Conference article

The paper examines the unresolved conceptual hybrids (or monsters) in the rhetoric and practices of the willed; purposive design strategies and mythologies of “the creative individual” or collaborating team (i.e. the conventions of authorship); contrasting these to the conventions of auto-poiesis (self-making) such as are adopted in algorithmic; generative or “evolutionary” design; artificial life art; emergence; and metacreation (the design of generative and creative processes). Applying Katherine Hayles’ paradoxical notion of “orderly disorder” to experiments in emergence by “bioartists”; “transgenic” artists or others employing processes outside the traditions of mimetic model making; the paper argues that an important consequence of locating creative and critical practice “at the edge of chaos” (i.e. at the tension between order and surprise) is the creation of new metaphors; possibilities for innovation; demands for interdisciplinary border crossings; hybrid networks; and capacities for seeing connections; which the paper claims will be a defining feature of our contemporary relationship – as professional practitioners; researchers; and critics – to “post human” creativity.

Authorship; design; auto-poiesis; intention; emergence; complexity; interdisciplinarity; art; metaphor; biotechnology; innovation