*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

Arcadia

**"A nice place to live if you are made of pixels"**

As digital beings, we have been playing, working, making friends in a virtual world for many years. 
Metropixeland is a vibrant metropolis where our pixels can live in peace.

Enjoy a relaxing experience with nostalgic vibes.

Learn more in the project site. 

                      ~         
                        __     ~
             ~         |::| ~  ~
            __ __      |::|     
           |..| .|   __| :|     
        ___|n_|__|__|n_|__|_____

**Interaction**
**Click & Drag** mouse for camera control.
**Keys: 1,2,3** changes to different 2D projections. Any other key or mouse-click goes back to Isometric.
**Key '0' (zero)** swaps between transparent background and default sky. Useful for screenshoting and editing.

Metropixeland

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

Quilted landscapes in homage to the desert. 51% of the minting sales proceeds from Patchwork Saguaros will be donated to the Nancy Rockland-Miller Scholarship fund, held by The Kent State University Foundation. To learn more, please check out my introduction blog post for the project: https://bit.ly/3tGPVd3

Patchwork Saguaros

A study in composition using simple shapes and layout rules. When repetitive patterns fail, and the symmetry isn't quite right, the images are strangely evocative. Somewhere between art deco, pop art, and sci-fi.

Art Blocks Presents

Arcadia #1

Zachariah Watson

More in Art Blocks Presents

Metropixeland

Fernando Jerez

JPEG

Jan Robert Leegte

Patchwork Saguaros

Jake Rockland

Eccentrics

Radix

Art

Company

Learn