Generative System 2: In this installment, the token ID hash string is read from left to right to create a bitmap matrix and a color matrix. Both are combined to create an image, which is then used in algorithmic fashion to compose a dynamic visual composition.

Gen 2

Color Variant

Color Accent

Bitmap Style

Sprite

# 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

Using single Cyrillic character typography with an inspiration from Soviet era punch cards, technology and mentality to some extent, _Such A Lovely Time_ is part of an ongoing obsession of creating visual complexity from the most basic shapes while retaining a sense of order in appearance. This sense of structure is something that holds true to most of us individuals, communities, nations. However disorganised or frail one may be on the inside one often makes a substantial effort to appear structured, ordered. In other words our orderliness stems from the perception of that very orderliness.

The themes explored in my work are often a bi-product of my echoic memory in which I often pick up on background movie dialogues and tend to remember them by associating a colour and feeling to them. This in turn becomes an artistic direction, drawing inspiration from the sets, colours, location, time period, soundtrack, language and so on. The soundbite and evoked emotions guide the exploration and creation process.
More often than not the line from the movie becomes the title for the piece, as is the case for _Such A Lovely Time_.

_Such A Lovely Time_ has a number of simple traits that when combined create intricate compositions.
- Three different styles (Grid, Punch Card and Mixed) set the foundation.
	- The Grid style is based on a simple grid of elements with varying levels of density.
	- While the Punch Card style is essentially also a grid, it has a different rhythm to it, at times very sparse with isolated clusters, at other times those clusters and elements are connected together almost resembling sheet music. In some instances the Punch Card can be very dense almost to the point of saturation.
	- The Mixed style is a blend of the two aforementioned and introduces a higher degree of variations and somewhat unexpected results.

- There are 16 palettes, each one of them named after a city. The colours are extracted from personal travel photos to those cities before being fine tuned.

- The Cyrillic glyph is the centre piece of the composition, sometimes bold and in the foreground, at times fragmented and sometimes even hidden, as if an invitation to the viewer to look closer and explore the many layered details.

- The other traits that make up the piece may have less depth in their meaning but add to the overall amount of graphical variations.

Each iteration of _Such A Lovely Time_ is a generative attempt at technical aesthetics.

Created by petitsapin (Dominique McKerl Dautheribes).

Such A Lovely Time

Simple rules - complex patterns. An exploration of abstract variation through generative symbols.

Hieroglyphs

«Ottocento» is a collection of generative portraits of fictional historical figures. The series starts by exploring the nuances of the male figure as represented in the 19th century («Ottocento» in Italian). Further chapters of the project, focusing on different identities, are planned. The illustrations, drawn by hand and then converted to digital, constitute an ironic portrayal of the society of that era. The portraits, all in the same three-quarter view, reference the typological projects of German photographer August Sander.

Individual features and expressions are combined through the controlled randomness that generative art affords, deliberately blurring clear visual distinctions between nationalities, roles, and social classes. The result is an «Esperanto» of human types with an uncanny familiarity. Is that a poet? A salesman? An aristocrat? A farmer? Unlike Sander’s project, «Ottocento» doesn’t force any labels on the characters, eventually leaving the interpretation open to the viewer.

Art Blocks Presents

Gen 2

DCA

About Gen 2

DCA

Algorithmic edition of 256

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Hieroglyphs

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Ottocento

Berubara

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Art Blocks Presents

Gen 2

DCA

About Gen 2

DCA

Algorithmic edition of 256

Additional details

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Seedlings

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Such A Lovely Time

petitsapin

Hieroglyphs

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Ottocento

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Learn

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