Maps for Grief explores the hyper-connected existence, filled with individuals who share common intents, ideals and feelings, but tend to live their sentiments in isolation. Its compositions oppose areas of fluid movement and immobility, revealing the structure of the piece itself: two interacting force fields that dictate the direction, as well as the strength – or absence – of movement.

On the keyboard: Press A to have the lines gently animate. Use the 1/2/3 keys to inspect the fields that make up each iteration.

Maps for grief

Blaschke Ballet is a reflection on movement, color, and mathematics - a juxtaposition of graceful motion and precise calculation. Observe the elegant ballerinas as they leap through the complex plane, the space between them constantly collapsing and reassembling.

Blaschke Ballet

A photon is a particle representing a quantum of light. Because it travels at the speed-of-light, time and space as we understand it do not exist for this elementary particle. The Big Bang was less than an instant ago for the photon and yet it has already traversed the cosmos. Time and space to it is what? It's hard to say. The word non-dual comes to mind.

Some components in Photon’s Dream look like images from an electron microscope. Other parts have a more cosmic or planetary vista. Juxtaposing both creates tension and intrigue where the boundary between fine texture and grand architecture becomes blurred.

The expression ‘One in all: all in one’ is somehow embodied in the wavefield primitives used to make this art. Art that aspires to create both holistic simplicity and the mystery of deep complexity. The quasicrystal and hyperbolic geometry employed here are subjects to the artist that express what is beyond macro and micro, internal and external and ultimately self and other.

Photon's Dream

Flowing in life, overwhelmed by colors.
Staying afloat, one step at a time, in a sea of details.
When dancing in a storm of changes, pause for a second.
Too much of a good thing, is still too much.
Take a step back, breath, and thank the universe.

Saturazione

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 #14

Jacob Gold

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Maps for grief

Louis-André Labadie

Blaschke Ballet

NumbersInMotion

Photon's Dream

Harvey Rayner | patterndotco

Saturazione

Stefano Contiero

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