Mmm, smart art

Martin let me tag along to a panel at Art Interactive coinciding with their exhibit called eVolution. Sadly, one of the pieces wasn't working and another one wasn't on, so I'll have to go back later. The two I did get to see were pretty interesting, and the talks were thought-provoking if somewhat repetitive of things I've heard before. It occured to me that both reality television and art with artificial life in it are both fascinating because the creator establishes a set of rules and then sets the thing free to produce unpredictable results. At best, he can control the presentation of what happens. The guy from Art Interactive thought that the key was that both appeal to our desire to play God and be voyeurs, but Christiane thought that evolving art was really appealing because it was interactive (although so is some reality television, I'd argue) and that reality television was fundamentally different because what we were watching were people instead of simple rule followers. Still, you have to wonder, if reality television has led to the decline of the sitcom and hour-long drama, will evolving art supplant deterministic art?