Although Latham developed his ideas alone, realising them was not a one-man effort. Being an artist research-fellow at IBM Scientific Centre in Winchester, he could lean on computer science know-how already developed there. Specifically, he had an intensive corporation with Stephen Todd, who dealt with software development or adapting existing software. When talking about Latham, it is important to note that this involves Stephen Todd almost as much.

Latham's interest is not so much in the singular work of art, as it is in the sequence of forms that can be seen in nature. Organisms go through quite some phases when growing, and natural systems extremely fascinated Latham. First attempts in defining an operational transformating natural system resulted in the hand-drawn system of FormSynth (1989). This system relied on a few simple geometric forms which could be transformed step-by-step using simple transformation rules. Using these rules, the simple forms would develop into more complex forms. Working out this system by hand (about twenty transformation steps deep) required a sheet of paper of approximately 10x7 m2. Obviously, using a computer would fasten a lot of the artistic handwork. Developing and testing new natural systems and exploiting them would not take that much time when the necessary software would be available.

The artistic effort lies in creating the natural system, and not so much in working out all result contained within the system. That would be merely calculating the results of the "equation". Although in posing the system, the work theoretically is done, the point really is visualising steps from the evolution-chain.

Latham is aiming to reveal the fascination you can feel when you see a thing of which you know it is actually still developing. Where it came from and where it will go, are questions that will puzzle the beholder. In order to create these forms, Latham uses the following strategy (in rather crude terms). He defines a system of forms and lets the possible new forms evolve by using the computer. Each step represents eight new forms that are based on the old form. Latham chooses that form which best satisfies his aesthetic aims, and this form will be the basis for the next cycle of evolution, and so forth and so forth. This choosing of most beautiful forms ends, and thus evolution ends, when Latham desides he has come at the end of his search. In this way he has travelled through the complex and huge space of possible forms in a rather fast and easy way, concentrating only on the aesthetic aspects of his system and not bothering about computational problems.

The conventional view of the creative act and being an artist involves a vision of what one wants to create. In Latham's work, there might be an inkling of what the results will be, but actual knowledge will only be acquired when the computer has rendered the image. The meaning of the work of art here follows execution of the work, and does not preceed it. Here we are facing new forms of creativity and art as the computer is used as a partner in creating art. The artist and the computer are equals with different roles: the artist brings in the concept, and the computer navigates through the manifestations and meaning of the work.

Must we conclude from this that the results of all works of art are predestined, and that all the artist really does is merely unveiling that which is already there? Perhaps not, because here we are discussing a very specialised form of art, evolutionism, which poses explicitly form-spaces that can be uncovered. "Conventional" Singular Works of Art are not defined as being part of a process, except that of the artist personally, and one would have a hard time formulating the creation process explicitly enough to instruct a computer.

Something about computer art in general. Although Latham's system uses random numbers in order to access new fields in form-space, these are not new in the sense of falling outside form-space. Contemporary computer art relies heavily on random numbers. This might be symptomatic for the state of thought about art and creativity. Using random numbers means imitating the human artist, because of the human artist we cannot fathom what considerations drive his decisions. But in reality we are fooling ourselves by equating the complex nontransparent motives of an artist with pulling a number from a very very very long list of numbers (which in fact, is what a random generator does). Using random generators just means that we do not know what is happening. Evolutionary art is what Latham calls his line of work. Influences which led him to develop it, were: surrealism, science fiction, system art, minimalism, russian constructivism, the natural world, evolution, and baroque architecture. As an art style, Latham traces impressionism, cubism, realism, surrealism, and pop art as predecessors. His work definitely has a personal style. This results typically from creating the basic forms, choosing forms from the resulting form space and rendering the emerging forms as single images or in movies.

Evolutionary art and computers gives a broad and deep survey of Latham and Todd's work. The book devotes chapters to all aspects of the work as an artist and as a computer scientist. It shows the importance of a good computer-user interface, and traces the lines of thought that resulted in writing the appropriate software necessary for creating the artworks. Many pictures, with magnificently printed colour pictures, clarify the results and the processes. A great number of diagrams and drawings enhance understanding of the text, which sometimes is quite technical. For anyone interested in the work itself, there is enough to see, and for anyone interested in the basic principles, lots of that stuff is included as well.