Morphogenetics: generative processes in the work of Driessens and Verstappen

Dutch artists Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen 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. This paper sets out a critical survey of the artists’ generative work, and shows how their application of a-life techniques destabilises, and enriches, some of the problematic aspects of those techniques. Specifically, where a-life frequently ignores complex morphogenetic processes, dematerialising them into a formal and instantaneous moment of genetic expression, the artists demonstrate the possibility and potential of richer, more complex and more ‘materialised’ models.