• I do not use AI to generate artwork
• I do not use AI to generate or create the code that creates the artwork

I figured I should write a little bit here about my background, "generative art" and "creative coding".

First up, I've been coding for years, starting way back in 1984, I am old, I've been doing this a long time, I know what I'm doing and I'm very happy with my own ability to write code. Luckily for me I have examples of the code and my artwork that predates recent LLM/AI which, if you really wanted to you could go back through my YouTube channel and see: https://www.youtube.com/revdancatt, and my newsletter

The Weeknotes would also be a good start. I'm not expecting you to watch them, but if you did want to do a background check on if I'm a real person, and create my own art, that's where you'd go.

I am also currently creating a series of Drawing Machine Tutorial videos where you can see me writing the code fundamentals that are used in the artwork on this site: Drawing Machines 101

So yeah, I got the skills 😁 but so do other people and they still use AI but I have thoughts about that too in the "creative coding" section.

Generative Art - a definition

For a long time "Generative Art" generally meant that instead of writing some code that directly drew some art, you'd write rules and executing those rules would create the art. A very bad example would be writing some code to draw five lines, where the code was basically...

Draw line 1 from here to there
Draw line 2 from here to there
Draw line 3 from here to there
Draw line 4 from here to there
Draw line 5 from here to there

Each time the code was run it'd draw the same five lines, however if the code was something like...

Loop five times:
  Draw a line from random starting point to random ending point

Each time you run the code the results would be different, and, very boring.

A better example is Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawings, there is a fun example for kids here on the Whitney Museum of American Art's website

"Each time they are in an exhibition, Sol Lewitt’s drawings are made right on the wall. The people drawing them use a set of instructions written by the artist. The instructions are open to interpretation: often, the people following them have to decide where the lines or shapes should go. A wall drawing like this one looks a little different every time it is created."

There are more detailed rules on the MASS MoCA page; Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective

In the past few years generative art and generative ai art have become confused and conflated enough to the general audience to be a problem; and there's been suggested a few alternative "Code art", "Algorithmic art", "Rules based art" and just sticking with "Generative art". But often they can still get mistaken for "AI generated art", I mean, here we are on this page 🤷‍♂️

We artists are now going "Yeah, it's art created by code, where there's a set of rules, and the computer runs the rules over and over again and each result is different. The art is created with code, not by AI."

However, some people (as a perfectly valid artistic choice) use AI to write the code which creates the art, as a sort of one-step-away thing. "Oh no, the art is created as outputs from code, not as outputs from AI"; and then you go down a rabbit hole of how much AI was used, and everyone has different views on where they're drawing the line. Is proper writing only 100% human made if no spell-checker is used? Is it okay to hand write code, get it create art, and then use AI in the end to optimise and speed up the code?

I do not use AI to create code to create art, unless it's very specifically stated for very specific reasons, which you can read about below.

Creative Coding - a definition

So this is a quick one. "Creative coding" was used to explain the point of some code. Computer code can be written for all sorts of reasons; running banks, controlling trains, making business decisions, running websites like this and so on. Creative coding is writing code for creative reasons, pretty simple.

But, that doesn't mean no AI. You can use AI to write creative code (or code for creative purposes), although people could argue that art created with "creative code" written by AI isn't really art. Equally you can write creative code with no AI, which is what I'm doing.

Now though, my view on the definition of "creative coding" is changing, it's evolving into "code as craft". People can knit by hand or use a knitting machine, people can turn and carve wood by hand or use woodshop equipment. There is generally always an easier, faster way to create something, so why choose to do things by hand?

We choose to do them by hand because it's relaxing, or a hobby, or a craft we want to get better at. The process is just as important, if not more important, than the end result.

For work I'll often end up having to use AI for some aspects of what I do, which means it's even more important to me when I switch to making art that I can enjoy the process of hand-crafting the code. I am not choosing to not use AI as some major principle (although I can totally get behind that), I'm choosing not to use it, because I enjoy the process of putting code together by hand. I've done it for the past 40+ years, and it feels like a warm comfort.

Yes AI

I do use AI in the art studio to help me manage the studio. Just over three years ago I created an AI PA called "Kitty" to help me keep track of tasks that I needed to do. I've written about Kitty before, but it started as a basic journaling system that helped me write at the start and end of the day.

From that it grew into a todo list tool and to help with correspondence armed with it's own pen plotter, selection of pens, and Kitty's own handwriting style. This is all part of my Arts Based Research into what it's like to give over some control of running an art studio to an AI assistant, and a deeper rabbit hole around handwriting and communication.

Other aspects of Kitty have grown into tools that resize images, place images generated by my code into archives and other file management.

Sometimes I prompt Kitty to create art, either directly, or through rules based systems. Sometimes I've asked Kitty to write notes and short letters on my behalf. In all instances this will be very obviously marked as being by Kitty "Dan's AI PA". I will not pass off Kitty's work as my own, and when I'm asking/prompting/updating Kitty to "create" "art", I'm doing it as part of my Arts/Practice based Research.

I'm not trying to pass off AI work as my own, but I am interested in keeping up with what AI agents can do.

However, when I get stuck on some code, and google for an answer, the answer to my question may be in the AI summary, or a link to an article which has been written by AI (which has the answer). The answer would have previously come from coding websites like Stack Overflow, but now AI touching everything is hard to avoid.

i.e. "This code was prepared in a factory that processes nuts"

Dan, 24th October, 2026