As the computer spreads ever more rapidly as a tool, IT procedures are increasingly featuring in artistic processes. Hence art production has a technology at its disposal that is otherwise known only from informatics, industrial working practices, robotics and research into artificial intelligence. All the basic creative decisions are broken down into individual steps and sent to the computer as digital procedures. The recipient gains new insights into the creative process and new access to the conceptual basis of a work of art. This means that the idea of the autonomous artistic personality is called into question and the artist's position in our modern media society reconsidered. The following terms can be found in the art context in the ‹generative tools› category: code art, software art, algorithmic art, programming art, generative art, generative design. This list does not claim to be complete. Clearly there are overlaps in terms of content, so that it is necessary to work out generally valid definitions and develop more approaches to differentiating content. Hence all the authors' texts give insight into fundamental questions within the thematic complex. [2] The essays on this keytopic are devoted to historical classification, aesthetic demands and using generative tools conceptually. We are interested exclusively in the artistic position. Key startingpoints are applying aesthetic selection criteria to a logic outside the artist's detailed control, and also connections between aesthetics/chance, aesthetics/logic and aesthetics/interaction. The novelty of the categories to be created derives among other things from the keywords non-repeatability, noncontrollability and non-human creativity. The introductory text «Generative art methodology» uses artistic standpoints from 1950s music history to show how different the aims can be, even though all the artists were using aleatory or serial methods. Leaving aside all considerations involving music theory, the only question to be addressed is what possibilities the use of such a method can offer in terms of form and content, and how this is reflected in current artistic practice—works by John Cage, Yannis (Iannis) Xenakis, Max Bense, Manfred Mohr, Harold Cohen, Brian Eno and others are discussed, as well as some current positions from recent years.

The differences between, as well as the very few overlapping points within, the texts show how complex and wide-ranging this still young field of work is, and identify aspects that need to be elucidated; these emerge not least from terminological definitions and differentiations. Inke Arns' text, which is published in the present book, «Read_me, run_me, execute_me. Code as executable text: Software art and its focus on program codes as performative texts»), points out sceptically how the term ‹generative art› has become fashionable in the last two years, appearing in contexts as different as academic discourses, media art festivals, architecture practices and design conferences. Here the term is often used if not as a synonym for software art, then without any clear differentiation from it. Generative art and software art do have something to do with each other—but what that is usually remains obscure. «Generative art,» says Arns, «defines processes that run according to determined, previously fixed rules or instructions autonomously (of the artist-programmer) or through ‹selforganization›. Generative art is interested in generative processes (and also in software or code) only to the extent that it—seen as a pragmatic tool that that is not itselfquestioned—serves to produces an ‹unforeseeable› result. And it is precisely for this reason that the term ‹generative art› is not appropriate for describing ‹software art›, which identifies an artistic activity that enables reflection on software (and its cultural significance) within the medium of software.»

In the classical art system, no notice is usually taken of the fact the computer was and is a tool and component of art, and that it has been so for as long as the machine itself has existed. A reappraisal of this history, dealing with embedding in the art-historical context, is still desirable—Matthias Weiss asserts this in «What is Computer Art?». He therefore comes up with two incentives for art history to address computer art: he explains the historical nature of the phenomenon, and he also stresses the role of description, in order to indicate that differentiation is possible only after detailed consideration, without which comparable features of older and more recent works cannot emerge to open up the possibility of a deeper understanding of computer art. He goes against the trend of using a constant stream of new ‹categories› for shifting the art system into a field of different techniques, suggesting instead that that the essentially traditional and all-embracing term ‹computer art› should be applied to the phenomenon of digitality in the arts, because it implies a historical and integrative element that makes connections with a comparative examination of computer art possible. He uses the term to place newer work from recent years into what he calls a «family relationship» with the computer art of the 1960s and 1970s.

As a complement to the more fundamental texts, Tilman Baumgärtel reflects in « Modification, Abstraction, Socialization. On some aspects of artistic computer games» on the possibility of modifying games , as this is now a more or less standard features computers offer, and has arrived in artists' studios as well as children's rooms through «Doom» and «Quake». His contribution deals with the art that has emerged from examining games. He focuses on artists who have mastered computer game codes and used them as a basis for works of their own. But it seems to the in the nature of this subject matter that artists do not restrict themselves to ‹merely› working on the code, but have concerned themselves with all facets of thecomplex theme of computer games. Excursions into the ‹more traditional› fields of art production—like painting, installation or video—are expressly included here.

New generative tools are constantly being developed both as commercial software like the Koan music software or as an artistic statement—for this see also Sven Bauer, who developed his «Fünf Räume» (Five rooms) project for this key topic. So generative tools are used in all fields of artistic creation, expanding the possibilities for presentation, distribution and interdisciplinary work. All the textual contributions refer to currently produced works of art. However, this survey is impeded by the different approaches used to develop and present platforms and applications temporarily at festivals and network forums. The corresponding projects cannot always be found on the Web. Some projects only run for a certain length of time for conceptual reasons, sometimes websites are switched off or put to different use. A fully differentiated discussion about the artistic quality of generative artworks has only just got under way. The selection of texts brought together in «Generative Tools» provides an overview of the current state of the discourse and indicates that further specifications are needed.