The UVM Art and AI Initiative is exploring approaches to artistic image production, comparing the results of StyleGAN and Genetic Algorithms. The work references an artistic lineage to artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Jonn Cage and Yoko Ono, who employ(ed) instructions and systems in their non-digital artworks. Kandinsky developed a science of aesthetics with the basic elements of point, line and plane; Cage used the oracle 'I Ching' like a computer to inform his compositional decisions; Ono writes poetic scores that turn her audience into active participants following a series of instructions. Through the use of machine learning, aesthetic intention may at times be subsumed into computational processes, before re-emerging in new forms.