*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

"Seadragons" is a generative catalogue of imaginary sea creatures from Syngnathidae family. Each seadragon belongs to one of the real Weedy, Leafy or Ribboned species, while the patterns and the small leaf-like appendages are an artistic interpretation. The dragons are rendered in real-time allowing you to watch them slowly drifting in the water or moving your mouse to nudge them slightly.

This project is a continuation of my long term fascination with using code to recreate forms and patterns occurring in nature. By using a range of non-photorealistic rendering techniques I strive to document those explorations as if they were actual sketches, posters or biological illustrations of the encountered specimens. Algorithmic variations of their patterns, sizes, colors, poses, complexity and surrounding seaweed present in each artwork are only a minor drop compared to the diversity observed in natural environments. 

15% of profits will be donated to oceana.org for protecting and restoring the world’s oceans on a global scale. Another 10% will be donated to givewell.org.




Seadragons

Perfectly symmetric - imperfectly drawn. Exploring the contrast between precision and chance in a playful spacecraft / papercraft setting. 

Paper Armada

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

Recursion is a generative art project whose concept is recursion. Each variation starts with a block which is irregularly divided into smaller blocks, which are then divided into smaller blocks, which are then divided into smaller blocks, etc, based on a defined depth (to better visualize this concept, take a look at https://hevey.art/blog/recursion-concept). In this project, even the script is recursive! The script is able to generate a large number of variations and each of these variations is then able to generate its own variations (keeping the same properties) with a single click on the image.

Art Blocks Presents

Arcadia #212

Zachariah Watson

More in Art Blocks Presents

Seadragons

Marcin Ignac

Paper Armada

Kjetil Golid

JPEG

Jan Robert Leegte

Recursion

Hevey

Art

Company

Learn