Augury is a festive collection ranging from vast sorbet-colored landscapes to dense pattern iterations.
 
Augury remixes frames from LoVid’s red, green, and blue (RGB) luminous moving image work. For over two decades, LoVid has been making audiovisual works using custom-built handmade analog video (and audio) synthesizers. In addition to moving-image media, LoVid’s outputs capture stills (frames) from generative video and incorporate these into digital collages, textile designs, wearable works, prints, and more. An essential part of LoVid’s process involves translating signals and experiences from one medium into another. This conversion/interoperability appears critical for living in an interdisciplinary, intermedia, intersectional mixed-reality world.

With Augury, LoVid continues exploring on-chain processes that are inspired by the mechanism and aesthetic of analog synthesis.This collection builds upon LoVid’s first analog video synthesizer-inspired collection: Tide Predictor. Each output in Augury grabs frames from the Tide Predictor algorithm (using a unique new hash) and arranges them on the screen based on a set of instructions, possibilities, and limitations.  The generative compositions in Augury are therefore both procedurally related to and visually reminiscent of quilting, tapestry pattern designs, and tactile weaving. They use visual elements that LoVid often employs in static works: mirroring and repetitive looping, abrupt changes in intensity and detail, overlapping recycled patterns, and a colliding playful mix of lines and signals buzzing in different directions. 

The rules applied in Augury are primarily set around placing variable levels of density on the borders, the edges of the work, creating a sense of dynamic movement and discovery. Focusing the viewer’s gaze outside the center encourages shifts in perspectives, literally and symbolically. Augury is inspired both by the ideas and aesthetics in the Pattern and Decoration (P&D) movement and Glitch art. 

P&D emerged in the 1970s as a response and challenge to a predominantly white male aesthetic that dominated the artworld and historically marginalized art forms and practices of women and people of color. P&D took a feminist approach by shifting the conversation around crafts and decorative arts, placing them on an equal canonic level with western-style paintings. Augury expands this conversation to generative art and challenges hierarchies and relationships to status, economy, and desire. 

Glitch art refers to artifacts that were created by machine error, intentionally or by chance. Glitch as an art form originally emerged as a response to and celebration of loss in signals “fleeting artifacts that momentarily offer a glimpse into the inner workings and complexities of storage, display, and communication technology” (Iman Moradi, 2009). In Augury, LoVid incorporates a color palette, textures, and shapes inspired by both digital glitches and inherently unstable analog outputs. Aesthetically and viscerally, Augury finds beauty in discarded marginal dysfunctionality. 

This collection’s title, Augury, refers to the practice of interpreting omens/predicting the future based on the behavior of birds. Complex systems and environmental signals inspire and require attention. LoVid’s Augury harnesses and embraces this chaos, the turbulent flow of data, to bring you a sweet and colorful feast for the eyes, food for thought and beyond!

Augury

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. 

- Move your mouse to interact
- Press “s” key to save a high-resolution still (5760x3240px)

Mind Maze

In the spirit of pushing forward the narrative of web3 interoperability & importance of on-chain NFTs, we have created the OnChainChain.  The OnChainChain is a whimsical high end piece of metaverse fashion that exemplifies the owner’s understanding of these important fundamental constructs.  A wide variety of chains, totems & accessories designed by Miguelgarest result in unique & prominent wearable chains. 

OnChainChains are standalone pieces of art that also provide the collector with the ability to wear it across multiple NFTs & platforms.  The ability to wear the same OnChainChain everywhere allows the user to become recognizable even while changing avatars across the metaverse.  Currently the OnChainChain is supported by several prominent projects and platforms with the intention of continued expansion.

-Press “b” to change the background color
-Press “z” and “x” to zoom
-Press “Space” to pause
-Press “s” to save the .vox file

*The script includes a modified version of vox.js (initially published by daishi_hmr and dev7.jp in 2015-2016, licensed under MIT)

OnChainChain

Inspired by the inherent multiplicity that goes with the tradition of the dish, Pizza 1o1 is a generative script that is capable of producing over a million unique combinations of a Pizza. 

Prepared and served differently across different countries and communities, Pizza 101 celebrates the generative nature of this Italian delicacy by offering a feature rich project that comes in various different shapes, sizes, sauces, loads of different toppings, a variety of cheeses and almost always some seasoning. 

Just like a card game, where you can pit one pizza against the other for its unique composition. 

Have fun minting.

Pizza 1o1

Paths is an animated journey across various subterranean and aboveground environments. To fully experience the project, you need to see it in high resolution with a capable GPU. Make sure that your browser uses your dedicated graphics card if any, and that you get a good frame rate. Control keys: 1-4 (change speed), 9 (fill aspect ratio), 0 (original aspect ratio), space-bar (play/pause)

Art Blocks Presents

Augury #16

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