“Pieces of Me” is an exploration of the diverse elements that make us who we are. Even though our pieces are of different shapes, colors, sizes and different in number, we all share the form of what it is to be human. We are our pieces and we are also the form.

Pallete

Form

Brush

Paint Consistency

Speckle

Rainbow

Pieces

Pieces of Me

How can intent be communicated when ideas are filtered through a pseudorandom number generator? Simply looking at the output does not make it clear whether a stroke is placed on the canvas because of a decision by the artist or by a roll of the dice. The artist’s hand is more present in the process than the result; they choose the algorithms, tune the parameters, and prune the features. As I experimented with my code, I held a particular idea in mind, but I was uncertain how it would finally manifest. I pursued a visual composition that made me feel a certain way, and the visuals I landed on communicate my feeling better than anything I can put into words. Through Curved Air is about the challenge of communication. Regardless of the medium, I can never be certain that the message I intend to send is the message that is received.

Through Curved Air takes inspiration from musical minimalism, where repetition is used to highlight changes in rhythm and harmony. Every output is created by repeatedly copying a single shape. Each copy only has meaning in relation to the other shapes nearby, and that meaning changes with the context around it. Delicate structures form and are subsequently obscured by further layers, and though they may be hidden, they still affect the perception of the final image. Clicking on the canvas will start or stop the looping mode, where the image is recreated in a slightly different way. New facets are exposed as the composition changes yet remains the same. Just as I spend my days trying to share my inner experience through my art, Through Curved Air uses each shape and each loop and each token hash to attempt to create a common feeling between myself and the viewer.

Through Curved Air also takes inspiration from the paintings of Joan Mitchell. I was drawn to her expressive strokes, vibrant colors, and use of negative space, all of which come together to give a more intense feeling of looking at a landscape than just looking at a painting of a landscape. Her energetic marks clearly communicate that there is a human being behind the art. The marks of generative works are often similarly representative of the underlying process, but instead of drawing focus to the artist behind the piece, they draw attention to the algorithm. To convey human emotion in the way I intended, I had to use a subtler algorithm.

The technical tools to convey this emotion are tools I have been consistently developing in my practice. I love making generative art because I can design a system where I understand how all the components work, but they can still come together to produce a result that surprises me. The algorithm behind the compositional variation in my earlier works Coquina and Primordial is one I continued to evolve, and it rests at the heart of Through Curved Air. In fact, I pushed it further than ever, using it to create the individual shapes that form the building block of each output. This emergent variation permeates the work and results in surprising images that more closely resemble paintings than anything I made previously. I believe the potential for surprise is key to conveying emotion through code. When the possibility space of the algorithm grows too large to understand, the mind wanders to the person behind the algorithm. Perhaps the human element is the struggle to understand, or the struggle to be understood.

Through Curved Air

"Organized Disruption" uses a circle packing algorithm to position and scale objects on a plane in an organized pleasing composition. A series of weighted probabilities determines how this composition is disrupted by picking 1 of 3 forms... squares, spheres (slight elevation off plane), rectangles (extreme elevation off plane). Probability also determines 1 of 9 color sets (some colors being harder to acquire), and 3 possible color animations (slow, medium, fast). Each seeded token hash "might" unlock a collection of mouse interactions... proximity object displacement, proximity scale up, proximity scale down, proximity object mutation, proximity object rotation. All minted compositions include "mouse + click + drag" to rotate the system. All minted compositions can press the "s" key on your keyboard to "save" an image.

Organized Disruption

"Foliage" is a moment of pause. The project is born from the futile attempt to catch a breath of wind, the one that no one sees but everyone notices when the leaves hang trembling. Inspired by long days near the Rio de la Plata studying the wind, this series of 250 foliage is an exploration of how angles and colors can generate the illusion of movement and harmony. "Foliage" is inspired on wind data visualizations where the use of angles and vectors speak of a trajectory. Winds, like data, travel through our world leaving a trace;  this time hosted immutably on the Ethereum Blockchain.

Foliage

Rapture is a series exploring magical seals overflowing their boundaries, gradually dissolving into the surroundings. It is imagined as abstract iconography for a fictional mystic religion. Rapture is the conclusion of a system I have been working with and perfecting over several years and it is the first time that it is presented completely autonomous. The series consists of computationally heavy art pieces, with calculations happening while the seal shake to contain its powers. 25% of the proceeds from this project will go to the preservation of the Ecuadorian rainforest Bigai through Randers Rainforest Wildlife Foundation.

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About Pieces of Me

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r4v3n

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r4v3n

Algorithmic edition of 222

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