Important Dates
- December 15, 2025 (Submission deadline)
- March 15, 2026 (Feedback to authors)
- April 15, 2026 (Submission of revised papers)
- May 15, 2026 (Final notification to authors)
Algorithmic artists, a.k.a generative artists, use code as a medium to produce artworks. When the code executes, it can drive any number of processes, from generating visuals and/or sound, to responding to user interactions or choreographing movements of robotic elements, among others. The code also includes some non-deterministic elements such as random numbers, live data processing or inputs from the audience. There exists a large number of software engineering concerns in relation to this artistic practice, spanning maintenance, evolution, programming abstractions and performance. For example, the “correctness” of the artistic output is non-trivial to measure as output aesthetics are difficult to formally quantify. The maintenance, preservation and restoration of algorithmic artworks is challenging, as they may rely on outdated runtimes or libraries, on online resources that quickly become unavailable, or on technology that is no longer available. It is challenging to balance performance for real-time interactions and domain-specific abstractions that support artistic expression with code.
With this special issue, we aim to open a conversation between software engineers, generative artists and caretakers of these artworks, about the latest advancements at the intersection of software technology and algorithmic art. We encourage the development and application of software technology to strengthen all aspects of the software engineering lifecycle in algorithmic art projects. We encourage the authors to make their code and data publicly accessible.
Code analysis for art maintenance and understanding
- maintenance of art-related code
- reverse engineering art-related code
- binary analysis of art-related code
- emulation for art-related code
- transpiling art-related code
- documenting art-related code
- case studies of software-based art preservation
- capture and replay for software-based artworks
Software technology for generative art
- open source software and hardware for the arts
- creative coding for software engineering education
- technology for live coding
- technology for generative visuals
- web3 technology for the arts
- programming languages for the arts
- visual programming for the art
- programming libraries and APIs for the arts
- browser-based technology for audiovisual arts
- middleware for the arts
- technological sustainability of software technology for arts.
- empirical study of software practices for the arts
The editors reserve the right to discard submissions that are only about artificial intelligence to generate art (e.g. prompt-based art generation).
Submission Guidelines
For author information and guidelines on submission criteria, please visit the Author Information Page. Please submit papers through the ScholarOne, system and be sure to select the special-issue name. Manuscripts should not be published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Please submit only full papers intended for review, not abstracts, to the ScholarOne portal.
In addition to submitting your paper to Computer, you are also encouraged to upload the data related to your paper to IEEE DataPort. IEEE DataPort is IEEE’s data platform that supports the storage and publishing of datasets while also providing access to thousands of research datasets. Uploading your dataset to IEEE DataPort will strengthen your paper and will support research reproducibility. Your paper and the dataset can be linked, providing a good opportunity for you to increase the number of citations you receive. Data can be uploaded to IEEE DataPort prior to submitting your paper or concurrent with the paper submission. Thank you!
Guest Editors
