The algorithm as a living number

Algorithmic Practice

These artworks are created using an algorithmic process: precise written instructions that tell a computer how to build color and textural elements and assemble them compositionally. Here, code is the medium and the algorithm represents the artist’s gesture and compositional instinct.

The artist does not relinquish authorship to an opaque system. This is not artificial intelligence, with a black box mediating between intention and outcome. Instead, code-based practice is a direct craft, closer to drawing or painting, where the artist explicitly defines the visual language, behaviors, and constraints of the work.

The algorithm as a living number

At its lowest level, all code is binary: long sequences of ones and zeros. These sequences can be understood as extraordinarily large numbers.

We can therefore think of the algorithm as a living number.

In this sense, when a new artwork is generated a new random number is fed to this large living number and a new artwork is born. Randomness in this system is not so much about giving up control, but rather it is a powerful means of exploring the possibility space of the algorithm. Because numbers are infinite, that space is also infinite yet always constrained by the DNA of the algorithm.

The result is a kind of algorithmic synesthesia: Where numbers have a direct expression as form, color and texture. The code artist is an explorer of a new synesthetic space of art making possibilities.

Work in progress

Although these works are intended for print and gallery display I want to create a convenient system for putting all the ingredients to make a physical work fully on chain. The dream is for the process of creation, the on-chain archiving, release interval and fabrication to evolve into a seamless practice. For me, the idea of evolving a group of algorithms over a long period of time and releasing the best examples of that evolution as they happen seems to be a more natural way to work. I will, of course, still release the occasional long form project, but generally, I'm starting to think about more organic ways to release algorithmic work in small related sets integrated with gallery exhibitions. An approach that supports a processes more than a final destination.

Short form curated collection

A supernova is the death process of stars with a certain mass. Throughout its life the nuclear fusion in a star's core provides outward pressure that balances the gravitational pressure created by it's vast mass. When a star has used the last of it's fuel gravity takes over and the star implodes in a matter of seconds. The inward shock wave can rebound causing one of the most powerful explosions we can observe in the universe. Supernovas can briefly outshine entire galaxies and radiate more energy than our sun will in its entire lifetime. They're also the primary source of heavy elements in the universe. Most of the atoms that make up you and our world would have been forged in a Supernova billions of years prior to the birth of our own sun. In short the Supernova is a story about cosmic death and rebirth. It is also a story about our own origins and the origins of all forms in the universe.

In western Art the story of the crucifixion is one of them most enduring motifs. I myself am not a Christian, but have always found this theme moving. The symbol of the crucifix is loaded with more cultural meaning than perhaps any other symbol in the West. For me there are parallels between the magnitude of this story within human culture and the scale of the Supernova within the cosmological story. I’ve often wondered if stars, planets and other celestial bodies are conscious. Indeed their internal structures and emissions are as complex and varied as those of any other living being. They also interact in complex societies, although obeying different constraints on a different scale of time and space. Does a star suffer as it dies? Does it have a sense that through its death new life is created? Is suffering universal at every scale throughout the universe? Is the desire to exist to serve others also universal?

Component algorithm for Manifold Unfolding

Work in progress

The Velum project is planned to be released in four movements over four or more years, like a generative art symphony. Each algorithm is evolved from the previous year. Like Velum I, Velum II is an experiment in pictorial space. For me this means how do I push elements off the surface and withdraw them behind the surface. The idea being to create a convincing pictorial volume without it being illusionistic. Strong outlines and well defined negative space simultaneously flatten the canvas creating tension with the push and pull of this space.

2010 to 2021 - Unpublished experiments