Data aesthetics and the role of narration in generative artefacts

Abstract

Data-based generative artefacts are objects that, by the means of generative algorithms, have one or more formal aspects parameterized by data. Although defined by the methods from which data is translated into aesthetics, inside their black-boxes, these artefacts incorporate different actants in a network of different translations that altogether, constitute a narrative. Driven by concepts taken from the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour, as well as the object-oriented-ontology as proposed by Graham Harman, this essay explores the different narrative aspects inherent to generative artefacts, and further explores the role of these narrational aspects as evidences of an ontological speculation inherent to such objects.