*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

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.

Watercolor Dreams

Fidenza is by far my most versatile algorithm to date. Although the program stays focused on structured curves and blocks, the varieties of scale, organization, texture, and color usage it can employ create a wide array of generative possibilities.

Fidenza

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

Our lives are scattered across several time scales, and the meaning of every event that takes place depends on the time scale that we choose to define & observe them from. Yet we fail to fully comprehend this in our daily errands. Entretiempos is an artwork that reflects on this, based on an aesthetic that pays a tribute to the works of Sonia Delaunay, František Kupka and other painters from their era, recreated by the usage of intersecting rings that create a varied and rich space.

The work plays with the time scales by painting dynamically and letting the viewer pause the work, restart, set it to loop indefinitely, painting and vanishing in an endless cycle. And it can be set to be done at varying speeds, to appreciate what happens in between the time scales ("entre tiempos", in Spanish).

Also, there is a broader theme that I find of interest to explore from every work that I engage with. It has to do with the concept of what I call total cognitive space, or the total range of possibilities that can be expressed / achieved with a given scenario and set of conditions. In this case, I was interested in expanding my rendition of the works of Delaunay into a broader space. How does this approach scale with varying parameter ranges? Is the painting still interesting? Can it express something new? Connected to this, I am also interested in thinking about what emotions would mean for an artificial sentient being. We talk about artificial intelligence, but leave aside artificial emotions all too often. While artificial intelligences are indeed interesting, we fail to recognize the paramount importance of emotions in human behaviour. To this end, this work explores also the result of painting with machine-like precision vs. performing the artwork with a range of possible imprecisions. The perfection of the machine vs. the imperfection of the human, does it trigger different emotions in us humans? What will the reaction of a machine be whenever they develop a taste?

This work exposes features that deal with its time and space scales, background colour, background elements, the palettes used, certain colour accents that may happen (golden accents, b&w tones), the style used to draw the geometric shapes (fill, lines, outline), the degree of paint precision and other features that influence the final result. The user may download a PNG file at any arbitrary resolution at any step of the paint process using the commands provided for that. A brief list of commands is as follows. Please note that you need to click on the artwork first to make sure it will receive the typed commands:

p to pause/resume the work
r followed by y to enter the looping mode
d followed by +/- or any number from 1 to 9 to increase resolution
s followed by c to save current image
s+f to automatically save the final image when the system finishes painting
s+m to restart and save a sequence of images of the process
r+0 (zero) to reset all parameters and resolutions and restart
k at any time to define keyframes, then r+0 to restart the work and it will automatically pause at defined steps, or s+i and the work will restart and automatically save an image at every keyframe defined with k. Reload browser to reset.

There is an Easter egg hidden in every work.

For the full project description, inspiration and rationale, as well as the full list of features and controls plus a hint at the Easter Egg, please visit the project homepage at https://www.iillucid.com/entretiempos

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FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT #692
Maya Man