[To learn more about the partnership between Motus and Wolffia, we invite you to watch the ilumz video](https://owenmcateer.com/ilumz/)

Collaborators working in two opposing mediums create a unique expression of art that neither could create alone. Merging IRL artistic techniques with algorithmic generative coding. Holding focus on creations that are varied, organic and feature human characteristics of spontaneous art work.

In the era of the machine, harmony and humanity shine through ilumz. This is rooted in the artists’ contrasting disciplines, techniques and styles which meld to create a cohesive choreography of abstract, organic, generative art.

The creative spark was a chance meeting of opposites. An abstract multi media artist (Wolffia) with an intuitive, freeform, joyful flair and a keen eye for bold shapes, vibrant colours and varied textures. And a creative coder (Motus) who uses algorithms and mathematics to explore the hidden beauty within numbers. 

Their ilumz brainchild is an algorithm with a human touch and the intelligence to not just replicate painted works but to redraw, reconfigure and recreate. Composition is at the core, so ilumz dynamically builds interaction and divergence into a symphony of shape. This fine balance creates a uniquely natural feel that isn’t overpowered by the algorithm for a distinct aesthetic – call it calm wonderment.

Ilumz is a journey from contrast to cohesion that blurs the boundary between physical art and digital craft. It fuses geometry with incidental imperfections of hand-drawn elements. And it’s full circle as Wolffia and Motus continue to catalyse (and challenge) each other’s thinking. You can see the humanity and the sense of partnership in every ilumz mint.

*“Chance, mistakes, serendipity... from abstract to algorithm we wanted our hybrid physical-digital project to sing of human touch.”*
*Wolffia Inc.*

*“Working out the rules for how shapes interact, collide and overlap to create unpredictable complexity opens so many opportunities to explore.”*
*Motus*

ilumz

Imagine a multidimensional and multitemporal space outside of reality, perhaps at the end of a black hole. Try to represent it with a code that transforms it into the changing variability of life, which encompasses all the nuances of human experience. This is Panelscape 🅰🅱, a composition that changes in the alpha values of the panels. Try to find your space, the representation of reality that best suits you.

Panelscape 🅰🅱

_There are no artifacts. There are only interpretations._

Glass is about the illusion of simplicity that cocoons us in our everyday existence. A glance at Glass may suggest a foam of bubbles or pebbles under clear water. But on inspection, these simple pictures dissolve. Instead of disks one finds stacked panes of translucent glass, intersecting and overlapping. There is dissonance between fine-scale chaos and the harmony of the aggregate. In Glass, two levels of reality -- panes of glass and the foam of bubbles -- are brought close together in scale, so that our oversimplified impression yields a palpable disquiet.

What appears simple is often anything but. Consider a standard wooden desk. To our eyes, it looks solid and continuous, but we know that it is made of atoms, tiny electrons orbiting nuclei. And these subatomic particles are themselves not like miniature solar systems, but creatures of quantum mechanics, stranger than we can imagine. The vast difference in scale between the atomic and the macroscopic hides this complex reality, but fundamentally it is the same phenomenon shown here.

Glass continues my exploration of emergence. While in previous work I explored how simple systems can create complex, emergent forms, here the interest is in the converse: how coherence is often deceptive, masking a complex underlying reality.

Glass draws on the aesthetic of Shin Hanga artists Hiroshi Yoshida and Kawase Hasui, and abstract expressionist Sonja Sekula. In live view, Glass has ambient motion: the shadows evolve, imperceptibly slowly.

The following variations & controls are possible. You may need to click on the canvas before they are active. For a high-resolution output, use the pixel density controls. For example, on a standard laptop, an image saved at pixel density 5 will be approximately 3200 x 4000 pixels, and therefore suitable for printing at ~ 11" x 13" at 300 dpi.

Variations (require redrawing):

f -- fit-to-screen on/off
o -- outline on/off

Controls:

s   -- save as png
spacebar  -- pause/unpause ( useful to reduce CPU load in Live mode )
b -- border on/off ( useful for printing )
1-9  -- set pixel density (default=2 on retina displays)
+/-  -- increase/decrease pixel density

Glass

Dream Engine is an ethereal art project that allows us to see, hear and touch the heart of the blockchain by exploring its sleeping DNA. It generates an abstraction of sound and vision, enabling  us to 
listen to the blockchain while watching it dream. Dream Engine enhances the unique and subtle differences in each invocation to be as distinct as a retina scan. 
Borrowing an adjacency matrix from graph theory, we locate and connect neighboring nodes while sequencing an evolving soundtrack from each hash code letter. These are color coded and distinct to every composition. 
This piece is not just "on chain", it is "chain native" and exists so the code can render an unrepeatable audio-visual hash signature from the blocks DNA.
Dream Engine also uses psycho acoustic neural frequencies. These resonate in a hypnotic therapeutic musical monolith, with crests and lulls designed to interplay within our own space of creation, meditation ​and dreams. 
Each dream piece is reproducibly generated from its immutable hash. But you can mutate your own composition and use it as an instrument for artistic expression. Click play to engage music. 
Use your mouse, speech or keys to remix. Return clears canvas to create your own dream composition. When paired with sister project, Talking Blocks, 
they will interact creating an audio-visual feedback loop. Dream Engine lives in a dimension where ideas are born. “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” today they do.
For instructions to create in Live Mode and more, visit our website https://www.doreme.xyz


Dream Engine

This work is the product of a project to dwell undeletable souls on the blockchain. A system that generates human faces with different personalities and expressions from a minimum of code. After determining the personality from a hash, the face continues to change into various expressions. It is a living portrait, a fragment of minter's soul, forever adrift in the vast net.

Living organisms are coded by a sequence of the four bases in DNA, and a human DNA is composed of 3 billion base pairs. This is about 750 MB of information. And the difference in code between individual people is only 0.1%, or 750 KB. This slight difference creates all kinds of differences in appearance and physical functions. This is quite astonishing to our ordinary senses.

However, if we are surprised by this fact, we need to suspect our senses.

I was interested in these points and explored what are the elements by which people identify the faces and facial expressions of others, how little code can create personality and emotion, and conversely, to what extent can an observer identify personality and facial expressions. As a result, I succeeded in expressing the personalities, emotions, and complex feelings of various people with 14 KB of code.

We like to think of humans are supernatural and one-of-a-kind. This is a common background to the past, when many people favored the Ptolemaic theory.

However, this work leads us to suspect that we humans are only a program that can be coded.

Then, what is the essential difference between a code written in DNA and a code written in programming language? I believe the only difference is whether the execution space is real or digital space. Is it a prerequisite for the existence of the soul to operate an organic computer in real space? It is merely a medium.

This is not meant to be pessimistic, such as we are mere code, the soul does not exist and is an illusion, a mere electrical signal in the brain.

Rather, the soul, the function that makes us aware of our existence, makes us think, causes us to emotion, and makes us act, certainly dwells in the code.

I store this code on the blockchain, thereby spreading undeletable ghosts on the vast net forever.

In this work, the ghost is output on the net by minting. This act is part of the work. The personality of the ghost is also determined by the hash owned by the minter. In other words, the ghost output by you from the code on the blockchain is a fragment of your soul on the net.


[NOTES]

Press C to turn canvas on/off
Press S to save image

Art Blocks Presents

GHOST IN THE CODE #27

Kazuhiro Tanimoto

More in Art Blocks Presents

ilumz

Wolffia Inc. & Motus Art

Panelscape 🅰🅱

Paolo Tonon

Glass

Eric De Giuli

Dream Engine

REMO x DCsan

Art

Company

Learn