CENTURY 2052

Casey REAS

This artwork will “die” on 20 October 2052.

Today I’m 50.
Will I live to be 80?
Will I outlive this artwork?
Will this artwork outlive me?

The original CENTURY project is autobiographical. Creating art and experiencing art is the core of my life, and CENTURY is my homage to 20th Century artists. It’s a synthesis of their ideas.

CENTURY 2052 brings the endeavor to the 21st Century. It’s released as 50 unique artworks, one for each year since I was born. The artwork transitions from life to death at 6:44pm EST on October 20th 2052.

This isn't a commercial or public release. It’s a gift to others who have shaped the world of art that I inhabit.

F1 Angle

F2 Angle

F3 Angle

This sale has a fixed price of {base_price} in {currency_symbol}.

Last night I dreamed of Murano and of paperweights... 

"Murano Fantasy" is an tribute to glassmakers who, since Antiquity, have been producing murrines.
Murrines are assembled into paperweights, with different layouts.
The central cane, when present, is often sophisticated, and the paperweight might be signed by the artist.

As with real murrines, a part of the pleasure is to use a magnifying glass: press 'n' (next) or space to automatically focus on noteworthy canes; use 'p' (previous) to go back to previous cane; 'c' (clear) to reset zoom; and click wherever you wish.

Murano Fantasy

# Seedlings

"A young plant, especially one raised from a seed."

Each Seedling grows delicately on a windowsill gazing outside. A Seedling's natural environment–whether a grassy prairie, a rocky mountain, or by a river–is but a memory now, leaving a faded imprint on the canvas' outer border. Some Seedlings resemble trees and flowers, others may appear to be geometric abstractions and fractals–yet all feature interplay between filled patterned regions (leaves and petals) and lines of solid color (stems and branches). Other abstractions also make an appearance: circles representing fruits, stars, or the sun and moon; and a gradient sky with foggy clouds beyond the frames of the window.

## Foundation

The idea for Seedlings was sown in 2019 and was my first foray into Generative Art. It began as a study of fractal trees where each depth level was individually parametrized (angle of rotation, length, etc.). Initially just a hobbyist project in the pre-Art Blocks era, I returned to Seedlings in 2022 to develop it into the longform series, I believe, that most effectively highlights the underlying algorithm's potential. So, I rewrote Seedlings from scratch, turning its simple monochromatic line renderer into a WebGL shader renderer capable of transforming Bézier curves into abstract stems, branches, leaves, and petals with diverse and colorful palettes.

## Inspiration

Having lived much of my life in New York, one of the most urbanized cities in the world, I developed a significant appreciation for green spaces. The city's parks became a refuge from the urban sprawl–where one could touch some grass, breathe fresh air, and pretend they were somewhere else. In an attempt to fill more of my life with green, I placed some plants on my windowsill. The joy they bring my home inspired Seedlings.

Over the course of its development, Seedlings collected many stylistic influences, including Hokusai's trees, Charles Demuth's crisscrossing polygonal regions, and Alphonse Mucha's curves. As such, you will find elements of Ukiyo-e and Art Nouveau across the collection. Seedlings also contains stylistic elements found in my other work, such as ink-like outlining and the concept of shape overlap.

Additionally, I drew inspiration from contemporary longform Generative Art that aims to create complex emergent behaviors from the interactions of a small set of primitives. The structural patterns that form each Seedling are created purely from the probabilistic placement of their branches and petals.

## Dedication

Seedlings has been a labor of love and has particular sentimental value to me as the inception of my Generative Art practice. It feels fitting and very exciting to be given the opportunity to release Seedlings on Art Blocks, the original longform Generative Art platform. Thank you to everyone who helped and supported me during this journey.

Seedlings

“Our lives are patterns of the fabric produced by the loom of time and space” (Shohaku Okumura). Looms and computers share a history of entanglement, weaving together patterns of binary code. Warp is a work of generative textiles. Modulations of form are woven to create intricate structures, stretching the metaphor of a loom. 25% of artist’s proceeds will be donated to Alianza Arkana, a grassroots alliance committed to the protection and well-being of the Peruvian Amazon and the Shipibo-Konibo peoples.

Warp

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.

Art Blocks Presents

CENTURY 2052

Casey REAS

About CENTURY 2052

Casey REAS

Algorithmic edition of 50

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Art Blocks Presents

CENTURY 2052

Casey REAS

About CENTURY 2052

Casey REAS

Algorithmic edition of 50

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Additional details

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Murano Fantasy

Pandelune

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VES3L

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espina

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gcrll

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