Formal Logic and Self-Expression

The digital computer can be used to synthesize images of Nature from first principles of mathematics and the natural sciences; these images can in turn serve as vehicles of self-expression for the artist directing the synthesis. This peculiar artistic process juxtaposes the deterministic formalisms of the scientific method with the subjective aspects of visual aesthetics and with the pursuit of artistic selfexpression, which may best be characterized as a spiritual undertaking. We claim that this novel creative process is unprecedented in the visual arts — not only because it can be practiced only with the aid of powerful computers, devices that are a recent phenomenon, but for deeper reasons as well. Furthermore, we claim that this new process has exceptionally deep conceptual underpinnings entrained from the mature formal disciplines from which it derives. Generally, practitioners of these formal fields — scientists and mathematicians — are not fully cognizant of the disciplines of visual aesthetics, just as practitioners of the fine arts are (though with arguably greater awareness) generally ignorant of the finer points of science and mathematics. This division of expertise has lead to the false contemporary cultural notion that the two methodologies are somehow inherently separate and irreconcilable. Not so, we will argue. Yet mutual appreciation will require mutual understanding of the richness of the underlying disciplines; the purpose of this essay is therefore to illustrate that art and science can be brought together in a single creative process, and to convey some appreciation for the depth of the resulting fusion. This essay is addressed to the intelligent layperson: We proceed by elucidating certain formal methods and how they relate to the computational process of image synthesis, then by pointing out some of the implications to the visual arts of working in this new process, and finally by illuminating the philosophical dilemma posed by the pure use of formal methods as the means to achieving qualitative, even spiritual, humanistic goals.