The creative process as artistic material
Making the creation of an artwork visible through the traces of the dialogue between the artist and AI.
This process, explained on the Workflow and Co-creation pages, produces numerous traces: series of parametric proposals, successive states of the artwork, abandoned branches and the path taken toward completion. It also preserves the creative dialogue between the artist and AI: the artist’s choices and directions, and AI’s proposals, analyses and comments. The work on screen can also be recorded on video to document the entire creative process.
How the process developed by FractalPerception works
- The artist always starts from a function in which he identifies a promising parametric space.
- AI can then explore the function’s parametric space at scale and produce new forms based on directions given by Philoxerax.
- The artist observes the results, selects, rejects, transforms and decides on the next direction.
- The selected forms are then incorporated into one or more compositions constructed by the artist.
- Through the saved states of the composition, AI can read the successive states of the parametric space and analyze the transformations that gradually lead to the final artwork.
The dialogue therefore no longer takes place only through prompts: it is structured directly within the parametric material of the fractals. The artwork is both the trace and the result of this dialogue.
The process developed by FractalPerception ultimately provides AI with a way to observe the creative process from within, beyond words.
Making this process visible
Each artwork created through this system can bring together documentation of the work on screen, the dialogue with AI, series of parametric proposals, the artist’s choices and the different states of the composition.
A public presentation could associate all or part of this raw material with the final artwork: abandoned paths, variations and bifurcations — the creative journey that is usually absent from the finished image.
The finished artwork
The public usually sees only the final image. It embodies the artist’s choices, while the experiments, variations and path that led to its final state remain invisible.
Successive states
The composition’s successive saved states reveal its transformations. They make it possible to follow the bifurcations, moments of backtracking and abandoned directions throughout the creative process.
Forms
Starting from a function chosen by the artist, AI explores its parameter space and produces series of forms. The artist examines them, selects one to incorporate into the composition or guide the next exploration, then labels the others to help AI understand his choices.
Co-creation in action
Recordings of the screen and the exchanges between the artist and AI can provide material for a video. Visitors can thus follow, as the artwork itself takes shape, AI’s proposals, the artist’s choices and the successive directions of the dialogue.
The parametric double
Each image can be presented with its parametric double: the visual rendering on one side, and the functions, variables and parameters that constitute it on the other. Showing their evolution side by side could allow visitors to follow the construction of the artwork in both forms.
An existing corpus
This selection features 36 of the 376 fractal compositions created since 2020. This body of work forms the artistic starting point for FractalPerception and for the research currently being conducted into the creative process.
See more at www.philoxerax.com
An image with two faces
The images created through this process are based entirely on fractals. In other words, each image exists both as a visual rendering in pixels and as a generative structure and parametric space: mathematical functions, variables, positioning, color codes and layer organization. This information could be displayed alongside the image itself, for example in the form of computer code. Likewise, the evolution of this code could be revealed as the image takes shape.
An artwork and a corpus
The process described above is intended to produce two objects simultaneously.
The first is artistic: two-dimensional works created by Philoxerax through his dialogue with AI, each accompanied by all the traces produced during its creation.
The second is a research corpus: a documented genealogy of the proposals, decisions, transformations and states that led to each artwork, together with the relationships between them. An AI system will be able to access it through an API to identify recurring patterns in the artist’s aesthetic choices and, over time, draw on this corpus to generate its own aesthetic proposals.
What is presented to the public and what becomes research material thus come from the very same process developed by FractalPerception.
A curatorial approach to be developed with the institution
FractalPerception does not currently propose a predetermined scenography. It offers a substantial and diverse body of exhibition material centered on a creative process between an artist and AI.
The project could take the form of an exhibition, installation, projection, residency, site-specific creation or another format developed with the institution or curator.
The objective remains the same: to make the birth of an artwork observable as closely as possible through the dialogue between an artist and AI.
FractalPerception is currently seeking an arts institution or curator working in the field of art × technology / art-science to jointly present this material to the public.
An existing corpus of works
Philoxerax’s artistic work, which gave rise to FractalPerception, began in 2020. It can be seen at philoxerax.com and includes an existing corpus of 376 fractal compositions, 1,396 shapes, 116 unique functions and 34,369 composition parameters.
This institutional and artistic approach is being developed in parallel with the scientific partnership sought by FractalPerception; it does not replace it.