Arcadia

*Arcadia* is a homage to the fridge-worthy landscape art of our youth. Childhood techniques of creating art are re-imagined by the scribbles of a nostalgic, computer-assisted mind.

**Spacebar**: Skip animation and load final image (useful when rendering in high resolutions)
**Up arrow**: Speed scribbles up (default speed is the highest)
**Down arrow**: Slow scribbles down

Palette

Alternate Paper Color

Border

Scribble Pressure

Scribble Roughness

Scribble Type

Mountain Type

Mountain Jaggedness

Mountain Height

Land Type

Sun Type

Cloud Type

Cloud Density

Has Rocks

Rock Density

Rock Size

Grass Height

Grass Density

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Compression has been the driving force behind the image-based internet since the early 90s. No compression, no Netscape, no social media, no NFTs. The JPEG compression has specifically enabled photography-based imagery on the net. It has always served that purpose and over time become the de facto default for showing high quality imagery online. But compression always leaves a trace, which has become the lens through which the network sees the world of uploaded images.

"A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience." ― Mark Rothko

JPEG tries to create an image programatically fully expressing that signature compression. An image that is like empty made from barely nothing, yet fully present in its blazing appearance. A work deeply material, expressing itself through the language of code and codec only. This is not a JPEG depicting an image. The JPEG is the image itself.

Delving into the depths and peculiarities of the digital, tethered to art history, JPEG found its way to the surface. Generated color fields are utilised to trigger the compressing algorithm, resulting in a world of raw visual entities. Where the abstract expressionists cut out the depiction in painting, aiming to let the artist convey pure emotion, JPEG cuts out the artist's emotion and lets it emerge from within the algorithm. Carefully you could categorize the work as *compressionism*. An art form where the machine speaks in its own raw language, but nevertheless makes a direct touch to our human heart.

JPEG is a collection of generative images in the JPEG file format. The work tries to break with the idea of the fixed file format, therefor creating the JPEG entirely from code using no image material whatsoever. The individual JPEGs are generated responsively at the moment of viewing based on the token hash as a random seed. You can literally drag the JPEG out from the browser window.

JPEG pays tribute to interface culture, and as such the work is responsive and not scaling. When the work is resized, the work is again rendered and compressed. When viewed smaller, details will disappear, yet the composition stays recognisable. It’s like stepping back to see a work from further away. The choice of color wanders from monochromatic tones to the brutality of complete randomness and everything in between.

In honour of the blockchain and the web, the work is written in vanilla JavaScript, using no dependancies, and generates a standard JPEG. This way the file is downloadable, aiming for a materiality that comes as close as possible to the standard browser.

JPEG

Our brains are well adapted to organize visual data in the form of previously recognized patterns. This means we usually have a very hard time just accepting pure abstraction. In the structures found in “Antennas”, this phenomenon not only resides in the eye of the spectator, but it also informs the creative process behind them. In the procedure that gives shape to these layers of simple overlapping geometry, I look to let intuition find ground in the known figurative world, in shapes we recognize and give ease to our cognition, working with code in a playful back and forth in order to find a balance between complexity and meaning.

Antennas

Radiance explores the combination of simple line patterns structured at different scale to produce unique connected geometric forms. Resulting shapes can vary from minimal to organic and intricate with an underlying modulation of line spacing radiating from center.

Radiance

THE SOURCE CoDE is a new techno-mystical framework that channels knowledge from source creation to our digital present. The medium of this knowledge is a set of unique 1024 “karma” cards minted in the Genesis phase of THE SOURCE CoDE. The Hash is a unique entity that drives all aspects of a single card.

THE SOURCE CoDE framework is based on 10 primitives, with each primitive representing a dimension of reality. Some cards have additional attributes that further empower the card holder. When you mint a card, an Intent is generated - the most powerful tool for navigating the endless possibilities in life.

Mint with purpose!

Art Blocks Presents

Arcadia

Zachariah Watson

About Arcadia

Zachariah Watson

Algorithmic edition of 256

Charitable giving

Creative credits

Additional details

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