Generative art rests on a creative principle (logos). Generativity, understood in this way, designates the very mode of creating the artwork and is not limited to the digital medium. Its essence lies not in the machine, the algorithm, the program code, or the blockchain, but in the principle according to which the artwork comes into being and according to which it acquires its internal structure. Every technology, every procedure, and every creative medium has meaning only insofar as it brings the creative principle into the artwork's manifestation. The creative principle precedes artwork's material making and determines what the artwork is, what its foundations are, in which relations they may stand, in what way they may change, and why each individual manifestation belongs to the same meaningful order. An artwork created according to a creative principle is not an arbitrary aesthetic form, but a particular consequence of the logos that constitutes the artwork. An artwork is generative if it has come into being according to a principle that ensures its artistic validity, autonomy, and internal coherence. In this sense, contemporary generative art only reveals with particular clarity what belongs to every true work of art: the artwork is not only what is seen, but also the principle according to which the visible appears.

Long-Form Generative Art

Long-form is a stricter form of generative art. In long-form generative art, one principle does not produce only one manifestation, but an entire series of individual artworks within a unified series. Long-form is a test of the internal validity of the creative principle, and not simply a series comprising many members. Every output of the system must be a true work of art, and each of the artworks must be independent, original, unrepeatable, and at the same time coherent with the whole to which it belongs. Decisive for the rigor of long-form generative art is the abolition of subsequent discretionary selection. The artist does not select only the successful results, does not discard the unsuccessful ones, and does not correct individual artworks after they've been created. For this reason, the weight of creation is transferred to the creative principle itself: it must be sufficiently rigorous to prevent arbitrariness and sufficiently fertile to enable a multitude of different manifestations. If every member of the series must be a work of art, then the whole cannot rest on accidentally successful exceptions. The difference among the artworks must arise from the same order, just as each individual manifestation must bear witness to the principle that makes it possible.