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

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

*FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT* borrows from the bubbly language and pastel aesthetics of text driven instagram graphics to scrutinize the promotion of wellness, self-care, and confidence on social media.

The piece concentrates on the rhetoric employed in these posts. Persuasive, upbeat, and relentlessly inspirational, there’s a sense of authority embedded in each one. By remixing words and phrases sourced from these types of existing instagram posts, the program generates combinations that mimic their cheerful tone, but range from feeling vaguely familiar to totally absurd. 

Text is wrapped in the sugar cookie aesthetic world of “girl power positive vibes boss babe” kind of media, imitating the graphics designed to catch your eye as you’re scrolling through your feed. Visual variables include the output’s background style, color palette, and layout, as well as other decorative elements such as stars ✹, hearts ♡, flowers ✿, and sparkles ✧ :D

Online, these media objects survive on likes, comments, and shares. *What do I believe?* becomes *What do I want to appear to believe?* Fake it till you make it! Maybe your dream life lives here: In a digital, fantasy world where the algorithm plays god and loving yourself feels like looking into the light of your screen.

ଘ(੭ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ✩‧₊♡ ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*ﾟ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*ﾟ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*ﾟ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*ﾟ✧･ﾟ

FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT

Dreams is an exploration of uneven subdivision. It focuses on the interaction between uniform and crooked lines, and the complex structures that can emerge from simple rules. Each iteration of Dreams is unique, with characteristics determined by the hash created at the moment of transaction. Created by Joshua Bagley

Dreams

**Running Moon** depicts the nuanced interaction between clouds and moonlight. It is a search for boundaries between structure and fluidity, precision and errors. It is a quest for harmony. 

The rendering of **Running Moon** is inspired by stained glass and watercolor. It captures the sharpness of the glass and the softness of light using abstract forms. As organic shapes gradually expand to fill the space, brush-pen-like stripes solder these pieces together to form intricate compositions.

Art Blocks Curated

Ceramics #170

Charlotte Dann

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