Algorithmic botany

L-systems are a specialized language pioneered by biologist Aristid Lindenmayer during the 1960s to describe the organizational structure of plants. This grammar system takes advantage of the self-similarity exhibited by nature to model the growth and branching patterns of plants and can be incorporated into algorithms to generate 2D/3D structures.

What is most striking about L-systems is how expressive they are as a language. They are yet another example of complexity arising from simple rules, and how we can harness the power of randomness to yield a rich set of outputs.

Genuary

One program per day for 31 days in January. Well not quite... Prompts are a great way to break out of your comfort zone, learn techniques, and find inspiration for future projects. It's an exciting time when many of the artists I follow emerge from their creative pursuits (and other rabbit holes) to share their daily creations. Thank you to @piterpasma and contributors for the prompts and a lot of fun to bring in the new year.

Art programming interfaces

Inspired by the "art as an api" idea demonstrated by Terraforms by Mathcastles. The idea being, art itself can serve as a input into another piece of work. With Terraforms, there is the Hypercastle - a Hyperstructure made up of thousands of individual components that can be directly queried for information.

terraform art --generate-random

Generative faces

A truly generative attempt at a picture for proof / profile pic (PFP) series. Here was a curated set of fifty unique outputs from thousands. Algorithmic faces are hard, at least in the absence of hard-coded features and obsessive curation.

This algorithm starts with a basic rectangle partitioning scheme to get the head. It has an edge detection component to remove corner partitions and round adjacent tiles, giving a face-like appearance. It uses various colors, grid schemes, and pattern tiling to give a robot-esque vibe.

Note: The image shown is not part of the original set. It was a 1/1 curated output using an improved version of the algorithm (See v2), auctioned on Foundation.

Gravity series

There are five variants of my take on flow fields. Physics is often a useful framework to conceptualize what you want shapes to do or what features you're interested in. In this case, simple lines are undergoing various gravitational pulls. Every component of this work is a straight line. Within each field, there may be zero, one, two, or multiple gravity wells, of which each line's orientation is slightly altered by, depending on their distance, causing spiral patterns, implosions, or deep otrusions.

Glitch arose from a bug that caused a large skipping segment in the coloring portion of the algorithm. I just loved how it looked so much, sort of looks like a space zebra, I kept it in. Perhaps the gravity was too strong, leaving a small tear in the fabric of space.

Community-driven generative algorithms

Nine hundred and ninety nine [999] artifacts. Hand-crafted by the community, with a bit of algorithmic assistance. In creating generative algorithms, we trade control for spontaneity. We give up some control over the output to give way to random chance. Typically one parameterizes the random choices an algorithm can make and constrains them to some reasonable range of values. An interesting twist on this process is to let others set these parameters (rather than the machine).

Infinethum

A space for limited editioned generative art series. The first Powered by Art Blocks (PBAB) project - which uses Art Blocks contracts under the hood to power on-chain generative art.

The first project is called Coalescent, with complex patterns emerging from simple shapes and rules. Thirty six initial shapes defined within a coordinate grid system coalesce with each other, giving rise to unexpected patterns. Generative art variants showcase different aspects of the art, including the static print, base pattern, and dynamic visualization.

/De/cipher

An emerging scene in the crypto art space is generative art platforms and marketplaces. One of the most interesting is Block Art, a platform that mints using styles from artists and creative coders. This is the first instance where creative coders can actually sell an algorithm as an ERC721. Now what's really cool about it is the block hash determines most of the output, but one does have some control over the coloring and parameters. Hisorical blocks (like Block No. 1) drive a premium. Each time a block is used as input for generating a piece, the cost of subsequent mints are increased, therefore rewarding early users for minting on high-demand blocks.

A project called Decipher was released on Block Art, allowing individuals to customize their art based on a style called Cipher - an exploration of recursive partitioning algorithm - originally released on VIV3.

CMYK

Going on a CMYK journey with KnownOrigin. I put out a few single editions of curated generative art experiments there. Sadly KnownOrigin has since closed its doors.

Dynamic digital art

While digital art is a natural fit for tokenization, programmable art was destined to be encoded on-chain. The key distinction is code art can be rendered live, in real-time upon viewing (with just a browser). With Ethereum, code can be written as smart contract data - which can later be queried upon request. Generally it is cost prohibitive to store data in the world state of the EVM, particularly for images or videos, but concise and optimized generative art scripts are often only a few KBs in size, sometimes much smaller.