Geometry, abstraction, and chance are important themes not just for generative art, but for all art of 20th Century. Key female generative artists from the early days of generative art who made enormous contributions in popularizing the genre include Sonia Landy Sheridan, who founded the first generative systems department at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1970, and Grace Hertlein, who helped to popularize the first annual generative art competition when she became arts editor for Computers and Automation Magazine in 1974.
One of the artists Jared Tarbell cites as a major influence on his work is Joshua Davis. Since 1995 Davis has been using programming to produce art. He is among the first and best known artists to use Flash to create generative art.
"What do we know of the world and the universe about us? Our means of receiving impressions are absurdly few, and our notions of surrounding objects infinitely narrow. We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos, yet other beings with a wider, stronger, or different range of senses might not only see very differently the things we see, but might see and study whole worlds of matter, energy, and life which lie close at hand yet can never be detected with the senses we have. I have always believed that such strange, inaccessible worlds exist at our very elbows, and now I believe I have found a way to break down the barriers."
