Generative artist have a name for the return: “from bits to atoms.” A generation digitized physical processes and now a subset sends digital output back to paper through pen plotters. The phrase frames it as directional, a pendulum.
Jonathan Saul Kane, performing as Depth Charge, did the same thing without the phrase. He sampled dialogue and scoring from kung fu films, built tracks from the pieces. Then he co-founded Made in Hong Kong, the first company to release Stephen Chow’s films on VHS in England. He went from pulling sound out of martial arts cinema to putting martial arts cinema on shelves. The loop closed and nobody wrote a manifesto.
The pattern is the same: someone who starts by extracting from a medium ends up producing within it. The pen-plotter artist makes prints that carry the logic of code; the output is paper, but the decisions are algorithmic. Kane distributes films with the ear of someone who took their soundtracks apart. The route through the other medium is what qualifies the arrival.
Generative art named the direction and got a movement; sampling culture enacted the same loop and got a biography. The pattern is probably common. Obsessive engagement with material tends to close the loop eventually. It only reads as a pattern when someone bothers to label the direction.