Mind Maze is a contemplative and meditative experience, a wandering above an ever changing labyrinth, a cryptic message scrolling endlessly. Mind Maze explores the relationship between mindset and worldview, drawing parallels between communication and mental health, especially in these troubled times.

With strong references to the labyrinth metaphor, but also borders, cities and calligraphy, Mind Maze plays with shapes, colors and movements to create an infinite space reflecting our need to explore and find answers, but also the endless expanse of our doubts, and the barriers constituted by our language and our cultural constructions.

As often in my work, this piece is inspired by the hypnotizing movements of nature, trying to make an organic feeling emerge from cold geometry shapes. A reflection on how a host of independent, autonomous, different elements can come together to form a whole, a new coherent entity.

Mind Maze is also my genesis piece on the Etherum blockchain, which means it’s my first NFT project offered on this blockchain. It’s written in Javascript using the ThreeJs library. It makes extensive use of GPU instancing, via custom shaders, to be able to draw and animate all the shapes in an optimized way. 

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Mind Maze

**the first 13 mints (#0 - #12) will be eligible for a complimentary 18cm x 14cm (7.1'' x 5.5'') signed print, posted anywhere in the world.**

'transparency' is a generative artwork that explores the connection between the fundamental elements of art and the viewer's perception of it. square figures, like pixels forming a picture, create prefigurative, fuzzy images with watercolor motifs. through the use of shapes, colors, and composition, the artwork aims to create a visual language inspired by pioneers of various media such as Paul Klee, Anni Albers, Hilma af Klint, and Alexey Pajitnov.

the use of square figures in 'transparency' is reminiscent of the basic things we drew as children, creating a sense of nostalgia and simplicity. the overlapping transparent rectangles add a sense of depth and tonal variety to the piece, and incorporation of watercolor effects gives it some lightness. the artwork is an expression of emotion in a way that connects with the viewer on a primal level. it is an exploration of the fundamental relationship between art, emotions and the ability of forms and colors to evolve.

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transparency

An exploration of color interaction and movement. Each piece unfolds its uniquely generated palette, carefully picked while roaming through the color space. 

Roamings

'Origami Dreams' represents me in a very intimate way. It is the product of doing generative artwork for years, experimenting in the intersection between movement, poetry and mathematics. Each piece is determined by a random seed. There are two possible states in the artwork, one static and one dynamic. You can switch between the two states with a mouse click. The prime number 13 guides all of the artwork. You will get one of 13 different characters, and each 'Origami' is defined by 13 random points. There are also two layers of 'stars', completely random in color and position. The possibilities are infinite, and every mint is a different outcome.

Origami Dream

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 #47

Jacob Gold

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