As I'm writing this, I have newly minted Fragment Assembler #243 up on a big screen in my office. I've been watching it in awe for the last 10 minutes while it's been building up the final form of the art piece in Live Mode. In landscape mode which is where it really shines.

Fragment Assembler is an excellent example of what I want to call Deconstructivism. It takes the perfect shapes that a computer can draw - straight lines, perfectly round circles, accurate angles - and slowly break them down while building up the artwork. The starting point looks like any other canvas with lines and circles. And it ends up as a chaotic symphony of broken lines, detached segments, crisscrossing shadows and colored patches. Nothing is left whole, everything is in shambles. And it's beautiful.

::tezos-storage-pointer[]{contract="KT1U6EHmNxJTkvaWJ4ThczG4FSDaHC21ssvi" path="token_metadata::1116664"}

Deconstructivism seems to me like a challenging undertaking for a generative artist. Computer graphics are built to make perfect shapes with no defects. Areas like design, diagrams and digital art benefit greatly from this perfection. Imagine architecture diagrams with crooked lines, that simply doesn't work. Generative artists work with the same JavaScript canvas as webdesigners, and it takes great skill to use these tools to produce something that does not look perfectly aligned.

In Fragment Assembler, Toiminto[ ](https://www.fxhash.xyz/u/toiminto)is masterly applying layers of changes and transformations that gradually build up the final chaotic artwork. Watching it in Live Mode is very much like listening to a great symphony. It starts humble, applies more force gradually, vaxes and vanes until it builds up to a perfect crescendo. And when you think it's done, it's really just an artistic pause before the next powerful change hits the canvas. It leaves you wondering if you'll ever get to see it completed. And then, just like a symphony, it ends with a loud finale.

![](ipfs://QmaLS9b1rfW97XT3nqw4hUpYY8VnY7TYvkVrJX2jY1D92Q)

Whether to animate a piece of generative art can be a hard choice to make. The animation has to add to the experience to be valuable. Some animated projects reveal too much of how it's made with the animation, but that is not the case here. Toiminto is deconstructing the canvas before our eyes, slowly, by gradually applying changes that add to the complexity. It's not obvious what the next move will be. After watching this many times both for the same and for different minted outputs, I still cannot predict what the next move is. That is a great feat and makes me admire this project even more. I urge you to take some time to explore the variations below and open up your favorite color palette in Live Mode.

::tezos-storage-pointer[]{contract="KT1BJC12dG17CVvPKJ1VYaNnaT5mzfnUTwXv" path="ledger::18495" data_spec="FX-GEN-DATA-002"}


An Ode to Fragment Assembler as a poster project for deconstructivism in generative art.

Deconstructivism in Generative Art: Fragment Assembler

Written by

Editions

Share

Details