_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

Faceless is inspired by the refugee and immigrant experience. It pays homage to the individuals that have helped over 25 million refugees flee their homeland to find peace and safety elsewhere. Oftentimes, as was the case with my family, it takes the bravery and generosity of a community of individuals, some whose faces will never be known to you, to have the opportunity to reach true freedom and safety. Faceless aspires to share a story of displacement and resilience with the world, and, in turn, give back to the communities that help people in their most critical moments.

Focusing on 2D silhouettes, Faceless is inspired by the Bauhaus designs of the 1920s and illustrates raw human form in a reimagined, colorful, and familiar way. Each output includes faces that are uniquely mapped onto the canvas, meaning no two works will feature the exact same silhouette. Silhouettes are arranged, colored, scaled, and distorted to remind us of the diversity, beauty, and pain that can be found in each unique story.

Faceless

Blockbob Rorschach

~~~~~~~~~~~  Simple, Pure & Uncut Noise, straight from the Hash ~~~~~~~~~~~ 

HashCrash is an ode to the book SnowCrash, written by Neal Stephenson. This book had a very big influence on the crypto and NFT culture. Long before NFT's or concepts like the MetaVerse were used, Stephenson already described the things we are living with today. For example, he introduced the concept of HyperCards, digital items that could be exchanged and sold in the MetaVerse.

One of the main concepts in the book is what is called "SnowCrash". This is a digital drug that can take over the minds of people, turning people into puppets to be controlled by their master. The drug was represented as a type of visual noise that could bring the viewer into a trance state. Like SnowCrash, NFT's have quite some effect on our minds and body, the addictive behavior and price rushes of NFT’s evoke in people clearly something that has resemblance to how certain drugs work. 
HashCrash plays in a cynical way with this concept of a digital drug. 

By simply representing the pure input hash-data and mapping it  to color, geometric figures appear. By mirroring and cycling through the numbers, the structures behind the random hash string come alive. What seems as a simple noise pattern, can reveal whole worlds to explore for the ones that look closely. The fast paced representation of the hash data can evoke different feelings from relaxation to panic. 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  Cheap, fast & powerful  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

* No customized rarities for this one. What you see is purely translated randomness from the transaction hash.

** Stare at the center closely in live mode for guaranteed breakthrough within 10. minutes

*** Use with care, do not watch when sensitive for strobing lights.



HashCrash

How can intent be communicated when ideas are filtered through a pseudorandom number generator? Simply looking at the output does not make it clear whether a stroke is placed on the canvas because of a decision by the artist or by a roll of the dice. The artist’s hand is more present in the process than the result; they choose the algorithms, tune the parameters, and prune the features. As I experimented with my code, I held a particular idea in mind, but I was uncertain how it would finally manifest. I pursued a visual composition that made me feel a certain way, and the visuals I landed on communicate my feeling better than anything I can put into words. Through Curved Air is about the challenge of communication. Regardless of the medium, I can never be certain that the message I intend to send is the message that is received.

Through Curved Air takes inspiration from musical minimalism, where repetition is used to highlight changes in rhythm and harmony. Every output is created by repeatedly copying a single shape. Each copy only has meaning in relation to the other shapes nearby, and that meaning changes with the context around it. Delicate structures form and are subsequently obscured by further layers, and though they may be hidden, they still affect the perception of the final image. Clicking on the canvas will start or stop the looping mode, where the image is recreated in a slightly different way. New facets are exposed as the composition changes yet remains the same. Just as I spend my days trying to share my inner experience through my art, Through Curved Air uses each shape and each loop and each token hash to attempt to create a common feeling between myself and the viewer.

Through Curved Air also takes inspiration from the paintings of Joan Mitchell. I was drawn to her expressive strokes, vibrant colors, and use of negative space, all of which come together to give a more intense feeling of looking at a landscape than just looking at a painting of a landscape. Her energetic marks clearly communicate that there is a human being behind the art. The marks of generative works are often similarly representative of the underlying process, but instead of drawing focus to the artist behind the piece, they draw attention to the algorithm. To convey human emotion in the way I intended, I had to use a subtler algorithm.

The technical tools to convey this emotion are tools I have been consistently developing in my practice. I love making generative art because I can design a system where I understand how all the components work, but they can still come together to produce a result that surprises me. The algorithm behind the compositional variation in my earlier works Coquina and Primordial is one I continued to evolve, and it rests at the heart of Through Curved Air. In fact, I pushed it further than ever, using it to create the individual shapes that form the building block of each output. This emergent variation permeates the work and results in surprising images that more closely resemble paintings than anything I made previously. I believe the potential for surprise is key to conveying emotion through code. When the possibility space of the algorithm grows too large to understand, the mind wanders to the person behind the algorithm. Perhaps the human element is the struggle to understand, or the struggle to be understood.

Art Blocks Presents

Through Curved Air #7

Jacob Gold

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