In Conversation with daLenz

INTERVIEW

In Conversation with daLenz

by Jeff Davis

•

25 Mar 2021

daLenz is a software engineer, hobby photographer, and blockchain/art enthusiast. I spoke with him in advance of his upcoming Art Blocks project Aerial View.

Jeff Davis: Hi there, it’s great to connect! Tell me a bit about your background in art and journey to crypto.

daLenz: Before discovering on-chain art, my artwork was focused mainly on landscape and drone photography. I love being outside, looking for the perfect scene, time, and weather and framing it into a still picture. I would also take my photographs and retouch them with different methods. One method I liked was to run them through deepdreamgenerator.com and tweak them until I got a result I liked.

Following some crypto projects during 2020, I started to get into digital/on-chain art because it allowed me to combine my engineering background with my art skills. I think it was in the beginning of 2020 when ChainFaces launched. I already knew about NFTs from CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties, but things really clicked for me with ChainFaces as it brought my attention to on-chain NFTs/art. The more I looked into on-chain art, I realized that I wanted solutions to generate art which were more lightweight to store them on-chain.

Icy Lake_daLenz.jpeg — daLenz, *Icy Lake*, n.d.

JD: And then how did you connect this idea to generative art?

dL: My first contact with generative art was a good time before I entered the blockchain space. A few years ago, I listened to an IT podcast about Vera Molnár and was fascinated by how she developed a simple algorithm to draw artworks. When I started to see the possibilities of that combined with the blockchain, I started to look for art/generative projects in this space and that led me to the point where I am now.

JD: Any recent accomplishments you’d like to share?

dL: All my recent accomplishments are software engineering projects. For example, I built a “Replicant Preview” tool for Avastars, which allows you to mix the SVG traits from different Avastars and create a preview of your replicant.

JD: Alright, let’s talk about Aerial View! What was the inspiration for your project?

dL: As I mentioned before, Vera Molnár was a significant influence on my learnings about generative art. I got hooked with rendering rectangles and was inspired to expand this idea with different sizes, color sets and illuminated backgrounds. Ultimately this led to my project Aerial View. My own vision and interpretation of generative-ly rendered rectangles.

JD: What should collectors look for in your Art Blocks project as the series is revealed?

dL: It’s all about patterns and I hope there is a pattern for everyone. Some will be looking for something simple, without much color or limited rectangles and others will be looking for complex structures that are colorful and diverse.