Style as Emergence (from What?)

Abstract

I argue that an exclusively formal description of a painting cannot provide an adequate description of its style, nor can it express its style so vividly that the description can generate objects stylistically similar to the originals. While the characteristics through which we identify style certainly involve the formal, physical presence of the work, this is not without reference to the mindset of the artist and to the history of decisions that result in the presence of the work. By way of example, I will examine some original work that was generated, not with a computer program, but by a computer program, named AARON. Its work has a distinctive appearance, but one that lacks an obvious formal organizing principle. It would be impossible to simulate AARON convincingly without access to its history because, as I will show, it did not arise through any primary interest in formal configuration. In fact, the argument for purely formal analysis does not require that it uncovers the true history of the original, simply that the presumptive history generates a convincing simulation. Should we conclude from that argument that any given configuration could have been the result of some number of alternative histories? A dubious conclusion: I will argue that AARON’s images result uniquely, not just from their making, but also from the long history of perceived goals and intentions, paths and detours, that resulted in the peculiarly idiosyncratic technology of their making.