Generative Art

My concept of art usually involves taking raw materials (canvas and paint, or rock and chisel) and using them to create something beautiful. However, I appreciate generative art, that uses already existing items (not raw materials), recombining them in new and different ways to delight and surprise. 

I often must use what already exists, and create something new and different that adds value to the company that has paid for my consulting services. I don't create from scratch. I must have existing information to work with, and access to the people who use it, to understand their thought process. From that, I create a framework... new perspective that is useful to others. So I identify with this style of generative art. Here are two examples that I really like.

Example 1: @Pentametron

I've blogged about him before here and here. This creative soul has automated a way to detect tweets that are in iambic pentameter, pairs 2 unrelated tweets that rhyming and republishes them.  He would have nothing without the original tweets, but taken out of their original context and paired with other, seemly unrelated things, he has created something original.

Example 2: Blackout Poetry

Austin Kleon will black out all but a few words of a newspaper article. The result is a work of poetry that is topically very different from the original work. He states he must do that in order to avoid legal action.