Art and the mirror of nature

This paper describes the software systems used by the author to create computer-based, generative artworks, over the last ten years. The systems discussed are linked by a thematic approach to process and perception - a poetic and romantic attachment to the sublime, and the biological. These topics are examined within a polemic on the conscious subject's ability to perceive and realise processes found in the natural world and their interpretation in a computer. These themes are placed in context of the phenomenology of being and the contemporary interpretation of subject and object distinctions found in the process-based sciences of cybernetics, systems theory and artificial life.