Many traditional aesthetes and art critics claim the pure art cannot be of mechanical nature, every single aspect of it must be a product of artist decision, it must contain an intention behind it, those moments of chaos characteristic only to pure human behaviour. However, holding this claim means in my opinion just holding on a certain “one sided” theory of art by putting focus on the creator side. Photography and film for example have been hold a mere public attraction at their beginnings for many years because of their “pure mechanical nature”. 

Now I believe the concept of art is or at least should be strongly connected to the concept of aesthetic sensations. Therefore, I follow in my free interpretation of art theory Immanuel Kant’s Aesthetic Judgement, at least to some extent. By judging the aesthetic qualities of an artwork focus should be directed to the internal sensations of lust and pleasure in relation to this artwork and not merely to the artwork itself. Additionally, the pure aesthetic sensation should not be based on any concepts and any interests, they emerge for their own sake. 

Today Kant’s Aesthetic Judgment in its pure form is surely problematic but it points to an intuition which I found very pronounced as I started making reactive and interactive art with touchdesigner. Making abstracts forms by combining various algorithms and converting and feeding different data into variable parameters doesn’t sound really that much artistic. However, the results are mesmerizing and thus “beautifully” fulfilling Kant’s concept of an “pure” artwork which cause a feeling of pleasure in the mind of the beholder. 

For those still having problems by connecting algorithms with art think of nature of music: it is highly mathematic, just like an algorithm, and combining different data is nothing else then combining different notes and scales in a song. And for those insisting on human touch behind an artwork: well, the number of combining alternatives in touchdesigner is similar to the Shannon’s number of moves in a chess game, so getting to a certain result can be sometimes by pure chance, but as a rule the artist decides at the end which algorithms correlate to which parameters etc.