UC Santa Cruz

Procgen is the field of making things that make things. Also known as procedural content generation (PCG), and overlapping with generative design and generative art, procgen is a growing field of inquiry in academic contexts and the focus of thriving scenes of craft practice. Procgen is frequently approached as if it was about getting something out of nothing. By contrast, this dissertation is founded on the observation that all information that comes out of a generative system must first have been inserted into the generative system, including information encoded into it by virtue of how the system was assembled from parts. Interpreting the compositional parts of a generative system, we can trace the relationship between inserted input and emergent output. Understanding how the modular compositional operations work in isolation makes it easier to recombine them into new generative systems.

My dissertation investigates the modularity of procgen via three research questions centered around aesthetics, composition, and applications. How does the structure of a generative system impact the aesthetic effect of the output? What are the lower level components that make up a generative system, and how do those components fit together? What new applications of generative systems are unlocked by taking a compositional view of their structure?

My work recomposes our collective understanding of procgen by building technical systems, applying humanistic interpretation to understand those systems in practice, and illuminating the connections between what we build and how we interpret what we build. I apply this method to existing generators, including some seen as canons in the field. I also assemble new generators using new capabilities emerging from the artificial intelligence literature. Taken as a whole, this dissertation establishes a practice of recomposing procgen: taking apart our understanding of procgen and putting it together again in new ways.