[ISEA2017] Paper: Dejan Grba — Avoid Setup: Insights and Implications of Generative Cinema

Abstract 

Keywords: Algorithm, Cinema, Creative Coding, Digital Art, Film, Generative Art, Generative Cinema, New Media Art

Generative artists have started to engage the poetic and expressive potentials of film playfully and efficiently, with explicit or implicit critique of cinema in a broader cultural context. This paper looks at the incentives, insights and implications of generative cinema by discussing the successful and thought-provoking art projects that exemplify the complex connections between the creativity in cinematography and the procedural fluency which is essential in generative art. It states that the algorithmic essence of generative cinema significantly expands the creative realm for the artists working with film, but also incites critical assessment of the business-oriented algorithmic strategies in contemporary film industry. These strategies of commercial film seem logical but they are creatively counter-effective and generative cinema is becoming the supreme art of the moving image in the early 21st century.

  • Dejan Grba, Serbia,  is a media artist, author and educator. His artistic investigation is focused on the various ways of the constitution, representation and interpretation of the individual notion of reality in the symbolic and narrative structures, primarily within the context of cognitive sciences, evolutionary psychology, biology and physics. He has exhibited and lectured at venues including SIVA Shanghai, ISEA2016 Hong Kong, ZKM Karlsruhe, IFA Berlin, GfZK Leipzig, Montevideo Amsterdam, MiP Vienna, CCN and Graz, MoCA Novi Sad, MoCA and MST Belgrade. He chairs New Media Department at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade where he teaches Transmedia Research. He teaches Poetics of Digital Art seminar at Digital Art PhD program at University of the Arts in Belgrade. He was a guest professor with Computer Art program at the CVPA at Syracuse University, NY, USA. dejangrba.dyndns.org

Full text (PDF) p. 427-435