The genetic art page is based on the International Genetic Art II site (by John Mount, Scott Neal Reilly and Michael Witbrock) which ran from 1994 through 1996. This site, in turn, was inspired by the work of Scott Neal Reilly which itself drew inspiration from Karl Sims. The International Genetic Art II site was a very early example of CGI scripts and HTML forms (which at the time were the only methods available to produce interactive web pages). The central site allowed a consistent view (different users saw the same picture) and primitive collaboration (every user voted and votes affected everybody). Some of the best pictures were photo-reproduced and displayed in "The Coffee Tree" cafe in Pittsburgh PA.
This version is written in Java and runs directly in the user's browser. This allows a much more reactive user interface and removes the need for a central site. However, without a central site or protocol the system does not allow collaboration or learning.
Most of the interesting patterns come from the properties of an interesting number system called the "Quaternions."
I also experimented with "genetic movies." Though, at the time they were too computationally expensive to allow direct voting on movies.
