Dutch artists Erwin Driessens ('63) and Maria Verstappen('64) work with generative techniques in a range of media, from digital imaging and software to sculpture and robotics. In their own words, they pursue an activity that explores the unseen, the unthought and the unknown.
To this end they create rich, elegant, self-constraining generative systems, which draw on, and re-engineer, techniques from the field of artificial life.
"We develop recipes which are used as a means of generating objects, images, and situations, which are neither depictions nor expressions of something, but rather the effects of arbitrary operations and combinations."
"Although it is true that the specific capabilities of a computer cannot imitate human thought processes, they do create the possibility of providing the computer with an autonomous, superhuman way of thinking that is interesting because it generates unforeseen results. We are therefore not interested in imitating human behaviour, but instead wish to implement processes that make use of these specific capabilities in such a way that artificial life systems (those designed to display emergent spontaneous behaviour) are created."
sources:
www.szp.swets.nl/szp/journals/dc141043.htm
www.csse.monash.edu.au/~iterate/SI/speakers.html
www.xs4all.nl/~notnot/