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.

---
 
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

Escher-style tiling of a plane, gone wrong. Each image spins hash-driven colors, shapes, and symmetries into infinity. Fly through the spiral as it morphs between beauty and madness. Keys: F = Fly through/back, D = Distort on/off, Esc = Stop, S = Save image.

Inspirals

▶
CS/TR-86 Bootstrap Loader. . .

Starting COLORSPACE v1.0
=
╔══════════════════════════╗
1.      View Fullscreen
1.     Click **[X]** w/ mouse to hide UI
1.     CRITICAL ERROR!

╚══════════════════════════╝

    loading...
▓░░░░░░░░░ - 10%

Colorspace is a tribute to creating on the computer.
An animated painting with programed brushes, erasers, and accents.
Based on the gestures of classic screensavers and operating system UI elements.

▓▓▓▓░░░░░░ -40%

I was inspired by the file size limits of storing on Ethereum.
Cutting edge technology meets a floppy disc.
It reminded me of my original software tools: 
MacPaint, Kid Pix, HyperCard, on a black and white Mac Classic II.
Colliding with a decked out gaming computer, running an arsenal of software, in millions of colors.

▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░ -60%

I hope Colorspace evokes the fun of learning new software, 
the trance like state of a late night coding session, 
and the anxiety of a HDD failure at a critical deadline.

▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░ -99%
 

**`C:\> start selfPromotion.exe`**
==
 > Hi, my name is Tabor Robak.
 > I've been making art on the computer my whole life.
 > My work is collected by institutions like The MET, MoMA, and the Whitney.
 > I'm a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree.
 > I've collabed with brands like Balenciaga and Microsoft.
 > I've taught at NYU and lectured at Yale.
 > 
 > This is my first NFT project.

  
╔════════════════════════╗

    Controls
=
1.    **[ESC]** to shutdown*
1.    Click **[X]** w/ mouse to hide UI
1.    **[SHIFT]** to restore UI
1.    **[◄ or ►]** adjust speed
1.    Draw with **[Mouse 1]**

 Shutdown only while UI is active.
 Keyboard controls will activate
 after clicking once within canvas.

╚════════════════════════╝
  

S͎̈́̚ͅYS̟̝̾̂T̠̻̝Ë̵͎M̠̝͇̄̏͛ ̱͇̠ͤ̏͑F͞A̤̤Î̖͇̓Lͥͫ̏̀Ŭ̻R̤̩̭̋ͣ̃E̘̭̐̏ ͙̟͗̅CR̵̩͉̟͂͊̇I̹̻̬ͦ̓ͫṮ̥̖I͗́ͥ͏C̨A̴͓̣ͨ͌L ͚̦͇̆͐̒ER͝R̴͇͓̃͋O̘̽͜R

Colorspace

**Cargo** is a series of abstract paintings created with animated pixels that are constantly moving without ever repeating. It is painting new patterns on the fly in between macro and micro compositions with a duality of different rhythms and continuous synchronicity. The focus is alternately drawn to detail, then distracted by movement elsewhere and caught up in the overall picture. This rhythm turns the visual complexity into an active experience.

ASDF: “My work should offer individual ways of interpretation, or even allow one to find some self in it. It wants to inspire some thoughts about dynamics and systemics and also just mesmerize the audience, capture them in a little fantasy, or just for a brief moment in a state of satisfaction.”

Cargo is the latest work in Kim Asendorf’s ongoing work series of pixel pattern animations. Starting with [monogrid](https://monogrid.xyz) in 2021, and [Sabotage](https://sabotage.kim) in 2022, both highly conceptual series, therefore visually very raw and unimaginable. Asendorf discovered various interesting details in these works, which eventually became fundamental in his artistic expression.

Cargo is a real time WebGL software written in JavaScript and GLSL. At its core is a flip-flop render buffer, also known as feedback buffer. That means the animation is alternately rendered in two different frame buffers. This technique allows the usage of the previous frame of the animation as an asset in the current rendering, which allows for a series of reactive animation strategies.

An initial image with variable structures and patterns is rendered and subsequently loaded into the frame buffer. A fragment shader is used to apply a set of animation algorithms that make the pixel move and a set of reset algorithms that constantly try to recreate the initial image. The final animation happens in selected containers and is always a combination of two algorithms, one from each set. By regularly animating and partially resetting the pixels, a wide range of movement patterns appear.

Cargo is a responsive and pixel exact artwork and it will fill the screen on any display size, thus changing the total amount of used pixels accordingly. This results in the fact that the detail level in the artwork is changing depending on the dimensions. The overall structure is consistently stretching the x and y axis independently. Single containers scale along the dimensions and offer more pixels to render the patterns at a larger representation compared to a smaller representation. This behavior leads to a brilliance, perfect pixels, a crisp rendering with nothing like compression artifacts.

This software includes the [simplex noise](https://github.com/jwagner/simplex-noise.js) JavaScript implementation by Jonas Wagner and the [cellular noise](https://github.com/stegu/webgl-noise) GLSL code by Stefan Gustavson.

Cargo

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

Art Blocks Curated

Ceramics #238

Charlotte Dann

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Cargo

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