LoVid’s signature video work mixes handmade analog synthesizers with digital tools in immersive Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) compositions that celebrate luminosity, chaos, relationships between craft and engineering, and connections between body and tech.
 
Tide Predictor, LoVid’s first onchain generative work, builds a bridge from video synthesizer patches to algorithmic code-derived imagery. This collection is formally and technically inspired by hardware-based image generation, and places experimental moving-image, circuit boards, and electrical signal-based video art at the conceptual roots of generative art.

Tide Predictor is a modular video synthesizer patch model, designed to reflect the analog spirit by working with three channels: RGB. Tide Predictor reimagines NTSC-encoded, oscillator driven electrical current based video synthesis while adding digital randomness/unpredictability, and transformations based on code, along with each mint’s unique content.
 
In the late 19th century, mechanical analog computers used rhythm and repetition to anticipate the rise and fall of water levels. In addition to “tides”, which are low frequency oscillations of the ocean, higher frequency changes or “waves” are frequently discussed in reference to both water and electrical signals. By working with looping - and explicitly addressing the period (=1/frequency) for each RGB color - Tide Predictor extends analogies between the flow of water and the flow of electricity.

LoVid’s Tide Predictor brings these relationships from the blockchain, through your screen, straight to your retina!

Tide Predictor

Ways of knowing...
Ways of seeing…

I can trace the origin of *Pre-Process* back to a Saturday afternoon in 2003 when I was sketching—first on paper, and then with code. I began by drawing circles, then connecting their center points, and then placing the circles in motion as coded animation. At that time, I was focused on *ideas* and not *images*—specifically, on dynamic systems and the ways a set of elements relate to each other within an imagined environment. I was working through questions about how to experience these systems and what might be an ideal (or interesting) way to engage with them. 

The ideas and code from this session later became the core of much of my subsequent work: including the foundation for the *Process* series of software, prints, and installations and the more recent *Process Compendium* works. *Pre-Process* pulls these origin points back into focus, develops them with what I’ve learned in the intervening years, and puts them on the blockchain to be archived. I consider the project a Rosetta Stone for my practice. It asks fundamental questions about the relationships between process and end result, including: Where is the aesthetic focus of a generative system? Is it deep within the code or within the picture the system creates?

Ultimately, *Pre-Process* emphasizes experiencing the origin of the system and then transitioning with it as it seeks, but never finds, equilibrium. The system is built around Element 1, the first that I created for the *Process* series:

*Element 1: Form 1 + Behavior 1 + Behavior 2 + Behavior 3 + Behavior 4
Form 1: Circle
Behavior 1: Move in a straight line
Behavior 2: Constrain to surface
Behavior 3: Change direction while touching another Element
Behavior 4: Move away from an overlapping Element*

*Pre-Process* is the origin of a long journey that I’m still on. It continues to ask essential questions and to encourage me to explore possibilities. Through it, I came to realize that I was ultimately more a picture-maker than a conceptual artist, or, the way I like to think about it,  I’m a “conceptual artist” with a small ‘c.’ I want the energy to be with the system (the ideas) *and* the surface (the picture) in equal measure. More directly, the work exists *between* the instructions, the performance and interpretation of the instructions, and the resulting images.

Pre-Process

white noise contains all possible harmonics/notes/chords. by filtering out narrow frequency bands from the noise, pure sine wave “notes” become audible. we’ve limited these bands to only ever reveal specific notes from a particular musical scale. 

each piece then, is a unique iteration of this scale with different notes from it gaining prominence. sometimes they will be chordal and sometimes dissonant but always beautiful because the scale is beautiful.

visually, the white noise is represented by particles which congeal into dense lines. each line that appears is a specific note you can hear and it's amplitude is defined by the corresponding particle density. chords are represented by the lines crossing over each other.

so in summary, it's a quite literal visual representation of sound moving from an arbitrary form to musical form. natural order from chaos with infinitely variable patterns depending on which notes are audible. 

*note we’ve implemented the following variables for more radical variation in particle behavior in addition to the random generation of notes and their corresponding patterns.

- particles will either form straight line shapes or curved shapes 
- particles with vary in size from one iteration to another 
- particles will either favor white or black as their prominent b&w bias creating stark contrast between iterations as well as variables in between the two extremes
- some iterations will reveal faster and some slower

montreal friend scale

"Edifice" is a series of 976 massive, deteriorating structures built on strange terrain. It is an exploration of buildings being conceptualized, constructed, and eroded away under a wide variety of conditions. Edifice's outputs run the gamut between minimal and maximal, with some showing few large, static blocks of color, and others many small, highly textured and warped shapes. Each image is progressively constructed in front of the viewer's eyes. It is a system full of surprises that I'm excited to share with the world.

Edifice

These cute companions live 100% on-chain where their bytes are cleverly stored in a scalable vector format. Built with quality components and complex algorithms, each Algobot is issued with a unique serial number and a NIFTY license which permits them to help out on any commercial projects where you might require their assistance.

Art Blocks Curated

Tide Predictor #110

LoVid

More in Art Blocks Curated

Pre-Process

Casey REAS

montreal friend scale

amon tobin

Edifice

Ben Kovach

Algobots

Stina Jones

Art

Company

Learn