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

You yearn to rescue the night, may the mirage never end. Through the haze, you brush aside the memory, a silhouette is all that remains...

Silhouette

"Ouroboros" is inspired from the idea that we as humans must continually devour ourselves to be reborn with new understanding. The algorithm is a grid of rounded squares, continuously spinning, an eternal cycle which expresses unity of matter and spirit which never disappear but perpetually change form through this cycle of destruction and re-creation. A multitude of color palettes, grid sizes, blend modes, border styles and shadows allow this project to generate some beautifully mesmerizing outputs. Click for enlightenment.

Ouroboros

Series Two of the popular 70s Pop. Here we're cruising down Lake Shore Drive in our shag carpet lined Chevy van, with sweet custom airbrushed art on the side. Barbarella meets Saturday Night Fever 🌈🕺 in tiny code form.

70s Pop Series Two

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 #56

Jacob Gold

More in Art Blocks Presents

Kai-Gen

Takeshi Murata, Christopher Rutledge, J. Krispy

Silhouette

Niel de la Rouviere

Ouroboros

Shane Rich | raregonzo

70s Pop Series Two

Daniel Catt

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