Process, Chance, and Serendipity: Art that Makes Itself

By: Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences

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Synopsis: From February 20 through July 15, 2018, Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences presented the exhibition Process, Chance, and Serendipity: Art that Makes Itself featuring work by artist Paul Brown. Brown discovered digital computers as a creative medium after seeing the landmark exhibition, Cybernetic Serendipity, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1968. He has specialized in art, science, and technology since the late 1960s and in computational and generative art since the mid-1970s. This exhibition was a 50-year retrospective of Brown’s work in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the landmark exhibition, Cybernetic Serendipity. Brown designs computer programs–sets of instructions–and when they execute, the ongoing process exhibits emergent properties, which comprise the artworks. He emphasizes that the art is not embedded in the programs by intention but instead emerges autonomously from the execution of the programs. Together with his son Daniel, an artist, they have described this methodology as “art that makes itself.”