On wonder and betrayal: creating artificial life software to meet aesthetic goalsaland@csse.monash.edu.au Available to Purchase

Examines the way in which works of generative computer‐based art, specifically those which reference Artificial Life, may gain aesthetic appeal through instilling a sense of “wonder” in a viewer. This idea is examined from its roots in our fascination with natural phenomena and the sublime, through its representation in terms of the basic elements of drawing off and on‐screen, and into the computational realm in which Artificial Life software finds its form. Further explores the artistic potential of the approach which takes computationally‐realized works with a single level of emergent organizational structure, to those capable of giving rise to interactions built yet again on top of these in an ever‐increasing hierarchy of added complexity. The difficulties of coding such software systems successfully will be briefly discussed.