Inside the computer there’s a digital hand. The hand selects a metal implement, cuts off a slab of clay, and carves into its surface. It wanders like your hand wanders; it carves imaginary contours, sinuous and exploratory. It doesn’t know the end result so it carves lines until it feels content, and then it numbers the piece and stamps its maker’s mark. It fires the slab in a digital kiln (it calls this “minting”) and through this act its art is preserved for millennia. The hand runs its fingers over the textured surface, feeling satisfaction at having spontaneously produced a piece of art so beautiful, expressive, and unique.

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Ceramics is a generative sculpture that mimics the physical expression of carving into clay. Through uncanny naturalistic rendering it challenges our notion of “handmade”. It asserts that the value of handmade isn’t the time it takes to make the work nor the physical materials consumed, but the endless small decisions and serendipitous details that appear along the way, as can be felt in each Ceramics mint.

Despite the handmade nature of Ceramics the outputs cannot be touched. Highly tactile images enchant the viewer to imagine their tangible representations, and leave them to dwell on their perception of materiality — both in the experiential physical world and conceptually-infinite digital space.

Ceramics

Click to activate sound 🔈 The work is responsive, it will adapt to any screen size 🌹

👉 Legowelt: *For Polychrome Music I designed a generative music system that plays an infinite composition on 3 different audio channels, each with their own synthesizer. These randomly generate simple musical timbres inspired by early computer sound chips. 🌴 The music itself is generated by randomly selecting 3 patterns out of a pool of 180. These patterns, which are little 8-bar music pieces, were written in the same C# Dorian scale so they always fit together. This is a pleasant sounding minor and colorful scale that I believe fits the general vibe of Rafaël’s work. 🌲 Composition wise, channel 1 plays the bassline and channels 2 and 3 the melody, countermelody, arpeggios and harmonies. 🌳 The system changes the patterns each time they are played, reversing, speeding up or slowing down the pattern or changing the synthesizer channel they are played on. In essence the system infinitely randomly remixes the source melodies to create ever new surprising pieces that harmonize with the colorful compositions.* 👈

Polychrome Music

Synapses is a generative study on movement and texture. Thousands of particles flow in space leaving a trail of their journey. the movements are inspired by swarm behavior and flocking mechanism. The trails when left by each particle resembles the graphite or carbon smudges on the white canvas. The particles follow either single or multiple vectors to create these intricate details.

Synapses

This edition of video artworks is the result of my research in video art from the 60s and 70s, especially early analog video synthesizers. These were heavy hardware machines capable of generating shapes and patterns from the ground up, with no external visual input. How could these machines generate such complexity by just manipulating electronic voltage? I decided to investigate this process. Although with modern technologies, Spectron shares the procedural logic with its analog ancestors.

Spectron

Watercolor Dreams is an exploration in simulation, a meditation on traditional techniques in watercolor, and an ode to serendipity. Where will this curve end? When will this shade fade? How will the movement come alive? Sit back, relax, and watch the colors wash over the canvas.

Art Blocks Curated

Ceramics #162

Charlotte Dann

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Polychrome Music

Rafaël Rozendaal & Danny Wolfers (Legowelt)

Synapses

Chaosconstruct

Spectron

Simon De Mai

Watercolor Dreams

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