Cracktro vs Generative Art
クラックトロ / ジェネラティブアート
Both sit in Digital Art, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. One is style and the other technique. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Cracktro
A short screen bolted to the front of cracked software as a group's calling card. An oversized group name, text scrolling without end and a run of greetings turned the home computer display into a stage.
Generative Art
A way of working in which the maker writes only the rule and the randomness, leaving the drawing to the machine. As in Nees's plotter work, the result is shown as several variants born of one rule.
| Cracktro | Generative Art | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1980s-1990s | 1965- |
| Family | Digital Art | Digital Art |
| Kind | Style | Technique |
| Cues | Text scrolling endlessly across the screen / Bands of color running behind it / An oversized group name held at the center / A run of greetings naming other groups | One simple element repeated to fill the field / Variants of a single rule shown side by side / Repetition drifting in angle and position / A density and precision no hand could reach |
| Best used for | Bolting a short screen to the front of something being passed around, to give the group's name · Packing a burst of sound and image into an executable with a small size budget | Letting a machine make identifiers or one-off tickets that must all differ · Exhibitions or works where designing the rule is what is on show |
| Type | Monospaced bitmap letters running the greetings along the bottom without a break | Letters handled as coordinates and repetitions with the face itself fixed |
| Composition | Hold the oversized group name at the centre and keep the effect moving around it | Seed and random range set, outputs laid side by side to inspect the spread |
| Material | Patterns generated from formulas and a short looping tune, built with no asset files | Lines assumed at a plotter's constant weight, tone made by overlap density |
| Caution | Line up the effects but drop the name and the run of greetings, and the calling card is gone, leaving only a short piece of animation. | A random range set too wide widens the gap between good and bad results and leaves a pile of output instead of a work. |