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The Poietic Generator is a Social network game designed by Olivier Auber in 1986, and developed from 1987 under the label free art thanks to many contributors. The game takes place within a two-dimensional matrix in the tradition of board games and its principle looks like the game of life (Conway) and the exquisite corpses of surrealists.

However, it differs from these three models in several aspects. While the game of life is growing in a limited matrix, games of the generator Poietic are played over a space of variable size depending on the number of players (potentially unlimited), and this is not an algorithm (like Conway), but human players who control real-time graphic elements of the global matrix, on the basis of one unit per person. Unlike the exquisite corpse in which there are always hidden parts, here all the players' actions are visible at all times by each of them. Finally, unlike the board games, there is no concept of winning or losing, the goal of the game is simply to collectively draw recognizable forms and to observe how we create them together.

The name "Poietic Generator", which derives from the concept of autopoiesis in life sciences (Francisco Varela), and of poietic in philosophy of art (Paul Valéry, René Passeron (in French)), illustrates the process of self-organization at work in the continuous emergence of the global picture. Since its inception, the Generator Poietic designs as part of an action research wider to create an "Art of Speed".

Rules of the Game

Every player (it could eventually be several thousand simultaneously) draws on a small part of a global mosaic formed by the dynamic juxtaposition of the parts manipulated by everyone. Everyone can therefore change its sign depending on the overall state of the image, which itself depends on the actions of each player. Out of this cybernetic loop emerges a kind of narrative: autonomous forms sometimes abstract, sometimes figurative, appear in a completely unpredictable maner and tell stories.

• Images of the Poietic Generator
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  Illustration of the concept (1988)
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  Each player draws on one element of the total matrix
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  Interface, Multicast version (1994)
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  Announcement of a session on the Mbone (February 1996). Screenshot of the "session directory" (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
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  Interface for mobile version (2012)
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  Recording the first real-time group interaction without any center (1995)
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  Recording of a web experiment, X-00 festival (2000)
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  Recording of an experiment with the "Elmediator" digital public space (2005-03-23)

In practice, each player can draw using a graphics tablet on a very simple image, deliberately limited in size (20 x 20 pixels), in order that a single player cannot draw figurative signs by himself. The overall image is continuously formed in the manner of a spiral, that is to say that the sign of the first player occupies the whole of the overall image, and the signs of the newcomers are juxtaposed in the first winding around it. If a player forfeits the game, his/her sign immediately disappears and its position remains empty until another player comes to occupy its position. A zoom in or out on the image constituted by the juxtaposition of all signs ensures that it is permanently visible to all.

Versions

The Poietic Generator can run on two types of architecture, a centralized network (for versions 1, 3, 4), or an Ad-hoc acentrered network able to implement multicast protocol (case version 2). Therefore no point in the network does play a particular role and, according to the rules of the Poietic generator, an "all-all" interaction may take place without the intervention of any center.

1. Videotex version, developed in C for the french Minitel system (1987)
2. IP Multicastversion, developed in C for the Internet Mbone (1995)
3. IP Unicast version, developed in Java for the Web (1997)
4. Mobile version developed in Ruby on Rails and JavaScript (2012)

This latest version is available on the web, via android mobile phone, Iphone / Iphone, via Facebook, and has a reference site.

Experiments

Since 1987, the Poietic Generator, in its various versions, has given rise to many experiments in various contexts. The first public experiment was conducted at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1990 as part of the exhibition "Communication and monumentality". Other museums, art galleries, digital public spaces, festivals, etc. then welcomed him, including the City of Science and Industry of la Villette in the exhibition "Communicating Machines" (1991).

Several experiments were carried out on the fringes of academic research, conducted in particular at Telecom ParisTech where Olivier Auber was guest artist between 1994 and 1997 during the experiment the Internet Mbone (with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Xerox PARC), or in other laboratories, on subjects as diverse as network protocols, the process of emergence of forms, the human-machine interfaces, collective intelligence, group behavior, etc..

Since 1997, the Poietic Generator is accessible to all on the web as a work of art free art (under Free Art License from 2002). This led, at the request of various groups of artists, teachers or researchers, several hundred recorded game sessions, and sometimes commented ones. Some of theses sessions have reached more than 70 players simultaneously. Some experiments have been conducted with students in kindergarten, elementary and secondary schools (including one linking multiple classrooms).

Latest event in the spring of 2011, 70 people responded to a call on the France Culture radio station to finance the mobile version of the Poietic Generator via the crowdfundind platform KissKissBanBank. This is the version that is currently online (2012).

Position in Art History

Several art historians and theorists, including Don Foresta, Gilbertto Prado, Mario Costa, Jean-Paul Fourmentraux, Louis-José Lestocart, Edmond Couchot and Norbert Hillaire, recognize the Poietic Generator, born at the time of Minitel before the invention of the Web (1994), and implemented from 1995 on experimental Multicast networks foreshadowing IPv6, as one of the historical works of digital art, interactive art, generative art and Net.art. At that time when the Minitel offered in France, for the first time in the world, an easy way to implement telematic art, several French artists attempted oncoming experiments, but none had the durability of Poietic Generator.

Conceptually, Anne Cauquelin goes further by considering the Poietic generator as the prototype of a new "cognitive art" which would fall, following Marcel Duchamp, Yves Klein and Andy Warhol, the task of questioning again, and dramatically, the "doxa of art".

As it was in the Renaissance, art becomes a heuristic, a type of missile that has the task of exploring a continent.

Since 1987, the Poietic Generator directly inspired multiple variations and derivative works, developed by its original author according to his own research process, or by other artists and/or researchers, especially Yann Le Guennec and fr:Albertine Meunier. It has also raised various experiences with some communities, including some contributors of Wikipedia]]. As a model, the generator Poietic directly inspired thinking and the work of some architects and planners, and indirectly, probably many other artists and designers.

Theoretical Aspects

Modelling

Jean-Paul Fourmentraux, in his classification of the Net.art devices quotes the Poietic Generator as one of the few representatives of the category of "Alteraction" devices, which support processes of pure synchronous human communication, free from algorithmic control or introduction of external data. This AlterAction process, envisioned as "an action in the middle which makes becoming other" (Philippe Quéau), is outside the field studied by the general theory of games, as its branch covering multiplayer games (Mean field theory) which does not consider the emergence of meta-levels: specifically "becoming other". If according to testimony, the Poietic Generator has an amazing ability to immerse its players in a learning process of social phenomena, it is likely that, giving more than living a kind of "conversation", it allows in some degree, to access to its model, by observing and interpreting autopoietic phenomena, that is to say truly "living", which take place there. According to Olivier Auber, there would be in the Poietic Generator, intrusion of eigenfrequencies, similar to those existing in other autopoietic systems (cell, cerebral cortex, etc.). Despite their apparent complexity, these temporal phenomena (oscillations between structure and chaos, complexity and simplicity) could be analyzed, even "mathematised", particularly in light of the simplicity theory (Jean-Louis Dessalles 2008) and the Fitts' Law (1954). Structuring phases observed correspond to a "become another" (Quéau) of greater "simplicity" (Dessalles). The emergence of these kinds of breaking paradigms, would be both unexpected and deterministic.

Perspectives

The Poietic Generator may be seen as a generic model of multiple complex systems (informational, urban, economic, ecological, etc.)to which everyone is confronted daily. But unlike these systems, often opaque about their prerequisites, their rules and infrastructure, the Poietic Generator is perfectly transparent: "everything is known or knowable", in particular the fact that it operates either centrally or without any center. According to Olivier Auber, these two architectures, centered or not, are achieving some forms of "perspective" (within the meaning of the Renaissance) in which the vanishing point lies, in the first case in a physical center (the server), in the second in a "code" under cover of which the network is sharing information (its sign of recognition in some way). He speaks in the first case of a "temporal perspective" because it is in the center where emerges moment by moment the "proper time" of the network (its rhythmic pulsations). In the second case, he speaks of a "Digital Perspective" because it is a "code" (an arbitrary number) which is the guarantor of the proper time of the emergence of the network in each of its points. These two perspectives are of course not visual as is the case of spatial perspective, but they share with it some topological and symbolic attributes. In particular, one can speak of "legitimate perspective", as Alberti did in the Renaissance. The Poietic Generator as an [Ideal city]], implements these two non-visual perspectives, described by Oliver Auber "anoptic perspectives," as perfectly and obvious as possible. Throughout the game, players can gradually take a cognitive step back and by analogy grasp in thought the nature of the perspectives in question. The hypothesis of Olivier Auber is that these perspectives are exercised within the framework of "real" systems, opaque and complex as mentioned above, and that they shape the imagination and judgment, that is to say the doxa of those who are enrolled in it.

In attempting to uncover the "anoptic perspectives", the Poietic Generator positions itself as a metagame which invites a questioning of the processes of social interaction, especially when they are mediated by technological devices interacting with social networks. For Olivier Auber, the generator Poietic, as a model and experience available to all, could contribute to "a certain conceptual knowledge (dianoia) of how the doxa is formed and exercised on us, especially through technology". At a time when technical objects are close to the body and are preparing to invade it, the Poietic Generator could help us by providing "a set of conceptual tools for the new "perspecteurs" (Abraham Bosse) that we could all become" so, he says, to "rethink the imagination of the technology in full light".

That's probably it, "the continent to explore" mentioned by Anne Cauquelin

Reception by the institutions of research, culture and media

Attempts like this are crucial to empower the technical status as a mere instrument for defined purposes, and to recognize the role that should be his as a creator of culture and related practices.

Since the 1990s, many social scientists in all disciplines, mention the Poietic Generator as a model which may help to rethink the cultural, even anthropological changing, latent in networks, and especially emphasize the urgency of the "redefinition of the notion of authorship". Some of these researchers brought in a personal support to attempts to practice large-scale experiments using channels such as broadcast television stations, museums, public places, etc. Without listening and support from these institutional broadcasters, few of these projects have been successful. Handicapped by its transdisciplinary or even "undisciplinary" nature, and naturally questioning the legitimacy of human organizations to which it is dealing with, the action research on the Poietic Generator has never found any other field to flourish as the Internet itself. Nevertheless, the Poietic Generator and writings of its author are quoted in many academic theses and dissertations, and in at least one "100% plagiarized".