Every December Prof. Celestino Soddu and his collaborators organise a conference at the Milan Politechnic University, Italy, on "Generative Art".

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This conference is an amazing mix of graphical, textual, musical, traditional, futuristic presentations about art which has been created "generatively".

One of the fun parts of the conference is that no-one really knows what "generative" means in this context, but roughly speaking I'd sum it up as "art produced by specifying a process rather than a final image (story, poem, movie, composition)". Computers can be used, but this is not an absolute requirement.

There is an accompanying a exhibition of generative art works...

and performances of generative music/composition.

The contributors are from varied disciplines, from the academic and business and design worlds.

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The conference is international. This year there were contributions from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Sweden, the UK, and the US.

Even the conference procedings are "generative". The book is a limited edition of 60 copies, each with a different cover. The cover designs were generated by one of Prof. Soddu's programs.
This could be thought of as one of the first examples of mass customization, which is what the commercial side of generative art is really all about. Click here for the full text of my paper published in the proceedings.

For more details and contact information:

http://www.generativedesign.com/

celestino.soddu@polimi.it