Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 9: AI Era (2010s)
2018
Meandering River by onformative

This AI audiovisual installation explores the transformative forces of nature through real-time algorithmic visuals and AI-composed music. Offering a bird’s-eye view of a dynamic landscape, the project visualizes the shifting behaviors of rivers and their impact on the earth. Utilizing bespoke algorithms and shaders, the installation simulates natural phenomena such as hydraulic erosion and meander scars. The accompanying soundscape, developed with composers kling klang klong using the Google Magenta Performance RNN model, dynamically responds to the river’s simulated movements, creating an immersive experience that underscores the unpredictability and beauty of natural generativity.
Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random.
Sources
Movements
generative art, artificial intelligence, Immersive Art, Audiovisual Performance, Real-Time Art
Filed under
- Ideas
- Generative Music, immersion, Installation Art, landscape, nature, performance, simulation
- Technologies
- algorithms, artificial intelligence, hydraulic erosion, machine learning, Magenta, Performance RNN, real-time rendering, recurrent neural networks (RNNs), shaders
- Works
- Meandering River
- Organisations
- Google, kling klang klong, onformative
Related moments
Echoes across time
- 1970 · Women Pioneers Bring Naturalism to Computer Art
- 1991 · Music and Connectionism, edited by Peter M. Todd and D. Gareth Loy
- 1999 · Frankensteinian Methods for Evolutionary Music Composition by Peter Todd and Gregory Werner
Le Random editorials
Le Random podcast
- Timeline Ch 9—AI Era (2010s) with Tyler Hobbs, Helena Sarin, Rhea Myers & Gene Kogan — listen with transcript on Le Random (30 Jul 2024, 51 min). Chapter 9’s episode. Apple Podcasts · Spotify