Along with the possibility of technical reproduction provided by the printing machine the individualization of authorship came in the 18th century, as well as the invention of copyright. During the 20th century, a diversity of artistic attemps was undertaken in order to deconstruct individual authorship and the implied ideas about geniality and originality.

Started by Dada and continued by the Surrealists one can follow this development which now faces an expected culmination, caused by the rise of the digital media. Playing with identities, the availability of an endless amout of material and information on the Net, the possibility of copying without loss of quality, as well as anonymous and decentralized ways of distribution have formed a networked culture which often makes it impossible to identify a single author. And also the works are in a permanent state of re-work and variation.

"Generative art" is a special variation of this networked culture. Here, authorship very often is distributed to several contributors - for example the user, the programer, the artist who makes the concept and provides the environment, the authors of the re-worked 'original' material, and most import the computer(-program). A consequent handling of this kind of art, makes it hard to almost impossible to categorize it by parameters like "authorship" and "originality" on which not only the art world but also copyright is based.

The radio play "Automatically Generated Auhtorship" tries to relate in form and content to the described development. Four characters represent the different layers of discourse around the issue: a male and a female computer voice, as well as a male and a female human voice. The spoken text, noise and generative music compositions comprising the radio play have been rendered from a jump-cutting timeline. Although the content is seeded by the authors (Sollfrank & Didymus), the final form has been left purely to a software based music-engine to arrange.

The shock of jump-cutting, the un-fixing of order, creates new symbiotic meanings and relationships, manifesting not only as a disruption of the codes of listening, but also perhaps more importantly a 'bringing together' of ideas not (fully) intended by the artists. This act demonstrates the seductiveness of the timeline, and time based media in general.

Autorschaft und ihre automatische Generierung

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Other Works

I Google Myself

Monstrous Weather