Iskra Velitchkova – Can machines make us more human?

As new ways of making unfold, Notes on Creation reflects on the self-devised processes used by today’s most exciting artists.

Iskra Velitchkova’s artistic inquiry revolves around one question – “can machines make us more human?” Like much of her practice, it is a simple starting point with complex philosophical implications. Machine algorithms are everywhere. Once merely tools for collecting, analysing, and regulating, in the past decade they have evolved into a presence that shapes our daily lives. In Iskra’s words, “they now stand as silent witnesses to our creative endeavours.” In this new human-machine dynamic, who defines whom?

For generative artists like Iskra Velitchkova, this liminal space between input and output is where magic can happen. In 1964, Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, put forward the idea that a machine doesn’t just obey an order, it interacts with it. It's in these interactions that randomness and chaos can emerge. This interplay of  order and  chaos has long interested artists. Vera Molnar, for example, began exploring these ideas in the late 1960s. Vera didn’t just see machines as tools; she saw them as partners in a dialogue.

Decades later, Iskra Velitchkova is using code to probe the relationship between humans and machines. In the world of contemporary generative art, outputs are seemingly endless, but for Iskra, it’s the process that’s truly fascinating. Iskra describes a "second self" that appears revealed in the creation process, a reflection of the artist inside the machine that guides it to respond in ways that can’t be fully anticipated. Her code is a dialogue between “human intuition and machine logic” – producing something that cannot be replicated without either part.

It’s important to Iskra that her code is straightforward and easy to read. Nonetheless, even the tiniest change in its construction – a single zero, a slight tweak in opacity, a tiny shift in rotation – can completely transform the output. Iskra views her generative practice as a pyramid that you can keep building and constructing, creating something more intricate and unexpected with each step.

This artistic approach is embodied in Lines and Bones: Study of Distance (2022). The project demonstrates Iskra’s ability to generate diverse outcomes from a minimal set of instructions – 5 lines of code, to be exact. The simple code produces a rich variety of forms and patterns. Two artefacts accompanied a print based on the project. The first was a restaurant napkin on which Iskra wrote the three lines of code that would become Lines and Bones. The second was a type-written letter to Kazimir Malevich, responding to his famous 1912 writings on the future of man and machine. Each artefact is a guide to understanding the final output – instructions for recreating it, and the philosophy that inspired it. They also showcase the distance between inspiration and creation.

Lines and Bones builds upon the ideas and principles of Avant-Garde artists such as film director Dziga Vertov – a pioneer of the modern concept of montage. Similarly, Iskra explores how individual images presented in a mechanical rhythm can convey emotions and attitudes like a montage does. In the process of deconstructing and reconstructing the algorithm, the image of an eye appeared to Iskra. This inspired musings about the role of artistic vision amidst the poetry of the machine. While machines don’t have ‘eyes’ they do have ways of seeing, including one based on the organic technology of many animal eyes – the lens. Beyond seeing, can a machine generate a point of view?

EYENESSLESS

Our debut collaboration with Iskra Velitchkova, EYENESSLESS, is a narrative evolution of Lines and Bones. She asked “if I can create an eye through code, could I reverse-engineer this process to understand how the human eye is constructed?” At the same time, the evolution follows the cultural shift in generative art away from exploring the possibilities of technology as a medium towards harnessing it for self-expression.

Iskra adds complexity to the original system by coding variations in colour, shape and opacity – asking not only what can emerge from code, but how this output can be refined and presented in ways that engage and challenge the viewer. In other words, can it be beautiful?

The print process, with its layers and textures, adds a tactile dimension that extends the digital dialogue into the physical world. It’s as if the machine is giving form to my thoughts, allowing me to further explore this intersection of technology and humanity.

Iskra Velitchkova