***"Ode to Untitled"***  is a culmination of inspiration from the color field and minimalist painters of the 20th century.  While my medium has changed from disc golf discs, to canvas, to digital canvas, to digital photography, and finally to code editor - the inspiration and output has remained abstract.  Seeing the works of Clyfford Still, Morris Louis, Agnes Martin, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, and Kenneth Noland (among others - hi Roy) seeded my desire to create visual art.

What many of these artists have in common, sometimes for differing reasons, was a fondness for naming their works *"Untitled"*.  Clyfford Still was entirely dedicated to this practice, while others came and went.  When other titles were used, often they were nondescript cataloging values or a rote description of the colors or shapes found in the work.  And, of course, abstract art history in general, and our current day, is littered with *"Untitled"* works.  Whether a desire to leave interpretation open to the viewer, not wanting to sully their visual work with words, a dedication to minimalism, or laziness - it's all fine with me.

While "Ode to Untitled" is not a direct reflection of any particular works, you will see influences shining through:  zips of color streaking across the canvas, an appreciation of the simple square and grids, a focus on texture, large fields of color, and a love of minimalism.  This one goes out to all the *"Untitled"* works.

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Ode to Untitled

_Libra_ functions as a manifesto that rejects digital art made from mimetic processes – the emulation of traditional analogue mediums and techniques. Such techniques are ubiquitous in digital art and arguably hamper the development of genuinely new aesthetics and new discourse for such a budding medium. 

Artists use digital mediums to mimic physical characteristics like brush strokes or textures of clay. It is not to say that these effects are not successful. Emulation of analogue artworks grants the digital work a natural, relatable and seemingly physical character. This use of the medium simultaneously distances the work from typical connotations of digital artworks being lifeless, flat, precise, and rigid. Perhaps this mimicry makes the work feel ‘finished.’ Digital techniques infiltrated painting in the 90s and early 2000s. At that time artists like Albert Oehlen and Jeff Elrod merged digital and analogue techniques to create a sort of ‘screen space’ on the canvas – something somewhere between a painterly space and a digital space. The Skarstedt Gallery, who originally presented Oehlen’s exhibition titled Computer Paintings, proclaimed that limitations in computers pushed Oehlen to ‘finish’ the paintings by hand – the paintings “required a human hand to enhance the final product.” That is to say that Oehlen augmented the digital works with an analogue technique. This is quite related to the current movement in digital art. Digital artists augment their works with emulations of analogue techniques. This observation raises the question: what does digital art look like when it does not emulate analogue art? Can such a work exist and feel ‘finished’?

To investigate such questions, _Libra_ generates imagery from first principles and default settings – two conflicting concepts that when brought together bring balance to the artwork. Each invocation of the algorithm directly uses the hash as the paintbrush: _Libra_ creates color-fields and blurs by placing the hash characters onto the canvas until it is sufficiently covered. Each character is initially recognizable as a letter or number – something we may all be familiar with. As the screen fills with more and more characters, some become unrecognizable and part of a larger system. Through these actions the hash is transformed into minute and carefully placed strokes that create illusions of light, space, and form that is unique to the screen space in which digital art lives. The remaining, recognizable characters ground our eye and act as a ‘staffage figure’ in a landscape painting. 

_Libra_ rejects traditional standards of aesthetics and beauty; Instead, _Libra_ embraces self-reflexivity and a contemporary definition of  kitsch – often a pejorative used to describe ‘low-brow’ or naïve artwork that is appreciated ironically or in a cult-like manner. In this series, a colored dot is dragged around the canvas both irrationally and without control. Drawing our attention in, this dot transfixes the viewer in an effort to shift the viewers’ attention from glancing at the work to a sustained look. These strokes are naïve and highly stylized – they embody the kitsch – and are mockingly-emulative of painterly marks and linework and grants the work a tone of self-reflexivity. Kitsch is obtained with drop shadows that create simple but satisfying _trompe l’oeil_ effects and fabricate a false sense of depth. Such an effect can be interpreted as humorous: this is an obvious and ironic representation of depth – it is totally fake and recognizable as fake on the flat digital display in which _Libra_ lives. 

Libra is a careful balancing act that creates form and color only to erase it.

Libra

Talking Blocks listens to the Blockchain hash # and creates a unique artwork with a signature stamped into the image that is a direct message from the blockchain. This provides the collector an assurance of authenticity while leveraging the blockchain to generate a unique message, a retina print of the blockchain hash #. This is an instantly recognizable visual signature. You can interact with the artwork to modulate a sonic reaction of oscillating circular waves. The permanent immutability of the underlying token hash # is combined with a non-repeatable signature from a person interacting with the artwork, all in real-time. In other words, you can have a conversation with the Blockchain.

Talking Blocks

Event Horizon Sunsets are a class of art works generated through an algorithm which uses Perlin noise to modulate the color, shape, and convexity of a continuous surface. The sunsets are generated instantly in a practical infinity of combinations, and it is possible to write a machine learning classifier that selects the most beautiful ones. Event Horizon Sunset (Series C) follows two previous series of Sunsets, with 5 and 9 works respectively. Series C is special because some of the randomly generated Sunsets have a "close proximity".

Event Horizon Sunset (Series C)

### Good job, Computer. Do that some more.

To what degree can we teach a computer to make a painting? One that resembles creation from the imperfect hand of a human. Here, the computer attempts to hide itself from the viewer in the details, such as inconsistent borders or uneven layers of paint. Intentional flaws that a human might make unintentionally.
Good, Computer is an exploration of not only how small cumulative inaccuracies create complete images, but also the forms and harmonies that those images evoke.

Consider the following:

***A set of 4 colors is to be considered -- singly as "actors," together as "cast." They are to be presented in 4 different arrangements -- as "performances."***
***Although they remain unchanged in hue and light, in "character", and appear in an unchanging outer frame, the "stage", they are to produce 4 different "scenes" or "plays," each to be so different that one and the same set of colors will be seen as 4 different sets, presented by 4 different casts.***
***And all this can be achieved mainly through changes in quantity which result in shifts of dominance, of recurrence, and consequently of placement.***
***The essential question: which group of colors is ready to lose its identity as a cast?*** 
***-- Josef Albers***

We can answer this question simply by asking ourselves why we're drawn to some arrangements more than others. In doing so, we consider not just tone, but also quantity, intensity and weight in order to form new relationships between the colours. And as such the viewer gives each image their own subjective personality.

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Art Blocks Presents

Good, Computer #2

Dean Blacc

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