Computational Aesthetics

In order to cut into the condition of computational aesthetics, this chapter offers a short overview of some of the features and characteristics that, to a greater or lesser extent, and to varying degrees of combination, articulate the reality of computation. It offers examples to provide an illustration of how computational aesthetics produces, regulates, but also points beyond its own ontological and epistemological validations, and thus always has to be found and investigated in the computational event. Computation is axiomatic. The modes of abstraction, universality, and discreteness discussed in the chapter are key features of the axiomatic character of computational systems, and of the many parallels between computation and logico‐mathematical reasoning. Memory also introduces other conditions and forms of computational aesthetics. It, understood as the extent of the capacity to process data, also has significant effects for digital art.