As the sun sets on the 70s, things become bigger, bolder and brasher. 80s Pop enters a new decade of extravagance with cutting-edge vector graphics, stylish modern patterns, cable TV and mainframe access.

A celebration of 1988, a whole year of games, tech and art crammed into one variety pack. The only way we could fit more in would be to put it on laserdisc.

Purchasing is suggested for expert users only and those already familiar with 70s Pop; fortune shines on the brave, and rarity is an illusion.

**Keyboard controls - _not mobile_** 
Space - Start, perhaps.
, . - Left/Right, sometimes.
Q A P L - Up-ish, Down-ish, other times.
s - Save screenshot (slow).
h - Toggle highrez (even slower).  

Interactive elements are for desk/laptop only as they require keyboard input, Chrome recommended for the smoothest experience. Highscores 👀 may be kept in localStorage on your browser.

80s Pop Variety Pack - for experts only 🕹

# Seedlings

"A young plant, especially one raised from a seed."

Each Seedling grows delicately on a windowsill gazing outside. A Seedling's natural environment–whether a grassy prairie, a rocky mountain, or by a river–is but a memory now, leaving a faded imprint on the canvas' outer border. Some Seedlings resemble trees and flowers, others may appear to be geometric abstractions and fractals–yet all feature interplay between filled patterned regions (leaves and petals) and lines of solid color (stems and branches). Other abstractions also make an appearance: circles representing fruits, stars, or the sun and moon; and a gradient sky with foggy clouds beyond the frames of the window.

## Foundation

The idea for Seedlings was sown in 2019 and was my first foray into Generative Art. It began as a study of fractal trees where each depth level was individually parametrized (angle of rotation, length, etc.). Initially just a hobbyist project in the pre-Art Blocks era, I returned to Seedlings in 2022 to develop it into the longform series, I believe, that most effectively highlights the underlying algorithm's potential. So, I rewrote Seedlings from scratch, turning its simple monochromatic line renderer into a WebGL shader renderer capable of transforming Bézier curves into abstract stems, branches, leaves, and petals with diverse and colorful palettes.

## Inspiration

Having lived much of my life in New York, one of the most urbanized cities in the world, I developed a significant appreciation for green spaces. The city's parks became a refuge from the urban sprawl–where one could touch some grass, breathe fresh air, and pretend they were somewhere else. In an attempt to fill more of my life with green, I placed some plants on my windowsill. The joy they bring my home inspired Seedlings.

Over the course of its development, Seedlings collected many stylistic influences, including Hokusai's trees, Charles Demuth's crisscrossing polygonal regions, and Alphonse Mucha's curves. As such, you will find elements of Ukiyo-e and Art Nouveau across the collection. Seedlings also contains stylistic elements found in my other work, such as ink-like outlining and the concept of shape overlap.

Additionally, I drew inspiration from contemporary longform Generative Art that aims to create complex emergent behaviors from the interactions of a small set of primitives. The structural patterns that form each Seedling are created purely from the probabilistic placement of their branches and petals.

## Dedication

Seedlings has been a labor of love and has particular sentimental value to me as the inception of my Generative Art practice. It feels fitting and very exciting to be given the opportunity to release Seedlings on Art Blocks, the original longform Generative Art platform. Thank you to everyone who helped and supported me during this journey.

Seedlings

CryptoNewYorkers are a limited release algorithmically generated pixel art collection based on real characters from New York City. Available only to visitors of the Bright Moments physical NFT gallery, CryptoNewYorkers grant holders exclusive access to IRL events and experiences across the world. Holders of CryptoNewYorkers are granted CryptoCitizenship.

CryptoNewYorker

_Libra_ functions as a manifesto that rejects digital art made from mimetic processes – the emulation of traditional analogue mediums and techniques. Such techniques are ubiquitous in digital art and arguably hamper the development of genuinely new aesthetics and new discourse for such a budding medium. 

Artists use digital mediums to mimic physical characteristics like brush strokes or textures of clay. It is not to say that these effects are not successful. Emulation of analogue artworks grants the digital work a natural, relatable and seemingly physical character. This use of the medium simultaneously distances the work from typical connotations of digital artworks being lifeless, flat, precise, and rigid. Perhaps this mimicry makes the work feel ‘finished.’ Digital techniques infiltrated painting in the 90s and early 2000s. At that time artists like Albert Oehlen and Jeff Elrod merged digital and analogue techniques to create a sort of ‘screen space’ on the canvas – something somewhere between a painterly space and a digital space. The Skarstedt Gallery, who originally presented Oehlen’s exhibition titled Computer Paintings, proclaimed that limitations in computers pushed Oehlen to ‘finish’ the paintings by hand – the paintings “required a human hand to enhance the final product.” That is to say that Oehlen augmented the digital works with an analogue technique. This is quite related to the current movement in digital art. Digital artists augment their works with emulations of analogue techniques. This observation raises the question: what does digital art look like when it does not emulate analogue art? Can such a work exist and feel ‘finished’?

To investigate such questions, _Libra_ generates imagery from first principles and default settings – two conflicting concepts that when brought together bring balance to the artwork. Each invocation of the algorithm directly uses the hash as the paintbrush: _Libra_ creates color-fields and blurs by placing the hash characters onto the canvas until it is sufficiently covered. Each character is initially recognizable as a letter or number – something we may all be familiar with. As the screen fills with more and more characters, some become unrecognizable and part of a larger system. Through these actions the hash is transformed into minute and carefully placed strokes that create illusions of light, space, and form that is unique to the screen space in which digital art lives. The remaining, recognizable characters ground our eye and act as a ‘staffage figure’ in a landscape painting. 

_Libra_ rejects traditional standards of aesthetics and beauty; Instead, _Libra_ embraces self-reflexivity and a contemporary definition of  kitsch – often a pejorative used to describe ‘low-brow’ or naïve artwork that is appreciated ironically or in a cult-like manner. In this series, a colored dot is dragged around the canvas both irrationally and without control. Drawing our attention in, this dot transfixes the viewer in an effort to shift the viewers’ attention from glancing at the work to a sustained look. These strokes are naïve and highly stylized – they embody the kitsch – and are mockingly-emulative of painterly marks and linework and grants the work a tone of self-reflexivity. Kitsch is obtained with drop shadows that create simple but satisfying _trompe l’oeil_ effects and fabricate a false sense of depth. Such an effect can be interpreted as humorous: this is an obvious and ironic representation of depth – it is totally fake and recognizable as fake on the flat digital display in which _Libra_ lives. 

Libra is a careful balancing act that creates form and color only to erase it.

Libra

Inspired by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. Made with an interest in color theory and a love for color in general.

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