1x1x100 - Onchain algorithm - Bright Moments

Inspired by the question: What do you get if you blend the visual DNA of two mid 20th Century artistic movements into a 21st Century generative art algorithm? The original ideas evolved by Abstract expressionism and Pop art tell very different stories in the history of post war American art. My approach however is more about just stealing from the visual lexicon of mark-making that characterizes these movements ignoring much of the contextual conversations around these works. When I started out building my first primitive for Velum I was picturing in my mind something that looked more like a gestual paint-stroke typical of abstract expressionistic painting. Adding Pop art stylised outlines to the structures however separated them from the background and gave them a floating quality. Liking this effect I quickly forgot about my first idea of making paint strokes to explore the emerging curtain-like elements and found ways to make them dance.

< 1x1x3550 - Composite community co-creation experiment - Verse Solos

In this project, collectors mint art tiles with randomly assigned edge properties that enable them to be joined together to create new artworks using a tool called the Composite Builder. Collectors can choose to participate in the project in two ways:

1. Treat the Composite Builder as a creative playground with the incentive of making the most visually compelling composites and be led by their own artistic instincts.
2. Build composites with strict joining rules, invest time, energy and money to collect specific tiles and create hard-to-make limited edition Black and White Dragons. The incentive here being creating quantifiable rarity which has become a significant feature of Web 3 art.

One open question framed by the project is which incentive does the community care more deeply about?

1x1x60 - Print first - Vertu Fine Art

Cove: a small sheltered bay; a concave arch

Hithe: a small port, harbor or haven especially on a river

Covehithe is an expression of my deep connection to a remote stretch of coastline near my hometown in England. Rather than setting out to create literal landscape scenes I wanted to find a new authentically algorithmic interpretation of the landscape. This means using certain rudiments of landscape art as primitives in a process that is true to generative art making. Covehithe is my most evolved work to-date in terms of combining multiple texture algorithms in an attempt to create surfaces that look like they have been abraded and discolored by the churning of the sea. Another key goal of this work is to capture the sense of nostalgia, mystery and ambiance I associate with Covehithe. This expressly emotive concern I feel has not been explored so much within generative art.

Event Driven Experiment at Marfa 2023 - Art Blocks Exploration

The marfaMESH was (what I’m calling) an 'event-driven' algorithmic artwork that took place at the 2023 Art Blocks Marfa Weekend. Everyone attending was given a IYK NFC powered lanyard and were required to download the marfaMESH app built by my collaborator on this project Shane Richardson. Participants were able to record interactions by tapping their phones to other people's lanyards, at which point they were prompted to take a picture. Abstracted color and compositional data from the photos together with geolocation and time was then used to build a node within the artwork. Nodes were clustered according to location and the time affected the background color of the art. Therefore, as more interactions were made the art evolved in real-time into personal artistic chronicles of connections with people and places. All artworks were finalized at the end of the weekend and minted for free to participants as an Art Blocks Explorations project.

The original concept for marfaMESH was to come up with an ice breaker that would help people connect during the entire weekend. In this sense the project was an overwhelming success. I believe event-driven algorithmic art has a huge potential to as a means of co-creating art mementos that help to structure memories of events and create meaningful connections. Feedback at Marfa Weekend 2024 increased my belief in this method as many people expressed disappointment that there was no Mesh project that year. A common comment was that it was much easier to meet new people in 2023 with Mesh!

1x1 - Sotheby's

Algorithmic Disney dystopia

Vibrant, colorful and energetic forms coupled with a sense of disorder, decay and discoloration. Synthetic cartoonery and ridiculous geometry combined with deep organic texture and waveform entrail-like artifacts. In this visual story I can see a landscape at the edge of a bizarre world both simultaneously jubilant and menacing. A place where the last remnants of structure and order are in the final stages of disintegration. Think alien Disney world being pulled apart in the event horizon of a black hole, being stretched and scrambled into an abyss of eternal entropy.

1x1 - Ordinals - Gucci + Christie's

The archival exhibition, Gucci Cosmos, explores the House's century-spanning creativity through various thematic lenses—from the origin myth set in a famed London hotel to the ongoing equestrian narrative all the way to a new signature shade of red. Using generative systems, nine artists each hand one of these era-defining themes over to new horizons.

1x1x150 - Proof Grails

This series explores rudimentary and mutating networks. Crude interconnecting webs of primordial elements. I love the idea of a network coming online in terms of self awareness. Networks seem to pervade all of life from the vast Mycelium webs in forests through to the circulatory, nervous and neurological systems in our own bodies. More inspiring for me however is thinking about the first pulses of life that evolved in microbial networks in ancient epochs and also the possibility of self awareness evolving quietly and wildly within the interconnected machinery of the internet. This series of artworks I hope are a playful expression of my fascination with this subject.