Hyperrhiz 29
Generative Art at the Intersection of Chaos and Order
Seda Ateş
University of Sussex
Citation: Ateş, Seda. “Generative Art at the Intersection of Chaos and Order.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 29, 2025. doi:10.20415/hyp/029.e03
Abstract: This paper explores the pioneering contributions of Golan Levin at the intersection of art, science, and technology, emphasizing his critical approach to generative art and interactive systems. Levin’s works challenge conventional boundaries by integrating programming and algorithms as creative tools, fostering participant engagement and inspiring individual creativity. Rejecting the standardization imposed by contemporary technological tools, Levin’s artistic philosophy emphasizes a layered and nuanced understanding of media temporality, offering a critical perspective. Through works like Cytographia, Levin transcends algorithmic repetition, celebrating organic variation and inspiring originality in generative art. The paper further examines the interplay of chaos and order in generative art, exploring how Levin balances aesthetic diversity and algorithmic precision. It situates his practice within broader debates on the integration of emotional depth and aesthetics into computational systems, dissolving dichotomies between natural and mechanical, analog and digital. Additionally, the discussion engages with Levin’s critical stance on blockchain technology, framing it as a tool for distribution rather than a creative medium, while considering its potential in expanding the boundaries of generative art. Finally, this paper sheds light on the evolving possibilities at the nexus of art and science, offering a constructive perspective on the future of computational creativity.
Keywords: Golan Levin, generative art, interactive art, blockchain art, art and technology intersection, media temporality.
Renowned for his work in interactive systems, generative design, and human-computer interaction, Golan Levin seeks to engage the viewer/participant actively - both sensorially and intellectually - in his creations. Often encouraging participants to discover their own creative potential, Levin designs experiences that make them an integral part of the creative process. By utilizing programming and algorithms as creative tools, Levin constructs interactive mechanisms in his works that reveal individual creativity while also challenging the boundaries of digital technologies. His art departs from conventional notions of representation, focusing instead on direct experience and exploration, allowing participants the freedom to express themselves. As a researcher, educator, and engineer, Levin is a pioneering figure who inspires a new generation of artists at the intersection of art and science/technology.
Levin has produced a diverse range of works in terms of both technological tools and creative processes. He notes that the breadth of his career makes it difficult to confine his work to specific periods. His production approach has evolved over time, shaped by the technologies he has used - such as Macromedia Director, Java, Flash, OpenFrameworks, and p5.js - and the types of works he has created, including performances, installations, net art accessible via browsers, and printed pieces displayed on walls. Instead of categorizing his art and creative processes chronologically, Levin advocates for a nonlinear temporal perspective, emphasizing the continuity of his creative identity and his adaptability to diverse contexts.
Similarly, I believe the artist’s approach to using technologies is shaped by a critical and alternative understanding of temporality. In other words, Levin appears to challenge the predefined and constrained nature of popular technological tools within contemporary media culture, as well as the linear temporality and myths of progress embedded in this culture. In the interview, Levin highlights the risk of repetition in generative art, attributing it to the standardization of tools, economic motivations, and a lack of originality. For example, Levin’s work Cytographia and the way it was created reflect both his effort to move beyond algorithmic tools and the necessity of preserving an individual artistic vision. Levin’s approach - encouraging his students to achieve diverse outcomes using the same tools and applying this principle to his own practice - serves as a compelling example of generative art’s potential. In this context, Cytographia is not only a work of art but also an expression of the pursuit of originality. Levin’s method inspires artists and students to discover their individual creativity in an environment where similar tools and commands often yield similar results.
Such an approach embodies the pursuit of creative freedom beyond technological constraints, integrating both technological innovation and individual artistic expression. In this context, Levin’s works offer critical insights not only in an aesthetic sense but also within the framework of generativity, encouraging us to think beyond the box of the technologies we use through creative coding. This reflects concerns about transcending the standardization imposed by technology, highlighting the critical dimension of his artistic approach. Simultaneously, it encompasses a techno-political critique of digital culture, including protocols, progress myths, and the networks of software and hardware discourse.
It is clear that Levin’s non-linear perception of temporality emerges in various forms throughout the interview, particularly in his reflections on terms such as “post-digital” and “post-internet,” which are frequently used in the field. While acknowledging the general value of these terms for understanding artistic production, Levin underscores their periodizing tendencies and their lack of definitive relevance to his own practice. Considering that some of Levin’s works incorporate analog themes or physical media practices, it might be tempting to label his work as “post-digital.” For instance, in Cytographia, Levin celebrates what he calls “noise” or “paper,” a textured surface that evokes a perception closer to the natural world, emphasizing the importance of organic variation. However, his approach in the interview critiques the necessity of terms like “post-digital,” which risk limiting creativity and artistic expression. Instead of accepting the periodizing nature inherent in the prefix “post-,” Levin provides insights into the deep temporal structures shaping today’s media culture. This perspective resonates with Siegfried Zielinski’s (2006) concept of the “deep time” of media, focusing on celebrating the temporality within media itself rather than drawing distinctions such as old vs. new or digital vs. analog. Geoff Cox’s caution (2015, 151) about how such terms can serve ideological purposes and restrict our understanding of historical and cultural processes further contextualizes Levin’s fluid, critical approach to media temporality in his artistic practice.
Such a discussion also becomes significant within the context of “contradictions” that arise -though need not necessarily be perceived as contradictions -at the increasingly blurred intersection of art and science. This intersection is shaped by the fusion of aesthetics, emotion, and nature with logic, mathematics, and the binary world of algorithms and code. Typical examples of this contradictory logic manifest in questions like, “If computers operate solely on logic and procedures, is it possible to create works with emotional depth using these tools?” However, a more productive question might be, “In generative art, how do we trust the mechanical world of the computer to deliver the aesthetics and emotions we expect from art?” While carrying similar concerns, this reframing opens the door to more inspiring answers. It shifts the focus to issues such as how artists use computers, how they capture artistic expression and emotion with these tools, and what creative methods and practices they develop to achieve these goals. In doing so, it creates a more meaningful and constructive platform for discussing the creative potential and limits of generative art.
Artists, by leveraging fluid media temporality, drawing inspiration from the chaos of analog and sometimes nature, or utilizing probability and randomness through interactive artistic practices, dismantle the assumption that we must choose between the natural and mechanical worlds, or between order and chaos. Generative artists thrive by neutralizing such dichotomies, blending art and science - or chaos and order - to create aesthetics. Levin’s works and artistic philosophy exemplify this approach remarkably well.
Levin emphasizes that his focus is not on the pursuit of meaning or representation, as in traditional art, but on the interaction participants establish with themselves during the experience. He argues that traditional art historical methods are inadequate for understanding the flexibility and multidimensional nature of computer-based art. This perspective provides a critical lens to explore the expanded expressive possibilities of generative art, which, unlike traditional art, is not confined to message or representation. Rather than being a self-contained, completed art object, the artwork becomes a tool that is continually renewed through participant engagement, enabling creative exploration and rooted in “cybernetic” principles. Levin employs innovative techniques to foster a strong connection with participants by producing aesthetic and emotional experiences through computers and coding. These interactions evoke emotional and cognitive responses, transforming code and algorithms into artistic mediums. Through this potential, Levin ensures that each interaction reshapes the artwork, giving it a dynamic and ever-evolving structure. Levin’s approach helps us understand how art created through creative coding diverges from traditional art forms and how this divergence necessitates a new interpretive framework within art history.
In the interview, Levin highlights the concept of “long-form generative art,” referencing Tyler Hobbs’ approach, and discusses the challenge of maintaining a balance between consistency and diversity in such works -an issue that appears critical for exploring the aesthetic boundaries of algorithmic art. Levin currently adopts a somewhat distanced stance toward blockchain technology, describing it primarily as a tool aligned with existing market dynamics. The artist notes that using blockchain technology as a means to exhibit and sell art offers a way to make works commercially accessible but emphasizes that he does not prefer to use this technology as a creative tool. Instead, he employs it to share and make his works accessible in the digital realm. While Levin acknowledges that Cytographia benefited from blockchain technology by enabling the creation and distribution of limited editions, he stresses that the value of the artwork does not derive solely from this technology and that the works should hold artistic value independently of it. Although Levin hopes that his work Cytographia can exist as more than just a mechanism tied to blockchain sales and offer something independent as an artwork, he also underscores that, in a broader context, the extent to which such platforms serve the creative originality and autonomy of art remains open to debate.
On the other side, discussions such as those in Merve Güven Özkerim and David Berry’s article “Algorithmic Choreography on Blockchain: Human Unreadable” (2024, 72-73) highlight the potential for blockchain technologies to catalyze unexpected examples of long-form generative art, expanding artistic possibilities beyond economic systems. Tyler Hobbs (2021) also underscores the significance of exploring these potentials, asserting that long-form generative art demands algorithms capable of reliably producing outstanding results rather than relying on chance. According to Hobbs, achieving such outcomes requires sophisticated logic, with diversity being a critical detail. Few artists can currently strike this balance, but Hobbs is optimistic that ongoing exploration will change this dynamic. Among the challenges Hobbs identifies, achieving diversity without relying on the randomness of algorithms is paramount. I believe that Levin, as a generative artist who has meticulously explored the balance between chaos and order, and discovered natural aesthetics within controlled mechanical systems, would -despite his stated preference not to use blockchain as a creative medium- offer pioneering and inspiring experiments in this domain as well.
Finally, as noted earlier in this discussion, when it comes to computational art, rather than focusing on assumptions that mechanical and “cold” systems (shaped by techno-political risks) are incapable of producing profound artworks (or “how” they can’t), it is more productive and insightful to explore what the intersection of technology and art offers and what potentials artists must discover to expand the boundaries of art. This includes investigating how hybrid roles such as artist-engineer, researcher-artist, or artist-data scientist emerge and interact; how computation brings the organic and the mechanical together; how chaos and order balance to foster diversity; and how these blurred boundaries might further evolve in the future. Such an exploration could reveal new dimensions for both disciplines, offering a more inspiring perspective on the possibilities at the nexus of art and science.
References
Berry, David M., and Merve Güven Özkerim. “Blokzincir Üzerinde Algoritmik Koreografi: Human Unreadable.” Yedi Sanatta Dijitalizm [Özel Sayı]: 67-74, 2024.
Cox, Geoff. “Postscript on the Post-digital and the Problem of Temporality.” Postdigital aesthetics: Art, computation and design. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015. 151-162.
Hobbs, Tyler. “The Rise of Long-Form Generative Art.” Tyler Hobbs 6 (2021).
Levin, Golan. “Golan Levin on the Potentiality of Blobs.” Interview by Peter Bauman. Le Random. lerandom.art/editorial/golan-levin-on-the-potentiality-of-blobs
Zielinski, Siegfried. “Introduction: the Idea of a Deep Time of the Media.” Deep Time of the Media. MIT Press: 2006.