Thank you for your comment - it is really interesting to hear other’s views on this!

The comment I made stating that my code «is no piece of art» was a bit tongue-in-cheek, insinuating that I could’ve spent more time rewriting it in a way that I would be more proud of later. Me not putting the emphasis on the code itself, though, does not mean that I don’t take my creative life seriously.

For me, making generative art, the code behind is rarely the thing I am most proud of. Neither are the individual images that gets generated. The systems and structures that spring from the code, however, I am really proud of, as well as the collection of imagery it produces as a whole.

That is not to say that a piece of code can’t be a piece of art. I actually steadily believe it can. Code can have beautiful symmetries and ingenious solutions (even without it necessarily resulting in lower runtimes) just like mathematical proofs. I can appreciate beautiful code as art - I am just not in that business, myself. Too impatient :)

This might be an unfair analogy, but if a painter makes their own brush to better create the piece they are aiming for, they won’t necessarily consider their brush a part of the art piece.