Seventeen

s p e c t r u m s o f o u r e n t a n g l e d h o r i z o n s — We all live in the same Minkowski cone.

Defining and implementing abstractions is more practice than elaboration. Interfaces built through formal languages are shaped by a shared praxis whose consensual lessons are established as standards. The use of such normalised means to create art pieces is hence an intuitive deviation: tools fashioned as means to an end are often used for purposes that appear to be the exact opposite of their raison d’être. Recent technosocial developments have enabled the tentative burgeoning of an economy nurturing these deviant applications. A new wave of the so-called “generative art” milieu is attempting to mobilise both factors of production, capital and labour, to augment the manufacturing of such algorithms. While the nature of each factor is apparently unremarkable, their intersection in this space does yield an idiomatic result. Humans and tools which are engaged in this practice, because they are incentivized to systematically share the outputs of their research, participate in the transformation of both factors and, as such, in their own. The generative art milieu is building an attempt to seize the means of generation.

Four events in the summer of 2022 placed fxhash-based generative art in the spotlight, putting the relationship between the legacy art world and generative art community into focus. While large legacy art world institutions (Art Basel, Sotheby's, Christie's) have begun embracing on-chain generative art, the dealer sector remains skeptical. How can a bridge of appreciation be built between these worlds to ensure an inclusive future of creativity?

From the Front Lines of Art Blocks Anonymous (originally written in Fall 2021)

We released the seeds at midday, following our best computer predictions, hoping against all odds that they'd travel far, re-seeding the earth, sowing a future for us. It was months since the fall, since that terrible moment containment failed; quarantine failed; humanity itself failed. We called it ‘The Last Days’—unoriginal, perhaps, but descriptive all the same–and shook our heads in despair at our hubris, at the price we'd paid. This would make it all right. Our computer model, proving we still had hope, that we'd make it all go away. The seeds would float on the wind, drifting into the tortured air, and carry with them new life. And we would live again.

Particles, forces, horizon // 🜂 ⇶ ⁂ Ω 🜁 ↺ // ∰ 🜴 🜔 ≋ ∂t ↺

Tych started as an exploration of the collaboration between human and computer in generative work. Tych is an attempt to bring personality to a generative system, combining fundamental aspects of computer generated art (Grids and high frequency of repetition) and human created art (Inconsistency and random misalignment on each stroke).