Inspired by the bright lights of the big city, Time Squared is an homage to New York City, brought to life through the magic of prime numbers. 

A key problem that we wanted to solve with this project is allowing visually impaired individuals to enjoy our art. As a result, these artworks feature a first-of-its-kind screen reader which contains a detailed description of the colors, movement, size, and structure of the artwork. You can activate it by enabling a screen reader such as ChromeVox and hovering over the artwork. 

Use any key to pause the artwork, or click to make it full screen. Photosensitive warning: These artworks contain flashing colors and moving patterns that could trigger seizures for people with visual sensitivities.

Time Squared

A geometric composition of a contrasting middle "heart" and an outer "soul". The seed of the symmetrical heart is broken into varying amount of chambers that are calculated to keep its corridors at the exact constant width in order to preserve its rigid mathematical character, yet provide enough space for variety for interesting geometrical patterns. The composition is balanced by a contrasting loose intertwining soul spreading to the borders of the passepartout that, along with the lining, give the piece a feeling of antiqueness. Heart and soul may also contain anomalies and unusual palettes. 

a heart and a soul

Compression has been the driving force behind the image-based internet since the early 90s. No compression, no Netscape, no social media, no NFTs. The JPEG compression has specifically enabled photography-based imagery on the net. It has always served that purpose and over time become the de facto default for showing high quality imagery online. But compression always leaves a trace, which has become the lens through which the network sees the world of uploaded images.

"A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience." ― Mark Rothko

JPEG tries to create an image programatically fully expressing that signature compression. An image that is like empty made from barely nothing, yet fully present in its blazing appearance. A work deeply material, expressing itself through the language of code and codec only. This is not a JPEG depicting an image. The JPEG is the image itself.

Delving into the depths and peculiarities of the digital, tethered to art history, JPEG found its way to the surface. Generated color fields are utilised to trigger the compressing algorithm, resulting in a world of raw visual entities. Where the abstract expressionists cut out the depiction in painting, aiming to let the artist convey pure emotion, JPEG cuts out the artist's emotion and lets it emerge from within the algorithm. Carefully you could categorize the work as *compressionism*. An art form where the machine speaks in its own raw language, but nevertheless makes a direct touch to our human heart.

JPEG is a collection of generative images in the JPEG file format. The work tries to break with the idea of the fixed file format, therefor creating the JPEG entirely from code using no image material whatsoever. The individual JPEGs are generated responsively at the moment of viewing based on the token hash as a random seed. You can literally drag the JPEG out from the browser window.

JPEG pays tribute to interface culture, and as such the work is responsive and not scaling. When the work is resized, the work is again rendered and compressed. When viewed smaller, details will disappear, yet the composition stays recognisable. It’s like stepping back to see a work from further away. The choice of color wanders from monochromatic tones to the brutality of complete randomness and everything in between.

In honour of the blockchain and the web, the work is written in vanilla JavaScript, using no dependancies, and generates a standard JPEG. This way the file is downloadable, aiming for a materiality that comes as close as possible to the standard browser.

JPEG

Woop Woop! Run for your life! Kai-Gen are attacking!
Fresh from the underground and ready to smash your city, these mutant beasties come unique and fired up. No polygons or texture maps here, just sweet ray-marching magic living right on-chain. When you're ready, press the 2 key on your keyboard to bring them to life. But be forewarned, animated Kai-Gen are hungry AF and will eat old GPUs like jellybeans. A modern-day PC/Mac desktop is highly recommended, then hit that 2 key, if you think you can handle it...
Key 1 = Still, Key 2 = Animated. Let's GOOOOO!

Kai-Gen

**SCRIBBLINES** are a tribute to countless drawings that are being created every day during monotonous meetings and are forever lost in trash.

Almost everybody has experienced doodling (or scribbling) at some point in our lives to keep our brains active. The mental state of doodling is between awareness and daydreaming and is known to often inspire creative ideas. Studies have shown that this idle scribbling actually plays a significant part in helping a person concentrate and focus. 

There are many types of idle scribbles - *real world objects (e.g. houses, hearts), people, faces, squiggles, boxes and cubes, ladders and stairs, spider webs, triangles, swirls*, among others. "Scribblines" has always been my favorite idle drawing.  At the core of each piece is a pivot line, created by a random algorithm. This pivot line defines the shape of the entire art piece. Every additional line traces around the pivot line. Computer generated lines allow for perfecting what is never possible in the “pen and paper world” and thus make this, somewhat obsessive, exercise compelling to the perfectionist’s eye. All these become the basics for the Scribblines features.

**Precision**. Even with great effort it is hard to follow the outlines precisely. In scribblines, the lines precision varies from inaccurate (to simulate hand shaking micro movements) to robotically perfect precision.
**Determination**. In a real world environment it is unlikely to find enough time or perseverance to fill in the whole paper surface and finish these drawings. Due to this I chose most of the generated Scribblines to fill the whole screen. However some pieces are set to be finished as a 'bulk' shapes and not fill in the whole piece.
**Paper**. The backgrounds imitate typical types of paper in lighter or darker colour. There are few special 'sticky note' papers in the algorithm as well.
**Pen**. The most variability is produced by opening all possible pen options. Pen thickness can vary from "Rollerball - Ultra Fine" to "Marker - Extra Bold". The most variability is provided by variable line widths in one piece. Random line feature chooses from several line width possibilities for each single line. Thickening or thinning line features creates beautiful shapes with a fade-in or fade-out effect. A similar effect is achieved also by varying line color in some of the pieces.

Time Squared #202.css-1wclmit{display:none;}@media (min-width: 768px){.css-1wclmit{display:inline;}} • .css-ymsk1t{white-space:nowrap;font-weight:400;}steen x n-e-o

features

Time Squared #202
steen x n-e-o