The contemporary moment is defined by the appearance of artificial systems that mimic intelligent behaviours with uncanny skill: bots that you can converse with, machines that can act as pets, and even the algorithms that recommend ads to you. At times they appear as strange beings; alive. To make sense of this phenomenon, we are forced to reconsider our notion of the living state beyond what we are familiar with on Earth. 

Calian is an infinitely zoomable and scrollable exploration of lifelike behaviour. It exhibits ambiguous natural-digital forms in a dynamic rendering. Species grow and compete; they get carried by the elements; they face boom, bust, and echo. 

What makes something alive? To go beyond recognition of terrestrial biology we need to delineate general principles and apply them to new intelligent systems. Calian uses the fruits of my research into the origin of life to create persistent, complex systems that we can experience and study (*). We can identify properties of living matter but these fall short of a satisfactory and succinct criterion. When does agency begin? Or identity? Calian asks you to ponder this as you wander through its ecosystems. 

Feel free to explore but be careful: although life is pervasive, living things are delicate. Your interactions affect the ecosystem, obliquely. 

Calian continues a thread of my work probing deep scientific questions with artistic means. It furthermore connects to my previous Artblocks projects Mazinaw and Glass through the theme of ambiguity: while Mazinaw suggested the hand of an unknown creator, and Glass visualized the intrinsic ambiguity of our quantum mechanical universe, Calian's amorphous forms bear characteristics both of familiar organic matter and digital technology. 

Interactive features allow you to explore each ecosystem, infinitely, both in depth and in scope. As you wander, the shader repopulates the world from its initial condition, while the physical laws governing the dynamics themselves evolve.

See Display Notes for Controls.

(*) For more on Calian's dynamics and its grounding in my research, see the Calian page on my website.

Style

Geometry

Growth

This descending auction has a start time of {start_time} at the price of {start_price} Ξ and will exponentially decrease until the resting price of {base_price} Ξ is met. Any excess posted funds are reclaimable once the auction reaches settling price, such that the net payment for any purchase is equal to the lowest price paid for a token on this minter.

Calian

CENTURY is my homage to paintings and drawings from the twentieth century and the countless hours I’ve spent looking at them. The references span the origins of concrete and non-objective art to color-field painting and minimalism. The strongest direct reference is a series of pictures created by Ellsworth Kelly in the 1950s where he cut his paintings into pieces and reassembled them in different orders. CENTURY creates a distinct picture for each unique transaction hash, and you can “cut” and “reassemble” it in different ways by pressing ‘1’ on your keyboard. Press ‘2’ to put the slices in the original order. These are landscapes; they look best large and in motion running as live code.

CENTURY

Lines are bent and shaded. There are no wrong turns. 

[Interaction in live view: press 1-7 or left/right arrow keys to see the stages of sketch construction: 1-grid, 2-divide, 3-tile, 4-bend, 5-shade, 6-color, 7-texture].

Bent

# Neural Sediments

## “Before objectivity, there was truth to nature; after the advent of objectivity came trained judgment”

Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison

Improving my decision-making process is how I would sum up my lifelong quest. Understanding yourself and the unlimited variables and actors surrounding us daily requires a radical yet utopian pursuit of objectivity.

A prerequisite to an objective observation is identifying and eliminating cognitive and observational biases.

My obsession with objectivity started as a sociology student; while studying epistemology of science and pondering the works of Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Popper.

This quest never left me and has been a cornerstone of my artistic practice for 25 years.

“The map is not the territory” is a mainstream expression highlighting a potentially oversimplified version of reality. In this series called Neural Sediments, inspired by the works of Alberto Burri, František Kupka, and Swiss topography, I highlight the complexity of our brains and some of their biases.

Looking at one Neural Sediment will deliver you a first broad impression; however, looking at it for a longer time will yield a never-ending and much more nuanced and delicate observation. Like Alberto Burri’s Cracks series, some things not obvious to the eye become real over time. Each Neural Sediment opens itself to the viewer in a unique way. The more you look at it, the more you can decipher it. 

Like Swiss alpine glacier sediments, this material appears only after a certain amount of time and a decent amount of gravity. Burri used a special technique to envision time with cracked canvas; František Kupka, in his Katedrála painting, opens the fourth dimension by looking at the vertical lines of the glass window.

In the Neural Sediments series, I used both as an inspiration to push the viewer’s eye to search for more details and a deeper perspective.

Choosing color palettes for a long-form generative art collection is as demanding as solving technical algorithmic challenges. 

The color palettes I create result from a process I've built into my practice over time. Each palette comes from my own algorithmic selection trained on classical masterpieces.

After this first selection, each set of colors used in a Neural Sediment is re-arranged to be linked with endangered ecosystems such as dark blue waters, peach salmons, rare botanic species, or volcanos.

Like Josef Albers, who highlighted the instability and deceptiveness of colors, my color sets are here to reinforce the question of objectivity in the art world and life in general.

Looking at its overall structure, each Neural Sediment evokes a brutalist architecture. 

Prioritizing function over form, each Neural Sediment aims to be used as a tool to rediscover oneself, free from the cognitive constraints we put on ourselves and the world around us.

PS: From a technical point of view, Neural Sediments require some heavy calculations, considering the very large number of intersections to compute prior to rendering.

PPS: Pressing the letter “i” on your keyboard will generate a high resolution export for a large scale and print friendly format.

Neural Sediments

Synapses is a generative study on movement and texture. Thousands of particles flow in space leaving a trail of their journey. the movements are inspired by swarm behavior and flocking mechanism. The trails when left by each particle resembles the graphite or carbon smudges on the white canvas. The particles follow either single or multiple vectors to create these intricate details.

Art Blocks Curated

Calian

Eric De Giuli

About Calian

Eric De Giuli

Algorithmic edition of 256

Charitable giving

Display notes

Creative credits

Additional details

More in Art Blocks Curated

CENTURY

Casey REAS

Bent

ippsketch

Neural Sediments

Eko33

Synapses

Chaosconstruct

Art

Company

Learn