«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.

Ottocento

Space Birds begin with three simple polygon forms; triangles, quadrilaterals and pentagons. Combined and layered, they twist and morph their shapes as they rotate in space, mimicking the appearance of an unfolding bird-of-paradise flower while other objects orbit around them. Keyboard shortcuts: Hold the mouse button down to pause the animation. Type 's' or 'S' to save a screenshot. Drop Mechanic: Dutch Auction with a starting price of 2Ξ and price decreasing by 0.25Ξ every 5 minutes. 
Pricing Tiers: 2Ξ > 1.75Ξ > 1.5Ξ > 1.25Ξ > 1Ξ >0.75Ξ > 0.5Ξ > 0.25Ξ 

Twenty-five percent (25%) of the artist’s proceeds from the minting of Space Birds will be divided among the following charities: Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Lymphoma Research Foundation, The International Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia Foundation, and the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center at University of Missouri Hospital.

Space Birds

Mind Maze is a contemplative and meditative experience, a wandering above an ever changing labyrinth, a cryptic message scrolling endlessly. Mind Maze explores the relationship between mindset and worldview, drawing parallels between communication and mental health, especially in these troubled times.

With strong references to the labyrinth metaphor, but also borders, cities and calligraphy, Mind Maze plays with shapes, colors and movements to create an infinite space reflecting our need to explore and find answers, but also the endless expanse of our doubts, and the barriers constituted by our language and our cultural constructions.

As often in my work, this piece is inspired by the hypnotizing movements of nature, trying to make an organic feeling emerge from cold geometry shapes. A reflection on how a host of independent, autonomous, different elements can come together to form a whole, a new coherent entity.

Mind Maze is also my genesis piece on the Etherum blockchain, which means it’s my first NFT project offered on this blockchain. It’s written in Javascript using the ThreeJs library. It makes extensive use of GPU instancing, via custom shaders, to be able to draw and animate all the shapes in an optimized way. 

- Move your mouse to interact
- Press “s” key to save a high-resolution still (5760x3240px)

Mind Maze

Strata explores the field of geology and more specifically rock layering. In the physical world, layered rocks form when particles settle from water or air. These layers of sedimentary rock are called strata. In the digital world, the Strata algorithm generates layer upon layer of colors to draw the impression of rock layering. Each token hash decides the unique path Strata takes through the generative space to the final output.

Strata

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

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