Generative art: the artists harnessing AI-powered design tools

Generative art is defined by the unseen hand – a system or algorithm or AI-powered design program that, working with variables and within parameters established by the artist, can generate almost infinite outcomes. And for some, it’s the future. ‘The most radical and interesting art is happening in the generative art space,’ argues the Irish artist John Gerrard. ‘It’s the work most aligned with contemporary conditions.’

Gerrard is not yet 50, but he’s been tagged as an OG of generative art, a title he’s not entirely comfortable with. Most of his work – the mesmerising Farm and Solar Reserve, for instance – is produced using game engines, though it is not classically generative. But he is evangelical about the potential of generative art and the wave of younger artists redefining it. German artist Kim Asendorf is a particular favourite. ‘He’s a coder and an artist who invented a process called “pixel sorting”,’ Gerrard explains. ‘He’s creating a new language of abstraction, which is only going to get more interesting over time. Give me this over any painting of the last 15 years.’

Full disclosure, Gerrard is an Asendorf collector. But as of right now, and for a relatively modest outlay, you could be, too. Asendorf’s artworks are minted as NFTs and available on the fxhash generative art platform for as little as two Tezos, equivalent to about $2. Gerrard has now created his own series of categorically generative art pieces, Bone Work, for the platform.

Over the last couple of years, fxhash and the more blue-chip Art Blocks have emerged as the key platforms for generative art NFTs. And for Gerrard, alongside others, they are leading the revolution. ‘I put the blockchain mechanism, as a new distribution and exhibition model, up there with photography in terms of what it is going to do,’ he says. ‘I think it’s transformative.’

Of course, there was generative art before the blockchain. Many trace its roots back to the procedural art of Sol LeWitt and the ‘arranged by chance’ work of Ellsworth Kelly, while the Hungarian artist Vera Molnár gets credit for pioneering computer-generated art in the late 1960s. The English artist Keith Tyson (W*212) created the ‘Art Machine’ in the early 1990s, using algorithms to randomly generate words and ideas he could turn into physical art, and the American artist Casey Reas, who co-created the open-source programming language Processing, has been producing what Gerrard calls ‘long-form’ generative art for over two decades.