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Aesthetics Generative Art

Screensaveriness

Abstract graphics looping on a computer screen will be seen as screensavers. Even relatively sophisticated digital artworks will be seen unproblematically as screensavers if you make them into an Xscreensaver module. Being seen as a screensaver is problematic if what is being seen as one does not wish to engage with what that means.

Screensavers are trivial distractions for the office. They are contemporary cabinet paintings. They are kitsch, mass-distributed industrialized creativity. Some display useful information or perfrom useful tasks, but they are still not being used by the computer’s user to achieve something. They make computing machinery into decoration, and decoration into a mis-use of computing machinery.

“Like That” is abstract, colourful and time-based. It suffers from a strong threat of screensaveriness. Hopefully much of it is too awkward and too referential to high art to succumb entirely to screensaveriness. Hopefully the rest of it will suffer from virtue by association. Any lingering screensaveriness will hopefully be stripped out by appearing windowed on web pages or wall-sized as video projections.

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