[spectre] Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life

[Mitchell Whitelaw]

> Melinda, something could appear abusive in the term "metacreation" 
> stricly
> applied regarding to life-art and more to artificial life.
>
> Don't you think so ? "Meta" literally : what comes after, what 
> succeeds...

Aliette I think my intention was simpler than your critique! In the 
book, metacreation is used to refer to a particular tendency within 
a-life art - something that I argue is a characteristic motivator of 
this practice. "Meta" here relates to recursion or self-referentiality. 
Metacreation is the creation of creation. For a-life artists this is 
the practice of creating systems which are themselves (somehow) 
creative. This is an ideal, an aspiration, rather than a reality, for 
there are real limits on the extent of that metacreation... but it's an 
important desire in this field (and actually, I would argue, in almost 
all generative art).

Maybe we can continue this discussion on -empyre- from November 4...

cheers,

Mitchell

Mitchell Whitelaw
http://creative.canberra.edu.au/mitchell