The self-organization concept has been utilized in many contexts of human sciences (social systems, culture, psychology) and, naturally, art. The first definition was introduced by Ashby and Von Foerster in the 1960-1970. It refers to the complex systems composed by a multitude of independent entities characterized by autonomous chaotic behavior. The self-organization is represented by the emerging of a global organized structure in the system.

This concept has been applied to analyzing living and not living systems. Prigogine ['84] investigated the conditions and the modalities to develop self-organization (dissipative systems, systems far from equilibrium, systems at the edge of chaos). To study the self-organization mechanisms, Wolfram ['86] investigated deeply the cellular automata introduced by Von Neuman. The automata are matrix of interacting cells: the binary value of each cell depends dynamically by values of adjacent cells on the base of completely deterministic local rules. Other research approaches have investigated the natural selection mixing genetics and random generation (genetic evolution [Holland '75], fractal growth [Vicsek '91]).

An important starting point in order to understand these concepts were the studies about the properties of the living systems (morphogenesis, adaptability, growth, self-repair, evolution, self-reference...). They started by the fundamental question: what is the life ?

A milestone to fix the specific properties of the living systems was given by Maturana and Varela ['73] introducing the autopoiesis as the function of each component to participate to the production or transformation of other component of the net. 

The fusion of natural selection and self-organization opened the way to the artificial life [Langton '89, Emmeche '91]. These studies focalize their attention on the simulation of basic mechanisms of the life. The declared goal of the "alifers" is the simulation of the life-as-it-could-be instead the life-as-it-is.

  The definition of these concepts are often qualitative. The scientist of chaos and complexity use the terms "emerging pattern" and "emerging behavior" in order to refer to the self-organization concept or to the behavior of living entities. These ambiguous limits of the definitions (probably related to the foundation of a new language on this topics) leave a wide space to express it in terms of visual and generative arts. Several artists (mostly using computers) recall this concept in their works.

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