neutral' science was in reality linked to the Cold War struggle against Marxism.  Decoding Chomsky offers some alternative ideas about the social origins of language from Knight's research into palaeoanthropology. The book is critically assessed.

Digital cameras and camera phones are now very widely used but there are some issues that affect their use and the quality of the images captured. Many of these issues are due to problem of interaction or feedback from the camera. Modern smartphones have a wide range of sensors, rich feedback mechanisms and lots of processing power. We have developed and evaluated a range of new interaction techniques for cameras and camera phones that improve the picture taking process and allow people to take better pictures first time.

New digital imaging practices have arisen with the emergence of image-based social media. An aesthetics that is both visual and social in nature is emerging and clearly manifesting on the user-friendly platform Instagram. While new visual aesthetics are rooted in the new attraction to vintage filters, social aesthetics manifest in embracing the mundane aspects of human life as a source for visual communication. Amateur image-makers are taking the lead and experimenting with new visual forms of expression. The field of visual communication has not yet examined such timely issues, so this paper argues for increased attention to new digital imaging practices, such as iPhoneography, the practice of capturing, editing, and sharing images with one device, which is altering how we make and read images.

Murat Germen International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques: ACM SIGGRAPH 2006 Art gallery, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, One Astor Plaza, 1515 Broadway, New York, NY, 10036-5701, USA,, 2006. Abstract not available. ...

The cameraphone has emerged as a dominant device for the production and sharing of photographic images in the new millennium.  No longer constrained by technological parameters of the past, the cameraphone continues to remediate and refashion the tropes of traditional photography, thus giving rise to new image making processes and, arguably, new ways of seeing.

From early model cameraphones manufactured in 2004 through to the enhanced capabilities of the ubiquitous Apple iPhone, the cameraphone has evolved from a crude digital imaging/communications tool into a sophisticated networked media device.  It is now capable of capturing, editing, storing, and exporting high-resolution images.

As the cameraphone continues to evolve, constant technological shifts have facilitated a liquid aesthetic whereby cameraphone images, and photographic practices are shaped and/or influenced by the constantly fluctuating nature of this transformative technology.  With this in mind, my research examines the shape-shifting parameters of the cameraphone and its impact on the field of photography.  I explore ways in which cameraphones may reconfigure our relationship with imaging and facilitate new modes of photographic practice.

CrossTalk explores the ways in which control affects relationships between performers, performers and their audience, and of the audience members amongst each other. Details about how this interactive musical performance developed over the course of three performances are discussed.

Smart phones are ubiquitous; light, portable and indispensable. The spatial, perceptive and visual connections among scene, subject and photographer are different, compared to a regular camera. This fact enables the photographer to focus on different topics, try practices s/he has not tried before. Mobile devices change the way we create, edit, sequence and share photography. When you do street photography with a smart phone camera, one of the advantages is that people do not really understand where you aim at and what you photograph. They do not react as consciously as they would in front of a regular camera. The reason is; almost all people, including locals and tourists, own a smart phone and taking a snap with them is very common practice for all. Okabe and Ito (2006) argue that:
“The camera phone is a more ubiquitous presence, and is used for more personal, less objectified viewpoint and sharing among intimates. It tends to be used more frequently as a kind of archive of a personal trajectory or viewpoint on the world, a collection of fragments of everyday life.”
Ease of use seems to make smart phone recording as one of the "sine qua non" practices of photography. There are many documentary photographers, reporters, journalists, professional photographers and even artists, film directors who take this apparatus seriously and use it. Some camera makers, like Samsung, are aware of the power of mobile imaging (described as “quantum imagery” by Fred Ritchin) and started to produce cameras 3G / 4G connectivity.
Before the digital revolution, the percentage of the “amateur” photographers was relatively less as compared to the digital era. Shooting with film was more difficult as analogue processes allowed less room for errors. After the launch of cheap compact digital cameras amateurs generated more self-confidence in imaging since they were offered the possibility of fixing any mistakes by just erasing any faulty photo. The introduction of cameras into smart phones was yet another dimension at which people felt even more poised to take photos, since the tool is not a “professional” apparatus with which you are expected to create expert results. In the light of above facts, I think it would not be wrong to say that phone cameras give a personalized power to their users. Nowadays, with the possibilities offered by social media tools, regular people contribute to the making of their local and global histories with the “amateur” personal images they make, which partially shape their identities. This can defined as power of the individual, using visual imagination as a tool.
This paper aims to discuss how mobile digital imaging alters the creation, perception and aesthetics of visuality. Contemporary photographic culture is definitely more intricately intertwined with popular culture as compared to photography in the 20th century and this should not be interpreted as a weakness but strength, when used consciously.

In this article I will elucidate the concept of photo messaging, and examine camera phones in the context of communication and photography. Camera functions are nowadays a popular add-on to the mobile (cellular) phone. Users can send photographs directly from the phone as photo messages. Findings suggest that the ubiquitous camera phone, and photo messaging, may substantially change the ways in which people use personal pho- tography. The imaging capacity of mobile phones is becoming a potential part of perpetual visual contact. Thus taking and sending photographs on a camera phone represents a new resource for visual communication.

Creativity is stochastic and assumptive in nature. The importance of randomness in the creative process must not be ignored, underestimated or intentionally disregarded in a condescending way. Notions of chance, randomness, or unpredictability are much important, especially when it comes to artistic creation.