BotWatch interviews Allison Parrish

Allison Parrish is a prolific generative artist–I’ve written about one of her NaNoGenMo novels, but she’s done a ton of other stuff too. This recent interview with her brings up some interesting concepts.

The thing that stuck me the most was her parallel between space exploration with robots to investigate places where humans can’t survive and exploring “semantic space” with generative robots. We send our little bots out into the void of the mind, where human thought can’t go, either because it’s actively difficult for us to think about, or just because getting there requires putting ideas together in ways that would never have occurred to us. 

After all, one of the effective uses for procedural generation is to unearth ideas for us to think about. That’s one reason why I like bots that juxtapose ideas and how even mostly meaningless markov chains can still create associations that lead me to think new thoughts as I imagine the pictures .

Perhaps our bots will lead us through the void and help us find new kinds of writing that humans can think in, islands that we’d never have uncovered if we’d stuck to the comfortable mainland. 

The second thing that stuck me is how she describes generative art as being bound up in joy and wonder. The unexpected juxtapositions aren’t just unexpected, they’re also amusing, sparking that bit inside us that delights in riddles and discovery.

You can read the full interview, with discussions of imaginary Unicode emoji, poetry of the incomprehensible, and the spaces inbetween.

http://bot.watch/post/138672227025/interview-with-allison-parrish