Is there a life force within art? Can we converse with creative energy? Artists throughout history have posed such questions. When I start creating new generative artwork, I often focus on discovering what’s new that I might unearth within the exploration of a simple algorithm. When the visual outputs start to move me, I love the idea that perhaps I’ve discovered some sort of personality hidden within the confines of the code, waiting for the most unlikely parameter to unlock its emergent beauty. Within that creative journey, I have a hidden agenda. I hope to commune with the voices hiding inside the code. 

*Speak To Me* experiments with layering and interrupting repetitions of basic geometric shapes, exploring their interplay and movement when placed in relation to one another. Drawing loose inspiration from historic art movements such as Suprematism and Constructivism, I’m seeking to investigate the potential of these simple forms to create dynamic and complex visual arrangements. The code generates compositions that are both structured and organic, imparting a movement and energy to the shapes, so they seem to grow and flow like living organisms. Some shapes speak boldly, with clear, directional vision. Some embrace the space between. Within this collection, the differences in those voices are celebrated with intention. 

One night I dreamed of my code in progress, which sometimes happens when I’m immersed in a project. I awoke in the middle of the night with a specific phrase running through my head, got up to groggily scribble it onto some paper, then fell back to sleep. In the morning, I woke up to see the words “Speak To Me”, and I realized that I now had the name of my collection, imparted in a dream.

Throughout the creation of *Speak To Me*, I found myself wondering if there might be a secret life of shapes. Reflecting on the creative process, I firmly believe that there is a dynamic energy inherent in artistic creation that can be considered a life force. As an artist, I view my role as a conduit and facilitator for this energy to manifest in the physical realm. From this perspective, in the case of generative art, I open up the role of creator to share with both the generative randomness of the algorithm and the creative force that inspires its creation. By embracing this philosophy of artistic creation, I’m hoping to both experience and share a more profound and transformative creative journey. I hope this artwork speaks to you as it has to me.

Speak To Me

***Vahria*** is an inquiry into the breaking points between two and three dimensions. Using spheres I attempt to create a tension between flatness and depth. Regular bodies become distorted blobs and circles. Occasionally, triangles are revealed, which are fundamental units in computer graphics.

The project is also a playful comment on constructivism and its dominance as a visual style in current generative art NFTs. In Vahria, I take the deconstructivist approach, favouring fragmented volumes, asymmetries and skewness, over linear forms, straight lines and right angles.

It is strongly encouraged to see the pieces on **full screen**. Otherwise, details of the renders are missed. You can export high-resolution images of the mints to disk by clicking on the artwork and pressing one of the following keys:

[1] : Full HD resolution (1440x1920)
[2]: 4K resolution (2880x3840)
[3]: 6k Resolution (4320x5760)

Vahria

Gravity Grid is heavily inspired by Go, a 2,500 year old board game. The game of Go is played on a 19x19 grid, which is how every Gravity Grid invocation begins. A psychedelic "gameboard" is drawn and pulled apart by gravity, as if slowly orbiting a black hole in space. Each Gravity Grid starts at a different stage of this process. Don't forget to click and hold - you *might* find an additional effect.

Gravity Grid

“little boxes on the hillsides, child” is a series of abstract suburban cityscapes powered by a program of LIA’s own design and development. Over the 25 years of her artistic career, LIA's working process has typically involved as much intuition as it does engineering skill, and this piece is no exception. Growing from an initial Processing sketch by way of the artist's careful selection of angles, transparencies, and line weights, a virtually infinite sequence of house-like forms appears and disappears. LIA conceives of her practise as a conversation between her own fluid concepts and the formal precision required of software code; when accidents or bugs appear, they are often treated as a part of this conversation and incorporated into the final work. In this piece the “cheeky blue” and “cheeky red” features arise from a bug in calculating the colour spread, and have been retained for their aesthetic contribution to the images. Taking inspiration from the song “Little Boxes” by Malvina Reynolds, this piece is a contemplation of houses and cities. The cyclical relationship between the construction of homes, the lands and environments they have replaced, and the ecosystems that will eventually replace them is echoed through an infinite production of geometric compositions. “little boxes on the hillsides, child” is the successor of “little boxes on the hillsides, mother”, presented in the exhibition “Synthetic Imagination” at bitforms gallery San Francisco, October 2–November 15, 2021. The NFTs minted on Art Blocks are the children of the “mother” work: brilliantly colourful, they are rendered in stillness as an artifact of the mother program's generative output, whose ancestry can be activated on the Art Blocks website by pressing the 'a' key to reveal the animated process behind the production of the still image. Dutch auction starting at 5Ξ and decreasing every 5 minutes to 0.2Ξ (5→4→3→2→1.5→1.25→1→0.75→0.5→0.4→0.3→0.2), 25% of sales over 0.2 ETH will be donated to charity (5% to the Processing Foundation, 20% to COTAP - Carbon Offsets To Alleviate Poverty).


little boxes on the hillsides, child

***Crypt***
Crypt is a labyrinth of sound, image, data, and code. It is an enigma. Once solved, it is also a gateway.

Crypt is a multilayered piece of generative art, one that unfolds into something else, then unfolds again. It contains artworks within artworks, found by puzzles inside other puzzles. One leading to another. At the center is a gateway. The gateway opens another world. That world is an Alternate Reality Game filled with cryptic histories, untold stories, and physical treasures hidden all over the world. 

To begin, some hints. The solution to the first puzzle is a three-part key. It leads to another layer. Here is a room of sorts. An escape room. Viewable from three angles. In the room are eight code-words. They lead to the way out. Collaboration is essential.

At the bottom of Crypt is another key. It unlocks a world. It unlocks Cyclops.

To confirm your solution to crypt and claim your reward please visit: https://cyclopsgroup.art

***Cyclops***

Cyclops is a networked performance, collaborative narrative, and alternate-reality-game designed to be played by groups of people working together across the world. Set in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the game begins with a series of audio tracks. Some tracks are musical compositions, others are filled with odd voices reading letters and counting numbers, others still resemble nothing more than noise and static.
 
Each track is, in fact, a puzzle of increasing complexity. As players work together to solve them, a narrative about early research into psychological operations, mind-control experiments, and an alternative history of the internet age begins to emerge. Over the course of the game, players come across - and are invited to collect - a series of artworks specifically created for Cyclops players. To find these artworks, players must identify and follow up on clues provided within the game. Cyclops is a world within a world.

Art Blocks Presents

Crypt #18

The Cyclops Group

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Speak To Me

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