Generative systems are systems that use a few basic rules to yield patterns. Depending on the rules, the patterns can be extremely varied and unpredictable. One of the more well-known examples is Conway's Game of Life, a cellular automaton. Another example is Boids. More examples can be found in generative music, generative art, and, more recently, in video games such as Spore.
Famous quotes containing the words generative and/or systems:
“Hence, a generative grammar must be a system of rules that can iterate to generate an indefinitely large number of structures. This system of rules can be analyzed into the three major components of a generative grammar: the syntactic, phonological, and semantic components.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“The only people who treasure systems are those whom the whole truth evades, who want to catch it by the tail. A system is just like truth’s tail, but the truth is like a lizard. It will leave the tail in your hand and escape; it knows that it will soon grow another tail.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)