Holger Lippmann has been working with software to develop generative applications for image and animation output for almost two decades. Following his studies at the Kunstakademie Dresden, the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Stuttgart, and the Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques, Paris, Lippmann was affiliated with the Institute of Technology, New York and studied post-graduate media design at CimData Berlin. Lippmann’s work has been featured in exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum Heidenheim, ZKM Karlsruhe, and Goetheinstitut Toronto, and in galleries such as DAM, Galerie Gebr. Lehmann, and Media Ruimte. His work has been recognized with international media awards, and his web-based generative application “minimal garden” has been shown at the Todays Art Festival, Rotterdam, the Unsound Festival Krakow, Club-Transmediale Berlin, and at FILE Porto Alegre, Brazil. 

Jordan Kantor: Holger, it is a real pleasure to speak with you in advance of WaVyScApE. This is your first project on Art Blocks, but you have a long and distinguished practice in generative art. Can you tell us a bit about your beginnings? How did you first get into making art?

Holger Lippmann: It’s a pleasure and a special honor to have this work selected as an Art Blocks Curated release. Thank you! As to the beginnings: my older sister was quite good at drawing and my father painted as a hobby when he was young, and he would sometimes show me how to do things. I remember, I was maybe 12, when I asked for gold paint, he asked me what I wanted to paint and explained to me that one wouldn’t need gold paint to paint something to look gold. He took a polished brass candlestick and painted it using my ordinary colors, which made a huge impression on me, and a deep joy about how real and shiny it ended up looking! In school, drawing was my favorite subject, and my drawing teacher delegated me to drawing competitions. Once, when I was about 17, we were in a painting course for a whole week, where I met other pupils who were also good at painting, some very impressive. Finally, my teacher asked me what I wanted to study and whether I might like to study painting more formally. This gave me self-confidence that art could be part of my life. That was actually the beginning.

After that, I didn’t want to be anything other than an artist. I attended a few courses and got to know unusual artists and personalities until I studied at the Dresden Art Academy. I should also mention that bauhaus made a big impression on me. After visiting the bauhaus museum in Weimar and in Dessau with my school group, I ripped my posters off the wall of my room and painted a large abstract painting in bauhaus style in its place. I remember, I couldn’t sleep that night: I was always turning the light on again to look at it. I was thinking: “Wow! I painted this!” or “I have to change this and that!” The never-ending process of creation and revision had begun . . .

JK: That is an amazing and intense story: bauhaus on the walls. I can sense your excitement, even all these years later. Thanks for sharing. Can you fast forward a bit and talk about how you first became involved with digital art?

HL: Sure, in the early 1990s, during my two year residency in New York, I used to go to clubs and bars in the East Village. Once, I entered a small place with electronic music playing and animations beaming onto the wall. I couldn’t stop staring at these morphing-into-each-other structures. Fractals! This was completely new to me, and I was stunned! I waited until the end and introduced myself to the couple who made it. They told me something about the Apple II computer and some software, but I barely understood anything. It was a pretty cold winter, and I lived in Williamsburg, so I went over the bridge and had this amazing starry city night around and inside me. I must have mumbled something like, “I have to go for it; I have to find out; I have to start over again.”

The next day, I talked to my girlfriend, and she encouraged me to call around at computer departments. Maybe someone would have a clue and help me track this down. The first call I made was to the Institute of Technology: “Hold on, I’ll give you the art department,” and then there was this guy, “Yeah, fractals! So you studied art in Germany and want to learn something about computer graphics and fractals? Come by next Monday.” I showed him a catalog of my art work, and he said, “This is bauhaus! I love bauhaus!,” and offered me an internship. That’s how I began working on an IBM workstation somewhere in midtown between the 30th and 40th floors, in front of two large workstations—one wall side completely glassed in, amid all these thousands of block buildings. It was like I was standing outside myself asking, “Where are you!?, what are you doing here!?” It exceeded my wildest dreams. In the mid-1990s, I was creating my first interactive and random running applications, using Macromedia Director and Lingo programming language. This wasn’t quite “generative art” yet, but it was the first step before switching to Macromedia Flash and actionscript. Around 2000, I became aware of some of the first interesting code-based art on the web, mostly developed with Flash, like that by Joshua Davis or Jared Tarbell, both of whom inspired me.

JK: You were really there at the beginning of a lot of this. Sounds like heady times. Can you tell us a bit about how and when you discovered the blockchain as a medium for art?

HL: I was interested in Bitcoin early on, watched a lot of Andreas Antonopoulos videos and, out of pure idealism, invested a bit in it. In 2021, I did my first drop with Annette Doms and Metadibs. Annette is a German art historian and general NFT evangelist, known for her “unpainted” art fairs in Munich, in which I’ve participated a few times. Then in April 2022, I took part in Bright Moments’s Berlin collection (thanks to Tyler Hobbs, who recommended me), which was an important event in my entry into this space. I learned more about NFT art and met interesting people there, including Jeff Davis, who encouraged me to submit a project to Art Blocks for consideration. Out of this, I also began collaborating with Jesse Rogers, a founding partner of Bright Moments, who is now building a business called Artifactor. Jesse helped me realize NEBELWALD, which we dropped on fxhash, and now WaVyScApE, too. I am excited to be collaborating on some future projects as well.

JK: You’ve had a lot of experience in different contexts over these decades. Can you describe the ways in which your creative process has evolved over time?

HL: Oh! I have wandered through ages ;) Sometimes it seems to me as if I had to work through a large part of art history, like an embryo wandering through phylogenesis. I’ve done so many different things to then do something new again. Now things have calmed down a bit. I’ve been working on certain topics for a relatively long time. Nevertheless, I’m more of a person who loves change and variety.

JK: Sounds like change is the constant. Building on this a bit: you have such a well developed generative art practice, can you tell us about some of the lines of research of inquiry that run through your practice as a whole? Are there earlier projects that were especially important for your development as an artist?

HL: In 2005, I took part in a processing workshop held by Marius Watz during the Transmediale Berlin, which laid the foundation for my work in processing. Then I learned with books by Ira Greenberg, Casey Reas, and later with Generative-Design, TheCodingTrain, OpenProcessing, etc. In terms of visuals, I’ve always loved a minimalist approach: most of my work from the 2000s is based on squares, lines, and circles. 

Later, I worked much more with perlin noise structures. Rather than any one through line, I rather see myself as playful and more fascination oriented, sometimes also following more complex concepts. But despite all the variety, I can identify certain themes and motifs that have followed me over twenty years of generative coding: Land/Wave; Grid/Structure; Circle/Round; and Tree/Flower.

JK: In another context, you have called yourself a “code minimalist.” For any artist, working with an on-chain algorithm, there is an economic incentive to keep the code as small as possible—for those who don’t know, the costs of uploading code are related to its size—but I sense there is something more aesthetic (or maybe even political?) behind the phrase “code minimalism” as you use it. Can you talk a bit about what that means to you?

HL: Sure. Over the years, working with code has not only become a practical technique, but also a factor that determines the aesthetics itself. Or it was even the main reason, when I started with code, using a formal language and principle that’s based on algorithmic functions, representing mathematical processes and simulations. which leave behind a kind of the machine’s own characteristic design language, representing our culture in its essentials. To me it also offers sort of a meta-level of looking at/into nature. I do call myself a “code minimalist.” Fascinated by bauhaus, constructivism, and minimalism, I developed many if not most of my processing apps exclusively with basic shapes like circles, squares, and lines. My code sometimes gets awkward and messy as a result of endless edits, and I really have to clean it up.

But, in general, by “code minimalism,” I mean the fact that I consciously work with simple code principles and not with the latest, most fancy ones. I remember, one of my professors said to me that an artist does not have to go to the most spectacular place in search of a motif, but rather only step out the front door . . . I often didn’t understand what he meant, but now it sounds a bit like Zen to me, and I know there is much truth in it. What does this look like? For example, my work unfolding silently is based solely on the interweaving of two 2D perlin noise matrices. 

In terms of code, this is really simple, and some of its artistic value for me, comes from the fact of making something unique with this simple algorithm. Indeed, it was the result of a long process, and almost endless fine-tuning of the color palettes and noise values to each other, line widths to fillings and distances, also here and there additional noise scaling and rotation, etc., but ultimately, it’s minimal. I find balance between controlling things and letting them go free really exciting.

JK: Fascinating. Let’s turn now to the project at hand. Please tell us a bit about WaVyScApE.

HL: Sure. This project is, like my tree works, an approach to something soft and organically formed. I wanted to make a work like this for a long time: something reminiscent of hilly landscapes, washed-out stone, driftwood, or endlessly forming cloud banks, and I have been looking for a way to realize this simply. I believe I found a solution by moving a dynamic object and rendering its trails. 

That is how the image WaVyScApE is built: softly morphing blob shapes travel horizontally and leave trails behind that create layered, three-dimensional forms. These staggered fields are built of noise and random color sequences, mixed and overlaid with white and grayscale palettes. Finally, I added a subtle shading to give a pseudo 3D effect and squeezed the Y-axis to create the look of a relief. For those who want to know more, I have assembled a satellite project site, which I invite you to explore here.

JK: Is there anything else you’d like to share that would help viewers approach and appreciate your work?

HL: Yes! I am planning a series of 12 drops over the course of 2023. I will release a selection of works which have come together over the last decade on the subject of trees and flowers. NEBELWALD is the first one and SCHNEEWALD follows. Again, I am collaborating with Jesse Rogers on these, and I plan the drops every three weeks until October 2023. The themes will follow the course of the seasons in the Northern Hemisphere. 

JK: You certainly have a lot on your plate. We will keep our eyes peeled as that drop series unfolds. What is the best way for people to follow your work and keep up with everything you are doing?

HL: Thank you, Jordan! The interview with you was a great inspiration, to think about my work, art in general, and tracing some old memories. Here are my links to my website and Instagram. I am most active on Twitter: @wowgreat.

JK: Thanks for taking the time to speak, Holger. Much appreciated.