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

A cryptoart collectible series to indulge the irrepressible human compulsion for pareidolia. This algorithmic homage to Hermann Rorschach's inkblot perception test will help you externalize your inner world onto the sometimes elegant, sometimes inchoate curves of a unique, one-of-a-kind, ownable cryptoblot on the Ethereum blockchain. What will YOUR cryptoblot reveal about you?

Cryptoblots

The field is a work inspired by the current trend in image synthesis made possible by machine learning technology. The latent spaces (the algorithmic structures that make AI image synthesis possible) can be seen as a part of our human collective unconsciousness; a hyper dimensional field of unlimited outcomes, inspired by our human symbols and language.

Exploring this new type of space, it sparked the idea of exploring the algorithmic essence of my own artworks. What would the structure behind my creative processes look like? What if I could visualize the algorithmic structures of my own mind that produced my artworks in the past?

These questions led me to The Field, a multidimensional machine hiding in my subconscious.

# THE GENERATOR
The first step to reach The Field, was to capture the algorithmic structure behind all my artworks. By compressing several hundred artworks from HyperHash, EnergySculpture, UltraWave & HashCrash into a 64X64 matrix, a noise image has been created. This was done by adding up all these works together.

This noise image I call The Generator was the starting point to explore possibilities for the creation of a new work. This 64x64 matrix filled with noise data was embedded in the source of the piece and functions as the core of The Field algorithm.

# THE FIELD
The Generator is being transformed into a multidimensional field of colors and motion, called The Field. The motions of the field relate to natural processes of creation and destruction. The field is like a fluid, solid and gas-like structure at the same time. It goes from a noisy formless state to a solid material state and back.

The field is created in a few steps. First a 2d noise pattern is being created from The Generator. This 2d pattern is made by picking random points from the 64x64 matrix. This is the fundamental background of the Field.

The second step is to use this pattern to set the field in motion. By using the color data per pixel, movement is being initiated. The colors are in that sense multifunctional, on one hand it visualizes random colors extracted from The Generator on the other hand the colors are used to set the field in motion and showing the interrelationship between the colors in an extra dimension: time. This creates the 3D effects, but also creates the effect of lighting bouncing in the field.


# REGRESSION, DESTRUCTION & CREATION
The creation of the field felt for me like a form of regression. Reviewing the concepts of my previous work, thinking about what overlapped in terms of topics conceptually and design wise drew me back in time.

The main topic of this work represents is the cyclical nature of creation and destruction. By revisiting my old works and literally destroying them, this new work was created. In this way the work reflects on the causal relation between creation and destruction (what's created will someday be destroyed, something has to be created to be destroyed). A  universal essence of our causal reality behind all that is, a balance between forces, from light to dark, from warm to cold, from dry to wet, from finite to infinite.

This theme of creation and destruction is visible quite literally in The Field. Every mint of The field has a unique position in the field with color filtering added on top. The locations in the field are composed of  either creational vortices (expanding spirals) and destructional vortices(contracting spirals), a combination of the two in a balanced state (order) or a combination of the two in an unbalanced state (chaos). 

The positions and coloring are a combination of hand-picked settings by me and totally random settings generated by the hash input from the token.


# Extra
- By pressing the buttons a,s,w,d you can move through the field.
- By pressing L you can activate LavaMode.
- By scrolling you can zoom in and out.

**** BEST VIEWED IN FULLSCREEN LIVE MODE ON DECENT GPU. ****

The Field

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

_Act of Emotion_ investigates digitally-facilitated abstract expressionism: the act of painting itself as a means of expression, extended into mechanical reach.
A reflection upon the future of automation, machine consciousness, creativity, and humankind’s inevitable consequences. As we await the next leap, we cling desperately to our belief that emotive art is an exclusively human experience. 
Inspired by those that came before—pioneering expressionists and contemporaries alike—the system engages in new methods of painting, free from traditionally accepted physical boundaries and artistic expectations. Action painting for the Connected Age; the system is in perpetual concert, recited in real-time and on-demand. 

Questioned by Colin McCahon, and recontextualised here through a generative lens: 
_How to make a painting beat like, and with, a human heart._
The machine’s movements are precise by default, grounded in mathematics. Organic expression must be introduced by twisting and destabilising; a process of broadening bounds that probes the subconscious of both artist and audience. 

Confrontingly minimal abstract compositions highlight the tension between rigid mechanical precision and fluid human intuition. Striping and stippling, swooping and darting; noisy automatism contrasted with coded instinct. 
Gestural abstraction applied with simulation of brush and emulation of media. Presence discovered through colour, texture, light and space; the works emerge as physically-manifested in digital form. 

Are these painted works analogous to physical counterparts? 
Can a machine successfully emotionally connect through this practice?
Let us consider both the intent and the act that realise a painted artwork.

_“Painting is a state of being. Painting is self-discovery.”_ — Jackson Pollock

# Controls:
- **[spacebar]** Pause/resume exhibit
- **[escape]** Reset exhibit
- **[S]** Export a still image at the current render size
- **_Double Click/Tap_** to provide a human touch

# Automatic:
- Render resolution upscales with viewport dimensions. Future exhibits will enhance alongside hardware advance. 
- Playback cadence is hardware-dependent and downscales when limited by hardware. 
- "**Perpetual**" tokens continue their performance indefinitely

# Printing:

Generatively signed giclée print renditions available up to 36x48" / A0.

Art Blocks Curated

Ceramics #176

Charlotte Dann

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