Alpha Version, Delta Signature: Cognitive Aspects of Artefactual Creativity

Abstract

This paper explores the cognitive aspects of artefactual creativity in new media art. With regards to the diversity of practices in this domain, I focus on generative art projects created primarily by processing the material from cinema, television and the Internet. These projects blend procedural thinking with bricolage, leverage complex technical infrastructures, foster curiosity and encourage vigilance in our critical appreciation of the arts, technology, culture, society, and human nature. I discuss their methodologies, poetic features, cultural and social contexts in three sections which exemplify the effects and consequences of computational paradigm: database logic, statistical abstraction and quantification. Throughout each section, I outline the theoretical considerations that can be educed from the examples, and expand on them in the concluding section which examines the artists’ creative motives and circumstances for analogizing and meaning making in relation to the cognitive and ethical implications of generative new media art.