https://www.katevassgalerie.com/blog/artblocks-marfa-weekend-milestones

It’s an honour to have my work recognized for innovation, as it’s an attribute I strive for. It also represents a personal milestone, where my art practice matured from early learnings into one where I began to find my voice, develop unique styles, and could craft with greater purpose. I chose to embrace digital aesthetics of code-based artworks at a time when many of my peers were focused on replicating traditional mediums digitally; an impressive feat in its own right, but one that didn’t resonate with me at the time.

Experimenting with a shader rendering technique known as raymarching to evaluate the shape of signed distance function of a 3D object, I discovered a way to modify the typical algorithm that effectively “unwraps” the subject onto a infinitely stretched out canvas. When stretched out this way, the render effectively draws the shape from all angles while the light calculations remain preserved on the surface prior to unwrapping. What this means is you see both the light and shadow side of a three dimensional object. I chose a twisted torus for it’s intertwined segments and smooth surface because once unfolded, it renders beautiful bands of light and dark while producing smooth gradients.

I was reminded of visualizations I experienced while meditating years ago. Behind closed eyes, I would imagine colourful bands of light flowing in sync with the rhythmic drones and chimes of the music being played by my instructor. I wanted to re-create this experience.

At the time I had grown a small collection of hardware synthesizer for making music and had become familiar with subtractive audio synthesis as a process so I began to explore how to build a similar structure in the web browser.

I ended up using the Tone.js library to construct a synthesis engine and post-processing stack that would allow me to generate a constant tone. To this I added some code that would look at the image being rendered for it’s overall brightness, horizontal luminance averages, etc. and mapped these evaluations to waveform partials, note volumes, and high-pass filter frequency cutoffs. In this way, the visuals would directly map to the audio being generated.

I’m thrilled to have Flux once again exhibiting in Marfa, Texas for an audience of generative art collectors and appreciators. I will unfortunately not be attending this year, but if you’re on the way I hope you’ll make time to visit the gallery and give it a watch / listen.

If you’re not in attendance, you can always experience it directly on my website — click the “Play” button in the bottom-left, and then click the artwork to activate the experience.

https://www.owmo.studio/artwork/flux/304

Here is where I was going to share a new video where I talk more about what Flux means to me as an artist and walk through how it works… but I’ve been sick for the last week and my window of opportunity to film & release has passed. So, I’ll just re-share an old episode of Behind the Code where I share many of the technical details of how Flux works instead.

Say No to Vlogs!

A few weeks ago, I was thinking to produce bi-weekly “vlog” style videos where I share what I’m up to every day. But after a few days I decided to scrap this idea because it was stressing me out; I felt it got in the way of actually getting something done and frankly, I don’t have the mind to just talk to the camera without any prep.

Trying to figure out a content strategy that works for me is proving very difficult.

Instead, I’ll shoot B-Roll as I work on projects and simply collect / organize that footage so it is available later. Once I hit a milestone where it’s worth sharing, I’ll craft a proper narrative and film a presentation that can use this B-Roll as supplemental visuals.

I had really wanted to avoid writing scripts and doing pre-production because I don’t intend to be a creative film maker, so it felt like wasted time. But given I want to build an audience and don’t have enough experience to just hit record and blabber on about something in a way that is coherent / entertaining… it’s unavoidable and so I’m shifting strategy again!

Sadly that means some of the footage I shot wrapping up my Entropy Portraits project is mostly useless, so I figured I’ll just share the end result. Here’s my happy family!

I chose a fragmented style for myself (left) because I felt it best represented the type of art I love creating. For my partner (middle), I chose something with a bit more flow and mystique so it would feel more feminine. And for our dog Pistachio (right) I went closer to realism than I normally would with my art because I wanted it to be visually readable as a cute portrait that we could hang above his bed. Not everything I make has to be serious fine art, right?

I wasn’t planning to do much more with this experiment, but if you happen to want one for yourself I’m open to commissions. Just send me an email with what you might want and we can see what the algo can come up with for a custom signed print — hello@owmo.studio

Thanks for taking the time to read, I’ll catch y’all next time!

Self Portrait with Code

Every artist needs a good self portrait, right?

About a year ago I got an amazing headshot that I can use for all those fancy-pants art gallery and residence applications I never actually end up submitting. It’s a great mugshot but what I really want is something that captures both my likeness and the essence of my style in creating art. Something kind of like Vincent van Gogh’s self portraits.

But… I don’t paint, draw, sculpt, collage, etc. I’m effectively useless in traditional mediums so I needed to think of a data-driven solution. Looking at my headshot, I realized there was more than enough data to transform it or generate approximations that I could feed into my code.

I selected my Entropy collection as my basis — an algorithm that I continue to explore and am curating slowly which best represents the style of art I love creating. Each artwork is rendered from 7 to 13 stacked layers, each progressing from dark to light, large fragments to small, and an evolving comparator determining the compositional overlap.

Perhaps I could guide the layers of logic using texture maps generated from my photo?

We live in a wonderful world of AI magic, and so I quickly discovered open source models for generating depth estimations. It didn’t take much to add edge detection and feature masks for my mouth and eyes. These masks were then used to modify my code, including:

Warping the domain-space of the raymarch projection using the depth map to get a visual flow along the gradient as it transitions from near to far along my face

• Adjusting the scale of fragmentation based on the luminance of the input image

• Adding offsets and quantization to my eyes to increase contrast and readability

• Ensuring the comparison logic builds up more as it reaches the near-point

You can catch a glimpse of the process of going from idea to functioning prototype in this “vlog” style video I was trying out. I ramble a bit, but there’s some fun stuff in there!

At present, I’m still generating samples and combing through the outputs in my impossible task to curate infinity down to one perfect self portrait. I should probably just pick a bunch and code up a “show random render on hover” method of presenting these.

Which, now that I think about it, might be the MOST suitable way for someone who codes algorithmic artwork to present a self portrait… 🤔

And of course…

I just had to try it out on a cute photo of my dog, Pistachio!

YouTube “Branding” Dilemma

At times, I worry too much about strategy and over-think things. And after having started my YouTube channel recently in a long-term effort to build an audience and professional creative presence online, I fell into that mindset for a while.

Every bit of advice I read or listened to about “doing YouTube” seemed to suggest picking a single niche and running with it. Makes sense, so what’s the problem?

I’ve never been able to stick with one thing for too long in my entire life!

I revel at being a multifaceted creative and love exploring new mediums. The past few years where I focussed solely on algorithmic art was an anomaly. And as the financial incentives have all but disappeared in that market, my other creative pursuits have started to come to the foreground alongside; music production, audio synthesis, maker builds, etc.

How do I reconcile my goals, my varied interests, and how YouTube seems to work?

TL;DR — By defining a “Personal Brand” around who I am, what I believe and my spirit, I can create content over time in a variety of mediums, while still having necessary cohesion.

Thus, I’ve renamed this newsletter to Audio-Visual Art & Design by OWMO to align with my more flexible perspective in what creative projects I chose to present to the world. I have plenty of algorithmic art in the works, but will also surface my interests in synthesizers and music production alongside. Ultimately, I want to bridge all of these interests together into larger scope experiences, but I need to remind myself to take one step at a time 😅

Roadmap Ahead

I’ll wrap up this newsletter with just a few things I want to commit to:

• Bi-Weekly YouTube Videos — Every two weeks for at least a year. I need to get good at video production, storytelling, speaking on camera, etc. and there’s only one way to do that. It’ll be a mixed bag as I try different formats, subjects, filming techniques, etc.

• Monthly Newsletters — I haven’t been consistent and that needs to change. I also need to force myself to share my work with others, and nothing beats needing photos for a monthly newsletter. I’m aiming for more “show” and less “tell” as I really enjoy that style when other artists hit my inbox.

• Algorithmic Art — I have a prioritized list and going to get cracking on new works!

• Generative Music — I’ve tinkered but am diving deep at the moment, more TBA.

That’s all for now, thank you once again for your interest and time!

Have a great September!

Yet the change from a “3” to a “4” in the leading digit of my number of times around the sun has made me face my inevitable mortality. Am I happy with life so far? What do I yet want to accomplish? What should I do to achieve my goals?

🔥 Dealing with Burn-Out

As I write today, I am at peace. But for the last month I was dealing with burn out for a long while without realizing it. Every day felt like a slow march with no end in sight with an ever-present anxiety pushing me to produce “something of value” every day. I had worked hard without break for far too long, only taking a week and occasional long weekends off over the span of years. I never felt I had enough time to get things done, which was compounded by diminishing returns on my productivity.

I went to the gym one day to try and burn off my frustrations — hitting the heavy bag with boxing gloves usually works wonders — only to return home with these feeling.

“Why am I still so frustrated!?” — “Oh! I’m burned out and need a break…”

This occurred about a month ago. Since then, I’ve been taking time to go outside to enjoy the sunshine. Long walks with my dog. Writing thoughts into a journal to reflect on everything important to me. Created peaceful music. Made an effort to observe the beauty of my surroundings. Basically zero pressure, do what I feel like doing.

I feel rested once again and recognize that going forward, I must take a minimum of four weeks of leave per year from my practice (much like an employer would give). I may enjoy what I do, but it’s necessary to take time off. And I suspect, it will provide me with renewed energy that will make what I create even better!

💡 New Decade, New Goals

I’ve been thinking deeply on how to transform my practice into one that is sustainable long term. What I was doing before won’t work going forward, but I want to continue making algorithmic artwork — alongside other creative pursuits — and make a living from it in some way. I needed a new business plan where I provide value to others in order to pay my bills, keep my creative flow going, and can work with who I am as a person; a soft spoken introvert who enjoys deep uninterrupted work in solitude.

My creative work had stalled because I didn’t know how to satisfy these conditions beyond just selling my artwork directly. And I wasn’t willing to burn through my nest egg just to create for the joy of it, knowing I’d have to return to a 9-to-5 existence devoid of my current creative freedoms.

🧠 “You enjoy watching creatives on YouTube and they seem to make a decent living…”

Huh… could it be that simple? Document my work on video in an engaging way and build up an audience that could support me? It would take a bit more effort to make the videos, but maybe it could be a way to keep my creative practice going?

I’ve spent the last two weeks learning Davinci Resolve — I can’t believe this software is free to use — for it’s professional editing and color grading features. At the same time, I’ve learned how to use my iPhone 15 Pro with the Blackmagic Camera App to record ProRes 422 Apple LOG footage to get the absolute best quality source video I can with what I have today. I also invested a bit of money to build a mini-rig for my phone so I can be ready to shoot in a moment’s notice throughout the day.

• Davinci Resolve Training

• Blackmagic Camera IOS

• DJI Mic Mini wireless microphone kit

• JJC 67mm ND Filter (2-128) for iPhone

• TWOPAN Usb-C iPhone Hub for ProRes Video Recording

• ORICO 512GB Magnetic portable SSD

• EUCOS 62” Phone Tripod / Selfie Stick

• KPON Magsafe Power Bank 1000mAh

It’s actually been pretty fun to re-learn video production and I could see how I might use it creatively down the line once I get better at the basics.

📋 Business Strategy

After watching countless videos on content creation strategy from artists who I feel are successful, here’s what I’m thinking:

• Make artwork, music and projects that are fulfilling

• Focus on YouTube and SubStack to build audiences

• Forget social media, it’s a waste of time (Insta, X, BlueSky, etc.)

• Document interesting moments, thoughts, techniques, etc. on video

• Produce “vlog” style videos for YouTube, occasional focussed topics

• Write shorter “update” style newsletters, occasional breakdowns

• Provide value to subscribers first, include sales focussed CTAs second

• Release artwork, ebooks, tutorials, asset packs, etc. for revenue

I feel good about this strategy. It doesn’t require me to go out and try to network in person or constantly post in hopes an algorithm picks me that day. I can just create, document and share consistently; compounding interest via evergreen content.

Let’s see what my 40’s can bring to life!

Music Study

I am not a student of music. I grew up teaching myself to play guitar by ear and reading tabs for songs I enjoyed, which are simple text files uploaded by other hobbyists that indicate where to place your fingers on the guitar neck. Instead of learning how to construct chords, I memorized finger positions, and instead of understanding what a key is and how to stay in it, I fumbled around the neck for what sounded good. Not a terrible approach, as it trained my ear, but certainly a far cry from being able to communicate and use the tools professional musicians employ daily. If only music education had incorporated modern music to give it some flavour and relevance, rather than relying solely on classical studies — an utter bore to a young mind that enjoys punk and metal.

Fast-forward 20 years, and I’m looking for a new musical hobby to complement my guitar skills. Having never given much thought to the bleeps and bloops that shape so much of the music I know, I stumbled upon synthesizers: fantastical boxes bursting with knobs, buttons, and blinking lights that would make any Star Trek fan with a home-built control console envious. But instead of piloting a starship, they transport you to other worlds through sound design. Even better, you can program them to play sequences on their own — I could jam along to my own tracks!

Synth that moment, I’ve slowly grown my collection and spent far more than I should have on a hobby. Early on I released an EP after learning the basics, but knew I needed to study my instruments more deeply and sound design itself (Syntorial is excellent for this). I experimented with various 8-bar loops and found inspiration from many musical artists on YouTube, so I started producing more tracks.

What I made sucked.

The kind of music only your Mom is proud of — thanks Mom ❤️

While you should always create for yourself, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to improve and share something others enjoy. I wasn’t going to uncover new insights or exciting opportunities in music production with what I was making, largely because I had hit the brick wall of my music theory ignorance.

There was no questioning it anymore — I needed to learn music theory (and better production techniques) if I wanted to progress. For a little over a year now, I’ve made a concentrated effort to learn everything I can about scales, modes, chord structures, progressions, inversions, composition, mixing, mastering, and more. I only wish I had done this when my brain was more plastic and adaptable. But as I apply what I’ve learned in my practice sessions, everything is starting to click. Now what?

Just… Make… Music!

Instead of making 8-bar loops in my “ideas” folder and calling it a day, my new mantra is to finish tracks. I’ve heard it said that you need to complete at least 100 tracks to find your sound and develop technical competence. So that’s what I’m doing; creating at least 100 raw jams and uploading them to YouTube. Along the way, if I really like a track, I may release it as a proper single or bundle a few into an album, but my primary goal is simply to finish producing music.

Producing with Probability

Great! I now have a production goal—but with so many competing theories and skills to practice, where do I begin!? Powering up all my gear and sitting down often left me overwhelmed with choices. More often than not, I’d just play something familiar to “get warmed up,” only to lose the time I had set aside for producing. Then I remembered an age-old tenet of the creative process…

Constraints inspire creativity!

But what kind of constraints should I choose? I could limit myself to a subset of my gear and see what I can create with it in isolation. Perhaps I could pick a genre and try composing in that style. Maybe I could do a cover song to focus on sound design and analyze how music theory was applied. Or what if I handed over composition entirely to my gear, using its generative features?

And there it was—the inevitable realization that I could apply my experience in algorithmic artwork to my music practice. Of course, I’ll still compose music traditionally, but algorithmic design offers a unique advantage.

By offloading many compositional decisions to the machines, I can constrain the overall scope of my work, allowing for deep focus in other areas. I’d have more time for sound design, intentional mixing, experimenting with different ways of triggering notes, adding nuance with occasional sounds, using post-effects creatively, and modulating everything over longer periods.

I started exploring these ideas in this generative jam track. It’s a bit dark and ugly, which I can only assume is my subconscious expressing itself from all the dread and anxiety I’ve felt over the last little while (🇨🇦😡👉…🎃🇺🇸), but I enjoyed making it and can’t wait to dig deeper into the generative features of the Deluge, M8 and Zoia!

Here’s hoping I can bring some more positive and calming energy in my next one ❤️

You haven’t been creative coding?

No, well… yes… but not in the way I have been for years now.

While I’ve loved working full-time as an algorithmic artist over the past few years, opportunities have been harder to come by lately. Last year, I dedicated significant time to a collaboration (with revenue split) that is now on indefinite hold due to market conditions. I also overhauled my website, art API, engine, and automation to prepare for the next phase of my art practice. I then invested in a fine art printer and launched my art shop — only to see zero sales.

I still have engaging work in progress — a different collaboration, a sculptural motion work seeking placement — but suffice to say I needed to re-think my career strategy.

ComboMash Games

I’ve wanted to develop and release an indie game for over a decade but never really had the development skills or maturity to tackle it. While re-evaluating how I want to run my art practice, I decided to get started on a Tactical RPG I’ve dreamed up over the years. So yes, I’ve been coding creatively, but not on anything directly related to this publication or my art practice. I guess it’s more of a time reallocation than taking a break, but in the end, it still means I haven’t been actively making artwork.

I won’t talk about my game here — only mentioning major milestones like when it’s launched or when a demo is released. Instead, I’ll simply invite you to subscribe.

ComboMash Games

Journey of a solo indie game developer creating Crystal Brigade (Tactical RPG) 🇨🇦

Algorithmic Artist Persona

I haven’t quite figured out how I want my art practice to continue, other than knowing that I have ideas I need to express that are uniquely algorithmic in nature. Right now, I’m thinking that sharing more about my story feels like a path forward that makes sense. I’ve tried social media,(mostly just spamming images and links) and frankly, I hate it. It feels much more fitting to try and build an audience I can actually connect with, rather than playing the everyday engagement game.

I follow many creatives on YouTube who share their process of creating, how they feel regularly, and demonstrate the work they pour themselves into. They inspire me, not only through the messages they share but also through the freedoms they’ve earned thanks to their hard work in producing engaging content and connecting with fans.

https://www.youtube.com/@owmo_studio

I’m giving it a try by starting with sharing the musical journey I’m on—experimenting with content types, presentations, production techniques, etc. It’s fairly low-stakes right now, and will almost certainly shift over time as I find what works for me, the audience, and, more importantly, my time to create engaging artwork.

In starting this process, I’ve found that it has rekindled flames I thought were nearly snuffed out. Blowing a bit of oxygen back into my creative furnace has returned me to a state of excitement and imagination. I’m looking forward to getting back to making art that I can be proud of and sharing it with you all soon!

TL-DR: My online art shop has launched!

TL-DR: Use NEW25 during checkout to get 25% off Open (∞) V.E. orders

Each Work is Unique / Segmented

I work with algorithmic code and I can technically produce infinite pieces, but no artist who wants to be taken seriously would want to flood the market and devalue their art. But, I didn’t want to constrain my algorithms too much and have the breadth of what it could produce go unseen. I needed a way to structure my prints to achieve two goals.

I thought about how painters may produce a limited number of works for a collection where works are distinct but similar to each other. Prints are often made from digital copies of the original works and offered at more accessible prices. These are called Originals (limited) and Editions (limited or open). I wanted my practice to offer a value structure that matches this, but leverages code so that every work is a one-of-a-kind.

I needed a name to call them. Editions is a well established term from decades of painters, photographers, etc. making copies of originals. Originals partially worked, it assumes uniqueness in each work, but I wanted to offer both unlimited and limited of the same algorithm and labeling them both "Originals” would be confusing. Asking my colleagues, suggested “Variable Edition” as a foundational term to use.

Variable Edition (V.E.) captures the uniqueness (variable) of each piece and the metaphor of duplication (edition) that results from using the same code for each.

It fit perfectly, but how will I segment my works?

Open (∞) Variable Edition — “V.E.”

Unlimited prints intended to openly showcase my algorithm’s breadth at an accessible price point. Offered at smaller physical sizes, I think of these as “consumable art” for people who want my work on the wall, but are not concerned with value collecting. I am experimenting with three different ways of offering them:

• Surprise — Place an order and I’ll pick one out for you as a surprise delivery

• Preference — Let me know what you like, and I’ll curate something to match

• Choice — Use my algorithm explorer and let me know what seed you want

I’m hopeful “Choice” gets used, because it’s been fun seeing the differences in what my friends and family have picked out. I enjoy the surprise selections!

Signature (#) Variable Edition — “#/n V.E.”

Limited, numbered prints from a collection that I consider an official part of my artistic oeuvre. Intended for value collectors, each is carefully curated to present what works I feel I resonate with and represent the collection’s intent. After rendering, I adjust each one manually until it’s just right, much like a photographer adjusts their raw captures.

You can learn more about these two segments here:

https://shop.owmo.studio/variable-editions

Entropy Alpha

I’m launching with my first series Entropy — algorithms I intend to experiment with in greater depth over time, snapshotting code discoveries for collection releases — with it’s Alpha collection. My goal is to produce a few algorithms I truly love, like this one, that I can bounce between as inspiration strikes and spend more time getting deeply familiar with each. While I’ll still do one-offs here-and-there, I want my work to have a more identifiable through line and stronger correlation with what I love to create.

https://www.owmo.studio/work/entropy-alpha

You can view the first set (#1-12 / 96) from the collection, which I’ve focussed on emphasizing strong contrast, balanced density, and emerging forms.

New Year’s Discount!

To celebrate New Years and the launch of my online shop, for the month of January I’m offering 25% off all Open V.E. orders. I put a lot of effort into setting up the shop to be a pleasant experience, I welcome any and all feedback you may have!

Use NEW25 during checkout at https://shop.owmo.studio/

Wishing you all the best for 2025 and thank you again for your support!

Am I an “Artist” yet?

My yearly theme for 2024 was “Year of the Artist” and this simple statement set the overall tone for everything I have worked on. I had clearly been working as an artist by creating several collections of my own alongside some contract work for others. But it was bespoke experimentation without a clear focus — learning new techniques and applying them creatively — and I was caught up in the crypto mania of the generative art movement. Now that things have died down and I have some experience under my belt, I felt like what I was doing wasn’t yet what I wanted in an art practice.

One big different between making art and running a practice, in my mind, is the way you operate yourself. Can you efficiently create works? Do you have ways to share what you’re working on and engage with potential collectors? Does your accounting and tax strategy support the work you’re doing? Have you found a distinct style or over-arching motif that unifies what you’re creating?

The past year was focussed on building solutions to these kinds of questions:

• Incorporating a business — OWMO Studio LTD

• Establishing bookkeeping practice via accounting software

• Moving business related accounts under my “omwo.studio” domain email

• Develop a new website with a professional tone, presentation and statements

• Focus on a newsletter engagement strategy and automating social media posts

• Work on developing my personal brand to align with my creative focus and ideals

• Reduce dependency on platforms for creating and presenting my artwork online

• Standardize my development workflow and introduce automation, by developing my own production framework for seed exploration and distributed rendering

• Explore fine art printing and develop a collection intended for the medium

• Establish an online shop and design branded materials that can be shipped

Each of these meant learning a lot — much of it is completely new to me, and thus it took more time away from creating artwork than I originall anticipated. I could write an entire newsletter on each one, but I’ll spare you the tedium!

Suffice to say, I was feeling a lack of accomplishment because my mind filtering for artwork results (of which there far were fewer), and while I got a monumental amount done, my brain was simply tricking me because they weren’t as satisfying to complete.

Well brain… what do you think now?

🧠 — “Okay, I’m an Artist… Now what?”

While working on these business focussed tasks, I’ve collected creative ideas as they popped up — some new, some refinements on the old — and now that I’ve had some time to reflect on them, I’ve noticed a few recurring themes:

Composable Collections

Where individual works in the collection are distinct but have a strong correlation or connection to the collection as a whole. I experimented with this in my Flux collection, where each edition can seamlessly shift from one to another.

https://flux.owmo.studio/

A new concpet of mine is to use a parent-child relationship (bi-directional) to make a connection between a digital work (NFT) and print editions made from it, using a motif of slight changes introduced when duplicating, like a photocopy. There’s a bit more to it, but I don’t want to spoil the surprises just yet. The idea of a collection of individual pieces feeling unified something I want to incorporate into my works.

Art Generators

Making DIY screen-based artworks running natively on an embedded Raspberry Pi that are individually seeded and continuously generates a styled artwork. Having a seeded generator is nothing new, but being able to have a no-fuss solution to get my artwork on a collectors wall is compelling.

It also scratches my itch to work with my hands and physical mediums, while still working to my strength digitally. It also could offer a unique chance to add sensors to the enclosure (ex: light, microphone, sonar) that could be used to influence the randomization or interactivity using real-world inputs.

Maker Prototyping

Askew from my art practice focus, I have sketches of boutique products that I want to prototype that would need relatively simple circuits. For example, a habit tracker that uses arcade buttons with colored LEDs to show your progress, or a stringed instrument that detects touch / audio signals to send MPE MIDI data to synths. I think these are worth exploring and could complement my desire to make more creative screen-based installation works.

My new yearly theme will be Year of Innovation as I want to push my creative mind towards exploring more ambitious ideas, as opposed to what fits the current meta. I love interactivity and digital, but want my work to get off the computer / phone and into real life spaces. This next year, I’ll be focussing on ways I can achieve just that.

Random Highlights

Not everything I’ve done fits into the preceding narrative, so here’s just a few more :)

• My collections are now explorable on my website, including live previews for my animated / interactive works, and full sized images — ex: WaveShapes

• I’ve curated and prepared the initial 12 editions of Entropy Alpha, which will be available soon as 16x20” prints on 17x22” sheets — viewable on my website

• A set of 100 widescreen, borderless Entropy renders are now on Artlum.io — a subscription based artwork presentation service now shipping with LG TVs

• My Online Shop is ready to go… but Canada Post is on strike (returning to work soon) so I couldn’t make anything available before the holiday season :(

That’s all for today. Have a happy and safe holiday season, I’ll be back to sharing more creative updates with you in the new year!

Raymarch Path Tracer

The big project that has been consuming me lately has been developing a path tracer. I’ve used several commercial renderers in Maya / Blender and love how even throwing some simple geometry and a few area lights into a scene can make it feel amazing.

I had no idea how they worked beyond “they bounce rays around” in a scene. I started my journey by going through the Ray Tracing in One Weekend series in C++. It took me a bit longer than a weekend… okay, it was about a week of full time effort in total, but I came out the other end understanding roughly how it works!

What followed were several weeks of frustrating effort trying to adapt what I learned in C++ operating on triangle geometry with all the memory pointers in the world to a raymarch scene developed entirely within a GLSL fragment shader. Reviewing other similar examples on ShaderToy was helpful to get started and then I made extensive use of ChatGPT to better understand many of the functions relating to topics such as probability distribution functions, geometry attenuation, Schlick approximation, etc.

There are parts of the code I don’t yet fully understand, but I managed to implement a Disney style BSDF shader, including a subsurface scattering method, as seen where the light bleeds through the sphere on the middle right.

I hit so many problems getting to this image, such as random black pixels popping up due to divide by zero errors somewhere in the code. In the end I got it working though and now I can render a relatively clean image in a few hours in the browser!

So what am I going to do with it?

I personally love how my WaveShapes collection looks, but I could not crank up the quality to get the smooth look I originally intended since it was designed for realtime. I was left wondering what it might look if optimization were not a concern. I’ll be using my path tracer to adapt this project into something new intended for a limited run of high quality prints. I’ve managed to get a debugging version working already that is looking quite promising with the soft shadows and lens blur giving it lovely depth.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Mark Schoening for dinner while he was traveling to my city and we got to talking all things creative. We’ve been collaborating recently on a project called Cycles, which is exploring how to adapt a set of design ideas he’s envisioned into a generative system. As of right now, we’ve got a functional prototype that can generate a form and export printable STL files. He’s been building a shelf of sculptures generated directly from the code I’ve written.

A key quality of the project is in how it uses colored lenses to cast mixed light onto the surfaces around it. Once we’ve found a manner in which we’d like to present them in real life, my intent is to adapt the path tracer to handle WebGL geometry and be able to render out high quality stills that simulate a similar look and feel to what you’d get if you were to print off any given generation. Check out Mark’s video here:

markschoening

A post shared by @markschoening

We’re still actively exploring the system and iterating on what it could do to further hit a balanced aesthetic that still has a chance for pleasant surprises. More on that later :)

Web Gallery

Art Blocks rugged me! Okay… that’s a bit inflammatory, I’m just poking a bit of fun at them. But I did discover one day that they quietly de-listed a bunch of projects from their marketplace (formerly Sansa), which was a bit frustrating as it meant I had a dead link to what I thought would be a perpetually available AB Engine project.

I’ve always wanted my collections to have galleries on my website; full control of the presentation and no reliance on external parties. Thus, I’ve rendered out full quality images, updated my studio API to query on-chain data and offer live generator URLs, and have worked hard to make a simple and friendly gallery UX for most of my work.

• https://www.owmo.studio/work/waveshapes

• https://www.owmo.studio/work/flux

• https://www.owmo.studio/work/erratic

• https://www.owmo.studio/work/quarantine

• https://www.owmo.studio/work/photosynthetic

Prints Soon™

Getting close to offering prints for sale! My poor Mac Mini has been generating high resolution artwork for weeks now, in preparation to offer “mystery packs” for my small sizes unlimited “out of bounds” prints. I’ve sent out some test proofs to family and friends to validate the packaging and materials, so I think I have it mostly ironed out.

I’ll likely do a soft-launch of my shop soon (a couple weeks?) followed by an official announcement later when I have my first set of limited prints ready for collectors, like the proofs I now have on my wall.

By the way, if you really want to know when my shop goes live please reach out and I’ll email / message you privately when it’s up. That’s all for today.

Thank you for taking the time to read and your continued support!

Owen

Why? Simply put, I want to see my art on walls. I’d love to participate in a group art shows alongside painters, photographers, etc. and I’d like to get out of my comfort zone, to challenge myself and see what I could create when a computer is only one part of my creative toolset. Learning the ins and outs of fine art printing felt like the most accessible first step towards those goals, with plenty of depth to dig into. Plus, I’m able to fit print supplies and the printer itself into a corner of my apartment, thanks to some great luck finding this beautiful flat filing cabinet.

What should I print?

As mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been busy working on my infrastructure so that I can reliably generate thousands of preview images or render high resolutions without crashes. As a result, I haven’t had the time to craft new print-focussed works.

But I do have released projects with a host of unexplored ideas. And given I would not need to make new work “long form” — a constraint that forces algorithms to always produce “good” outputs at the expense of occasional unexpected outliers — the new ideas could be pushed to extremes that would be fresh and exciting. In the past I felt aversion to doing this both because I wanted to try new techniques (I still do) and due to fears of diluting value of existing collections, but I felt right now it was worth giving it a try. I chose Erratic to be the foundation for a new exploration as I had many ideas left on the table. After a complete code overhaul and exploring it with fresh eyes, I felt convinced this was not just a good idea but one that could reshape my practice.

Series of Collections

Entropy is the first of what I intend to be several on-going explorative, print-focused series. Each series will be comprised of incremental collections, each exploring a new technique or design that builds upon the preceding collection to push the algorithm into new territory. I am likely to overhaul another existing project and bring it into this new practice then start a completely fresh design, once I have the headspace again.

At the heart of the Entropy series is my desire to show raw captures from infinitely chaotic systems that I handcraft in code, as part of an iterative process of curious experimentation. The work represents the property of our universe wherein a state of disorder is more probable than one of order; given enough time, everything will shift away from structures towards their basal components. It is this transition that gives life to everything we know. By crafting my algorithmic code to have the agency to make thousands of small decisions using pseudo-random values - distortions, tearing, reflections, layering - atop an otherwise stable scene depicting a torus, each piece in the collection yields a unique view of a universe rapidly trending towards maximum entropy. Observing the emergent qualities of thousands of captures, I judge the composition, palette, density, balance, etc. as part of my curation process, to decide which make it into the final collection.

I feel this practice will be more manageable because it reduces the pressure to always come up with “the next best thing” and have it be a wild success. Instead, once I have a few algorithms established, I can dig into each on a much deeper level with fresh ideas feeling more organic. Released work will also be more seasonal, with designs that may or may not resonate with collectors coming and going more casually. I will still do entirely new projects — I have a long list I’d love to explore — but they can sit alongside my regular work, instead of always feeling like they’re on my critical path.

Editions… Variable Editions

So what will people actually be able to collect? The code I develop, for all practical purposes, can infinitely generate artwork, unlike other mediums like photography or painting which can only create “one of something” that may be reproduced as a print.

Thus, I feel a strong desire to ensure every print is unique artwork regardless of the size or price paid. To borrow business terminology, this is my unique differentiator.

I want every collector to feel the same special experience of knowing that have unique artwork that no one else in the world owns. This privilege is typically reserved for the wealthy who can afford original artworks, but given the nature of code art offered as a print, it doesn’t have to remain that way. The challenge then, is how to segment my work into different sizes and price-points such that the unique experience is the same but the monetary exchange aligns with the overall perceived value of the package.

wrote an excellent post recently that is tangentially related, where he proffered that pen plots (algorithmic art drawn by robotic servos) could be valued somewhere between a limited edition art print and an original painting / artwork.

Drawing Machines & Notes from Art Studio Robots

📙 #042 - Time-shifting, and how to sell pen plots

Read more

2 years ago · 5 likes · 3 comments · Daniel Catt

It’s a great read and it helped me come to a couple conclusions in how my artwork should be positioned. To make accessible artwork I would offer smaller sizes with an unlimited number being available. While a more premium offering would be larger in size, have a limited number per collection and come with a certificate of authenticity. The latter fitting similarly with how he views a unique pen plotted artwork.

But what to call these? An “edition” doesn’t work as it implies a duplicate copy of the same visual output. Once again, Daniel came to my rescue with a suggestion to use the label “variable edition” for work that uses the same underlying code but produces unique outputs. So here’s how I’m using that label for a given collection:

• Variable Edition (Limited) — I will only produce N outputs at a high quality and physical size. They will be thoroughly curated and I’ll do post processing by hand to ensure the highest quality prints are produced. They come with certificates of authenticity and should be considered my “collectable” work. Each work will be listed individually and available to purchase. These are premium artworks.

• Variable Edition (Open) — each artwork is unique and I will produce as many as are requested while the collection is being offered. They will be curated to ensure they meet my expectations of quality, but I will not pass judgement on the merits of their inclusion. They will be listed in packages where the default assumption is that you will receive prints blind, not knowing exactly what you will get. Though I will be open to email requests asking for particular types, aesthetics or colors if someone doesn’t want the fun surprise. These are my accessible artworks.

As of right now, I’m thinking of offering the following for Entropy Alpha print sizes, which have all been determined to fit common frames and matt options correctly.

• 6x8 art on 8x10 sheet — Variable Edition (Open) — $

• 11x14 art on 12x16 sheet — Variable Edition (Open) — $$

• 16x20 art on 17x22 sheet — Variable Edition (Limited) —

I still have to figure out things like how to effectively communicate this plan on a web store, where the UX is usually “I see the thing, I buy the thing, I get the thing”. Perhaps I’ll need to look at collectibles like Pokemon card packs to get some ideas 🤔

How should I package it?

I want to ship prints flat, rather than rolled up in a tube, both because I think it’s nice to not have to uncurl a print and because I frankly don’t have space to store tubes. I ended up finding this great article that gave tips on how to effectively package up various different print sizes and have purchased bags, glassine and mailers to match.

https://www.thebeastisback.com/blog/2019/1/2/how-to-ship-your-artwork-safely

I also spend time watching YouTube videos of experienced artists talking about how they include various items to help reinforce their artistic branding and give buyers a more personalized and/or special experience when opening. For me personally, just receiving the art is fine, but they convinced me that including these extras is worth the effort for some. This video in particular helped me think about all of the factors that weigh when crafting a good presentation.

I’ll be honest, I loved what he did so much that I pretty much just copied it. Except for the fancy box as it’s too expensive and again…takes up too much space. I designed a similar “thank you” card for personalized messages, a project specific explainer card that shares insights into the print and a certificate of authenticity that will be included with every limited edition print. Seeing them together really helped things feel legit.

When will prints be available?

I don’t have a timeline yet, but soon-ish? I want to finish mailing some test packages out using artist proofs and all the extras included, to ensure the entire flow works and no serious damages are encountered. I’ll likely do a soft launch with my open variable packages then strategize an “official” launch that will include an initial set of limited works to try and get some buzz. If you want to know about the soft launch, send me an email and I’ll privately contact you once it’s live. Otherwise, a future newsletter will have the launch date once I’ve decided what it will be.

hello@owmo.studio

Thank you for taking time to read this and for your continued support :)

Owen

This was back before 3D at the cinema had even begun to be offered and getting a stereoscopic monitor and set of glasses was highly specialized and expensive. Our DIY solution was to align two projectors to play a side-by-side video spanning the displays, placing polarizing filters at 90 degree opposition to each other in front of each lens, and projecting onto a wall painted with a silver reflective quality to try and maintain the polarity as much as possible. I can't recall the exact method we used for the virtual camera - I think it may have been the toe-in method - but suffice to say the effect worked surprisingly well given our limited access to hardware.

Now, about 15 years later, devices offering a similar experience are popping up, but without the need for glasses! My interest was piqued once again to explore different ways of introducing depth into my work, particularly because the idea of offering a shared experience without a complicated setup was now possible.

One such device is the Looking Glass Factory Portrait display, which offers a lenticular lens that spreads light from specific pixels to 48 separate angles such that each eye will see a different perspective in addition to being able to see it from side to side. The article linked below does an excellent job of walking one through how to produce content for the display if you'd like to learn more about it or stereoscopy in general.

ARTICLE: Adventures with the Looking Glass Portrait - by Paul Brooke

Replica

In a very early phase of prototyping and conceptual exploration, Replica is meant to be a digital reflection of the process a painter may practice where they produce an original and also offer a print reproduction of the same work. How I plan to make homage this convention is beyond the scope of the article - as a hint, it draws from my experiences making copies of copies as a teen while working at a photocopy store - but what is pertinent is that I wanted repetition to be a strong element in the visuals to reinforce the motif. I landed on having layers of overlapping in a myriad of patterns or arrangements. Upon seeing the result it felt a bit flat and so I tried the idea of casting shadows on the layers beneath to give it some visual depth. I loved the result and wondered how I could enhance the effect even further.

That's when I purchased an LKG Portrait and worked to separate each layer into a set of it's own textures to be composited together. I faked the required view projections by just stretching and shifting the quad each layer is rendered on (kind of like doing a photo perspective adjustment in Photoshop) and set up an automated export that produces a Quilt image format the LKG expects (pictured below).

https://x.com/owmo_studio/status/1791200250172256365

The results were very satisfying and brought a sense of realism to the work in spite of the prototype just being flat coloured shapes. Originally I thought maybe I could offer this as the end medium for collectors, but it doesn't quite have the resolution I need for the smaller details and too expensive for the size of art it offers. However, it's great for visualizing depth and encouraged me to find other ways to bring art into the real world in a way that exhibits it's depth.

Entropy

With more of a focus on producing fine art prints, Entropy is a chaotic system that is comprised of layers of logic where each preceding layer's pixel data is compared in a series of iterations to determine where and how to render. This layered approach was meant to help "fill in dark / light" gaps originally but ended up being an aesthetic that lends itself well to individually processed layers to create an overall aesthetic.

While I am completely satisfied with the results as a flat image intended for print, I wanted to use each of the layers - accessible as individual PNGs in my code - to see what kind of physical artworks I could produce with depth. I recalled a technique I saw from the recent Vancouver Art Fair where an artist used layers of epoxy resin as a canvas on which he painted small fish and aquatic life, giving it wonderful sense of depth. I couldn't find the artist mentioned, so here's a video showing a very similar work.

I've started to experiment with a similar technique where each layer is printed onto clear sheets and placed on the epoxy allowing the inks to bond, allowing for the sheet to be carefully removed later to complete the transfer. My hope is that if the aesthetics feel right I may be able to scale this up to larger sizes at a higher quality.

Collaboration with Mark Shoening

I was contacted by Mark to see if I would be interested in collaborating on adapting a design concept he had been working on as a generative system. If you are not familiar with Mark's work, I suggest you browse his website and see his creations for yourself. One of the things he is known for is producing 3D printed geometric sculptures.

https://www.markschoening.com/

Many of his sculptural works use depth and overlapping structures, so conceptually I was immediately hooked. Now, I don't want to talk too much about what we're working on together just yet, but the collection had a strong design language that fit perfectly with where my creative mind had been in recent months. The sculptures are made of several layers of coloured lenses connected to each other and mounts that tie each layer together. The arrangement of each layer produces an emergent form while the light passing through coloured lens gets tinted and yields a uniquely beautiful caustics pattern.

The collaboration has presented enjoyable challenges thus far, such as learning how to effectively use a ThreeJS boolean library to build up the sculptures elements and export it as printable STL data. I'm looking forward to trying my hand at developing a raytracer dedicated to capturing the light transport just right so we can render transmission and caustics accurately. More importantly, we're both learning new ways of thinking and adapting our practices from each other and I have no doubt that the work we produce in the future will will benefit from this experience.

As we now face a relatively bearish art market in the crypto space — largely due to speculative interests having moved on to other assets — the reality is that a much smaller number of collectors remains. They are the true believers and genuine art appreciators or value based collectors, and so my strategy must adapt. Questions of how to turn my good fortunes and hard work into a practice that can stand the test of time arise. I want to build a practice that is genuine to who I am, further develop my own aesthetics and explore what I want to create, but it must also be a business in which I am mindful of economic realities.

In this newsletter, I share my thoughts on the topic and what I’m exploring to not only produce new artworks in my practice, but also to build a business that diversifies my offerings and earnings beyond just the tokenization of my artwork on blockchains.

The Wall Test

One thing I’ve heard over and over again among collectors is that they prefer to buy art that passes “the wall test”, or perhaps “the wife test” as said by Trinity on the many of the Waiting to Be Signed podcast episodes. Whatever the phrase, the idea is the same; will the artwork look good in my living space?

While many generative artists prefer a style that more closely matches physical works and fits nicely into this criteria, many skew away from the aesthetics bellcurve (🖐️) so getting a spot on the wall may require some creative thinking. To even begin, I need to answer a very simple question.

Can it be displayed easily?

Most of the artwork I have created thus far is difficult for a collector to display. In the case of my interactive and animated works, like Flux or WaveShapes, you need both a dedicated wall-mounted display and a powerful machine to render the artwork. The typical solution motivated collectors advise is to get a Mac Mini and connect it to a Samsung Frame TV, hiding the OSX tray and menu bars and using the app Plash to display artwork URLs on the desktop. It’s expensive and requires tech literacy, and worse yet, doesn’t even permit interactivity rendering part of my work incompatible.

A notable collector of mine who goes by pixelpete has been exploring ways to get a better experience on the wall and came up with the following: a custom framed iPad Pro M4 running a Kiosk web browser capable of displaying work in fullscreen with interactivity (WaveShapes still required a custom script to mimc a “click” event).

BONUS — WaveShapes passing the wall test! 🎶 💃🕺 🎶
https://x.com/pixelpete/status/1807447156980064484

While this is a fantastic effort and one of the best solutions I’ve seen for someone to display most of their generative art collection up on the wall, it doesn’t quite hit the criteria I imagine would work for individual artworks to be on permanent display. It is however great inspiration and I’m keen to find more accessible options.

Why is this important?

I make art first and foremost for myself. I love the process of coming up with idea, studying techniques and technologies and improving my coding craft in the pursuit of building systems that can use my learning to produce my what I envision. I would create whether I had an audience or not, but…

It’s magical when someone connects with my work and truly appreciates the effort I put into something with a sense of awe or wonderment. I’ve been lucky enough to have these moments after releasing work or while it’s been on display. I would love to know that I have work out in the world that brings people this sense of appreciation every day by way of being a part of their living space. I feel this is the next phase of developing my practice; creating work that goes beyond an immutable record on a blockchain and persists in some manner within a physical space.

What are you considering?

The obvious place to start for my static work is fine art prints that I will produce, sign and ship to collectors myself. I’ve ordered an Epson SC P900 and have started to set up a web shop where I can list my artworks once they are ready.

This is all well and good, but I had one fatal flaw in my plan: all of my work to date crashes the web browser when attempting to render at fine art resolutions 😱

So, for the past few months I’ve been studying how to design game engines, code design patterns and rendering technique in an effort to adapt my work, including:

• Bucket Renders — chunking an image into smaller areas to stitch together later

• Progressive Sampling — averaging the results of pixel outputs to reduce noise

• Node Graph Execution — ability to structure data flows for discrete computing

Along the way, I got tired of moving code between projects and losing track of what feature was implemented where and decided to develop my own Engine to give a consistent framework for all my projects and open up potential for future automation.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/@combomash/engine

Together, months of effort resulted in my capability of producing renders suitable for a fine art printer, so now I’m able to focus on what I want to print!

🧠 — Originals

Unlike my long form generative work, where the code was “locked” at time of release, I want to iterate on these over long periods of time, teasing out sets that represent evolutions of the core idea the code presents. Entropy is the first system that will fit this new regime. It’s derived from a chaotic branch of my Erratic collection and I have pushed the output space to go in wild direction, necessitating mindful curation.

These prints will be considered “Originals” and likely name in a way that indicates the system, version, theme and number, ex: “Entropy, Alpha, Background Radiation 1/10”. I’ll print them somewhere around A2 size and each will be individual post-processed by hand to ensure they really pop at the highest quality I’m capable of.

🧠 — On-Demand

Unlike many photographers who offer Limited or Open Editions, I’m not bound by a medium where each individual output is made by hand. Therefore an ethos I want to adopt is always releasing unique work (no editions). My code produces practically infinite sets, so why not make the experience uniquely special for every print?

I’d love to make generative systems available on-demand in a variety of common frame sizes with accessible price points. I imagine an ordering flow where previews of a system are generated to the desired size and can be picked through until they find one they really love to order. Perhaps a “blind order” mode could be fun too 🤔

I haven’t yet determined if I’l fulfill these myself or outsource that to a fine art drop-printing service like The Print Space. Either way this will require considerable work to get the right experience and workflows in place, as no service is made exactly for this, but I feel it would be worthwhile to have a wide reach complementing my Originals.

🧠 — Mixed Media

When viewing physical artwork a quality that always draws me in is when there is an element of depth to the medium. Thick impasto paints, sculpted clay on canvas, 3D printed structures, layers of wood, etc. This wonderful work I saw at Art Vancouver, Contemporary Art Fair really pulled me in and caught my attention.

It dawned on me recently that all of my active art projects — including a collaboration with another artist — were actively exploring depth in one way or another. As a reader of my newsletter, you get early access to blog posts so please take the opportunity to read my latest article where I expand on this realization in more detail.

Exploring Depth in my Work

Suffice to say, I am exploring this motif and want to find ways to produce works that clearly exhibit depth. Both Entropy and Replica were already using a layered design approach, so what could I do with them?

At first I decided to try a Looking Glass Factory Portrait screen, which has a lenticular display connected to an internal Raspberry Pi, capable of displaying stereoscopic 3D without the need for glasses. Quickly modifying Replica to export the necessary 48 views the device’s specification requires and got some promising results!

But… after cycling through the samples on my desk for a few days, I realized it wasn’t the right fit after all. It simply costs too much to buy the unit itself, the resolution is not as high as I’d need for high frequency details, and at around 4x6” it’s kind of small. It’s a great way for me to soft proof works with depth, but not as a final display device.

Then I remembered another artwork I saw at the fair, where an artist painted layers of underwater plant life and fish on layers of epoxy resin, creating a pleasant illusion.

I’ve begun to make proofs of this idea by printing each layer onto clear plastic sheets on my home office printer and applying them to layers of resin contained in a simple frame from the dollar store. My hope is that from these proofs I might get an idea of how I could scale the process up and if it presents visually compelling depth.

Phygital

Okay, it’s a silly buzz word, I know… but when it comes to the question of how to get my animated and interactive work up on a wall, it kinda fits? What I really want is to be able to offer a self-contained bit of hardware in a boutique case — ideally hand made for that artisan touch — in which an entire generative system is running at the touch of a button. I muse a little about this idea on Camille Roux’s latest GENART podcast:

🧠 — Self-Contained Systems

Years ago I started learning the basics of Arduino programming to use custom circuits in building fun DIY projects. I originally wanted to make some MIDI devices to go into my music gear but the novelty wore off and now I’ve got a drawer of hardware looking for new life. The idea of a self-contained generative system seems like it could be a good fit, so I wired up a screen and got a standard drawing library working to draw random coloured squares to screen.

It was pretty slow to draw and while I could squeeze in a couple more wires to add a button or two for basic interactivity, it was feeling a bit too limited. Add to that, I would need to get much better at C++ and would be limited to very basic drawing library 👎

So I looked over at the RAK Helium Miner I had running in the corner earning barely a few cents per day of SOL and I recalled it had a Raspberry Pi 4 inside. After a quick tear-down I got it booted up and tested the of my performance of existing artworks.

I could get WaveShapes running at a super low quality and Flux squeezed out 15fps, but looking at example ThreeJS projects it ran at a reasonable 30-60fps. Not great, but if I made an artwork targeting the device from the very start, pairing a small LCD screen with it and array of sensors, I could create something performant and unique.

I later got an Orange Pi 5 to get a bit more CPU/GPU power to play with and now it’s a more compelling option. I haven’t yet prioritized this concept yet, but I do think it is a strong contender for a “buy it, plug it in and see new art every day” type experience.

🧠 — Blockchain Tokenization

My work to date has been tokenized on Ethereum and Tezos blockchains and while I love having work on an immutable database with permissionless trade, I’m going to focus my usage of blockchains to a few key areas.

1. Archival — when I produce physical works from a version of my code, I’d like to capture it on Ethereum to ensure it can be reproduced in the future.

2. Partnerships — for the right platform and/or collaboration, I’ll participate in a drop if there is a reasonable demand (mostly to ensure my hard work exists as mints)

3. Sketches — I have systems that I enjoy but don’t want to turn into saleable work, so for these I’ll simply capture them as 1/1 infinite generators

4. Innovation — for collections that require a smart contract for some meaningful interaction, inter-connections or execution at the time of mint.

And wherever possible, I’m going to be mindful to incorporate the other strategies into my tokenized collections. Why limit all this beautiful work to just the occasional glance on a computer or mobile device, right?

TL;DR

• I will make artwork that passes “The Wall Test”

• To pass the baseline test, displaying my artwork must be easy!

• Recently started developing my own Engine while studying rendering

• Ordered a fine art printer — Epson SC P900

• I will curate sets of Originals to print from systems I explore over time

• Investigating an On-Demand print strategy for open edition systems

• Exploring epoxy pouring to produce uniquely layered artworks with depth

• Early access to my latest blog post — Exploring Depth in my Work

• Phygital installs using small form factor hardware for animated & interactive work

• Using blockchain tech for archival, partnerships, sketches and innovative mints

I've always been an active goal-setter who writes down concrete objectives for the next year and spends time reflecting on how well I achieved them. While this has been helpful to me, I often felt disappointed when I failed to achieve some of the goals I set, despite getting close. I recently discovered The Theme System popularized by Cortex podcast, in which one defines a high level statement to act as a reference to guide your decision making throughout the year in pursuit of a meaningful change in your life. Rather than concrete yes/no outcomes, which are equated as a pass/fail, it encourages a holistic approach that makes incremental shifts towards change. I’ve found this process far healthier and more effective than outcome-based goals.

https://www.themesystem.com/

I chose “Year of the Artist” as my theme for 2024. What this means to me is committing to a process of reforming all of the work I’m doing into a professional practice. Doing reflection on what motivates me as an artist. Figuring out what techniques or technologies I want to pursue longer term. Postulating the bigger picture and envisioning what achievements I might like to accomplish. What I can do to produce artwork that reaches a connected set of collectors, both online and IRL.

Ideal Outcomes

Having a high level theme is extremely valuable as a guiding light, but the theme system still does include a structure where you can include outcome based goals as “ideal outcomes”. It can feel very similar to the older method, and I personally use it to set concrete objectives, but the spirit is for them to remain flexible as you follow the higher level goal, and to reflect on them at year’s end when evaluating your next theme. Here’s some of what I’ve completed thus far:

• Defining my artistic personal and goals ✓

• Incorporating my practice as OWMO Studio LTD ✓

• Build a new website with professional artist materials ✓

• Prepare a media strategy suitable for deep focus ✓

I feel the preceding objectives really were laying the foundation for the rest of the year, and so now I’m looking forward to bringing my attention back to my artwork and aiming for outcomes that could be a little more nebulous or flexible:

• Build stronger connections with my core collectors, get to know them

• Be able to mint and browse all of my on-chain artworks on my website

• Release a generative collection via custom contract entirely on my own

• Produce high quality prints and offer them for sale via an online store

• Exhibit at Eastside Culture Crawl and Vancouver International Art Show

• Reduce time using social media, focus on blog and newsletter readership

Finally, I'd like to invite you to check out the WIP (work in progress) section, where I'm sharing a small glimpse into what I'm actively prototyping or considering developing. The next year and beyond is looking bright, I just need to get out there and get some sun!

Intention

Where to start? I felt I needed some kind of guiding light; an idea or emotion I could draw inspiration from. I thought about issues I’m passionate about - such as climate inaction, or the growing wealth inequality - but these conjured projects ideas that I felt required more experience and study before attempting to tackle them. Not finding a suitable topic, I thought… “why not just make something fun?”.

Art doesn’t have to be tackling a serious subject after all, it can be whatever you want it to be! I looked to long form generative projects that had a “fun” element - such as AlgoBeats (Han x Nicolas Daniel), Paper Armada (Kjetil Golid) and Geometry Runners (Rich Lord) - and felt a sense of nostalgia that pulled up memories of playing video games on the NES and watching mesmerizing WinAmp audio visualizers. This feeling lights up my creative / playful soul and so I decided to use nostalgia as my muse.

What followed were a series of studies in which I practiced techniques for using signed distance functions in a ray marching algorithm to draw rows of shapes, how to analyze audio input frequency ranges, and pixelation alongside color banding for that old school graphics vibe. Once an isometric camera projection started rendering out colored shapes that could dance to music, I knew I struck nostalgic gold!

Reflection

At the time of writing, the project has been technically complete for about a week after being in development for about 6 months, if you count all the studies that lead me to the finished work. And so, while I wait to hit the Mint #0 milestone and ship it off to be collected as part of the Moonbird’s Diamond Exhibit, I find myself checking over test outputs and feeling a new sense of understanding for what I’ve created.

While I used my nostalgic love of video games and visualizations of the past as my intentful inspiration, what I feel I’ve created in this collection is more akin to a direct reflection of my personality.

I’ve always favored structure in the way I live and work; I like clean organization of everything that can be itemized, clear communication channels in formal tones, and will spend considerable time crafting conventions to make this all happen. I’m a solo developer, yet I employ studio production levels of hierarchy to my craft. As well, I’d say I have a strong penchant for pattern recognition and this style of thinking yields brainstorming sessions where I envision not the final output, but complex clouds of connecting ideas and complex architectures. I feel the compositions of shapes, largely in tidy rows of repeating patterns, perfectly captures this aspect of myself.

On the flip side, for those who know me well enough, I’m fairly light hearted and love to make people laugh with observant jokes, or just downright silliness. I can certainly get into and enjoy discussions of in-depth topics on very serious subjects. But, I like to keep a playful attitude towards life and try my best to avoid becoming the kind of boring adult I thought all people were doomed to become as a child. This is evident in the vibrant and saturated colors, presented with a strong contrast in value as a nod toward the duality of structure and play I bounce between on the daily.

Finally, I love music. Both listening to and creating it. While I do listen to a wide variety of genres - electronic, metal, punk, rap, etc. - I’ve been enjoying EDM lately after having purchased some synth gear and producing an EP in a chiptune style for fun. Despite this love, I’m not outwardly expressive about it. I don’t feel the urge to dance, or even move really, to music. But I feel that passionate love for it internally, and I think by making the shapes dance around to strong beats or wiggle to vocals, it’s my own way of expressing that externally. Plus, I’m told by my girlfriend that the little shapes are very cute while dancing, which is an attribute she claims I share with them.

It’s been an interesting experience creating something with clear intent only to later find new meaning in what I’ve created. I’m looking forward to hearing what it may evoke in others once the editions start coming into existence.

Drawing inspiration from video games I’ve enjoyed, I was led to using a top-down isometric perspective, simple primitives and crushing colours into narrow bands to emulate the feeling of what limited hardware could produce. Pixelation was top of my list and while it initially fit my nostalgia driven craze, once I began to see my creation in higher fidelity I knew mixing the old styling influences with modern clarity was the right way to go. The only catch was that I wanted it to run in real-time (more on that below) and while technology has advanced far beyond the 8-bit era influencing me, it wasn’t enough. It dawned on me that the developers of yesteryear likely had grand visions as well but were limited by hardware. However, I'm confident the JS code compatible for a long while and that hardware speeds will improve rapidly, and so I made the live artwork pixelated by default with an option to bump up the quality once devices were capable of running it. It felt analogous to my journey of playing with pixels to creating them today.

Wait… It Moves!?

One of the reasons I love working in digital artwork is because you aren’t limited to what can be drawn on a canvas; it can move and react. Animation was an original career pursuit of mine and I revel in bringing the study of motion into my creations. The beauty of crafting motion art with code is being able to describe animation principles - slow in / out, arcs, squash & stretch - easily with mathematics. Slowly evolving waves of motions brought a passive life to the work, but it needed a little bit more excitement.

Interactions

• click - allow microphone & activate audio

• drag & drop - add audio files to playlist

• spacebar - toggle playlist / microphone

• left/right arrows - next / previous track

• double click - toggle fullscreen

URL Configurations

• quality=1 - adjust pixelation (0.25 to 4)

• maxDb=6 - set max sample decible (>0)

• minDb=120 - set min sample decibel (>30)

• static=true - render single frame (quality 4)

• time=1 - advances time in seconds (1 to N)

Drawing on my nostalgia once more, I recalled a period of time after I had built my first computer where I downloaded all manner of music visualization plugins for Winamp and would get lost in the synchronous trance accompanying my favorite music. Once again, it felt like magic to me back then, but today I knew better. I could analyze frequencies and use them to make my shapes dance!

Audio Reactivity - Limitation & Suggestion

Running JS code in a web browser, security policies limit audio monitoring to microphones you permit when prompted. This means that your computer's system audio - where music from a Spotify application is running, for example - is not accessible natively. However, you can install audio routing software on your computer, which allows you to connect system audio to a virtual microphone that can be allowed in the browser for WaveShapes to monitor.

• Blackhole (Mac)

• Loopback (Mac)

• Voicemeter (Windows)

• Jack (Mac / Windows / Linux)

Features

Lately I have adopted the mentality of not crafting features around any kind of rarity that can be analyzed and therefore flipped for immediate profit. I want each edition to be judged on the merit of what it presents the viewer and valued as such. Any statistical skew is thus buried within hundreds of randomization calls scattered throughout the code and each has been tailored to be in service of the collection as a whole. Qualities including density, color palette, smoothness, period of motion, etc. are randomized on the fly while the shader code is instantiated. The only exception is the overall Structure, which I felt was helpful for filtering purposes.

Lattice

Tightly packed elements with relative uniformity

Composite

An interference pattern between two lattice structures

Cluster

Fluctuating mathematical patterns across the elemental field

Aligned

Parallel lines of undulating waves of rotations and transformations

Concentric

Rings of circular structures pulse in and out over tim

Perpendicular

Parallel lines of undulating waves of rotations and transformations

Regular

Parallel lines of undulating waves of rotations and transformations

At some point during development, I realized that the more I allowed parameter ranges - variables that are passed to the shader I use to actually draw the artwork - to run wild and not have clear demarcation points other than their maximum and minimum, the more I would discover surprising compositions. Certain combinations of exact values across the ~50 randomized values I had constructed would somehow produce something beautiful that I had not intended. I decided to re-focus my efforts on achieving the emergent design as a possibility in the collection and rejected the use of branching conditionals. The challenge of that decision becomes one of balancing the possibility of unique results (expanding the domain) with collection cohesion (contracting the domain).

Featureless Qualities

By not bracketing the input variable ranges and writing an algorithm where these values are iteratively intertwined, there truthfully wasn't a way to clearly set feature descriptions that would have any meaning once the output was generated. You will find common elements and structures in the images, suggesting it might have been possible, but in practice changes in just a few variables could produce radically different visuals, making it nigh impossible to describe meaningfully, so I embraced featureless qualities instead.

• Color - Three sets of random RGB values are picked within a clamped ranges - with the green channel being drastically reduced to allow more warm colours - and applied to the X, Y and Z facing ratios on a smooth 3D surface. This creates the smooth, subtle gradients in the fragmented pieces.

• Iterations - The rendering shader goes through several loops when fragmenting the structure, with each pass scaling the coordinate space being projected smaller and smaller, including pixel value checks that trigger re-rendering at vastly different scales, creating some visual layering.

• Reflection - Three polar reflections are applying the projected ray on each iteration, each with a small but consistent movement in the space. This largely produces the "tearing" and "fragmentation".

• Movements - Movements are applied to the overall composition, iterations, centers of polar reflections, etc. creating consistent offsets between all of the operations, ensuring each render is unique.

Mentioned previously, the intertwined nature of the randomized variables made feature definitions impossible, but a few variables in isolation are able to produce some semblance of recognizable qualities.

When looking through outputs from projects like Memories of Qilin by Emily Xie and Ringers by Dmitri Cherniak, there is an interesting commonality between the two projects, despite having completely different styles. They both produce art where the sum of the whole is more than the parts; emergent design. To pick a couple easy to recognize examples, as labeled by their communities, Memories has “The Lion” and Ringers has “The Goose”. While both of these examples depict an animal — easy to recognize form resembling something from real life — this is not a requirement of emergent design, it’s just an easy example to illustrate the idea that the elements in the work add up to a whole. What is it specifically that allowed these two projects to produce artworks with forms that the artist did not explicitly direct?

Studying each project’s output space for their common elements, and speculating on the techniques and approaches they may have used to construct them, I noticed they both had a similar characteristic. They did not use predefined compositional forms, rather they defined sets of rules that constructed them. Of course, all generative art uses randomization for things like positions, shapes, rotations, etc. but fewer have clear instances of emergent design. I postulated that there exists a creative sweet spot between control and chaos where this may be more probable. Compelled to explore it further, I decided to incorporate the hypothesis into my next long form generative art project in hopes that I could achieve a few grail status outputs in the collection.

What I Mean by “control” and “chaos”

All generative artwork makes use of two core principles. First, a defined set of rules that when followed will result in a perceptible output. Second, using randomization sources to make decisions within this set of rules, thereby introducing a layer of abstraction between the creator and the execution. The types of randomization and where and how much they are applied to the rule set creates a spectrum ranging from control (minimal random) to chaos (fully random)

Towards the control end of the spectrum, you’ll find projects that use randomization sparingly in favour of pre-defined elements to select from and construct the resulting output. I’ve heard this referred to as stochastic or compositional generative art, but categorization labels in this medium haven’t achieved a consensus quite yet. On this end of the spectrum you’ll find many of the collage projects, which pick from sets of images to be placed on the canvas. To the extreme end is where many PFP projects live — Moon Birds, Bored Apes, CryptoPunks — as they primarily use randomization for picking from elements created by artists. An interesting characteristic of this side of the spectrum is that given knowledge of the set elements, decision tree and shape of randomization, you can easily predict what the final artwork may look like.

Moving over to the chaos end of the spectrum, you’ll find projects that make liberal use of randomization and have fewer pre-defined elements. Much of today’s on-chain generative art skews towards this end given that they have limitations on how much data they can afford to store, minimizing predetermined elements. It’s common to see colour palettes, musical notes, styles, flows, etc. as features to pick from because the data can be stored in relatively fewer bytes, but much of everything else is derived within the rule set. To the extreme end, you’ll find projects that use noise and math operations — Raster is a great example — to create, inching closer to pure random, which would look not much different than a cable TV static signal.

The purist’s view of generative art

Given my definition of the generative art spectrum above and my desire to explore the property of emergent design in my next project, I needed to more clearly define what my set of rules and random values would adhere to. What I landed on is the “purist’s view of generative art”. To be clear, what follows is just a thought experiment I used to create and explore, it does not cast any judgment of what is or is not generative art.

purist (noun) a person who insists on absolute adherence to traditional rules or structures, especially in language or style.

From the perspective of a purist the interpretation of generative art — using random values within a set of rules to achieve an output — could be interpreted as exclusive use of random value ranges within a set of rules that do not branch. While ludicrous to cast the medium as a whole, it resonated with me as an idea to explore because it does reflect how portions of generative code (within a larger structure) already work. To put it simply this means no predefined elements, no conditionals (if/else), and not segmenting value ranges where possible (ex: 0.0, 0.1…1.0 instead of 0 and 1).

Could this extreme set of rules lead to emergent design? What would it feel like as an artist to impose these additional restrictions as part of creating a long form generative art project? Where would the rules break down and force an artistic decision in the pursuit of having a cohesive and visually appealing collection?

Erratic; an exploration of restricted chaos

The project began as a series of isolated shader experiments in which I was trying to manipulate SDF objects — mathematical way to draw spheres, boxes, etc. — with the goal of producing a deformed and sharply jagged structures. In one attempt, I tried slicing and transforming one side, which worked but ended up exponentially more expensive with every slice. I replaced the slice with a polar reflection instead and iteratively moved the centre pivot by an ever-decreasing amount in each step. What rendered was promising and as I refined the concept by adjusting the instructions and value ranges, I realized some versions of the script were producing unexpected results.

My curiosity was piqued and the unexpected outputs spurred the reflection described previously in this article, leading to the hypothesis I would then choose to follow for the remainder of the project. After a little refactoring to adhere to the rules, I now had a working theory to explore and viable prototype to build upon. I set about reshaping the code little by little every day; adding new modifiers, adjusting values, rendering thousands of outputs overnight and identifying any outliers. This creative process went on for months in the early mornings and late evenings, alongside some paid client work I was working on at the time. I was obsessed with achieving my goal.

Eventually the project matured and had a good balance between chances of emergent design while maintaining cohesion across the generated outputs, which is crucial in long form given you cannot have any “duds” in the output space. During development, I was tempted to segment value ranges whenever I had found an interesting output, as adjacent values would likely produce similar structure, but I managed to stave off that temptation. Across 50 randomized input variable ranges, only 2 were segmented with a conditional to allow for rare outputs I enjoyed, but would ruin the collection as a whole if the full ranges were permitted. Examples of the “pure” ranges include:

• Colour - random RGB values clamped within an acceptable brightness range, with the green channel drastically reduced to allow for warmer tones to mix in.

• Iterations - the number of times a given artwork will loop through and scale down the series of instructions, producing large blocks up to very fine details

• Reflections - triplet of numbers describing polar reflections for each pass

• Movements - triplet of vectors describing the amount of movement to apply in all three axis (x, y, z) after each reflection and within each pass, which has a huge impact on the resulting patterns and is by far the most unpredictable variable

• Noise & Maths - the scale and amount of Perlin noise and Math (sin/cos/tan) to apply to the calculated distance to object, resulting in a displacement like effect

• Twist & Zoom - the amount of camera-oriented twisting and zooming

The vast majority of the coded logic also adhered to the rules of the purist, with only a few if/else statements checking a random value to introduce a little bit more variety to the mix. The rendering logic was otherwise one big math equation based on the pixel position within the canvas and random values fed into it. Conditional logic was also used to add render passes, where if a pixel were too bright or too dark it would scale the coordinate space randomly and re-render. I don’t consider this as necessarily a break in the purist rules, given it just helped fill in the canvas and introduced a lovely overlapping effect. Were I able to quantify it, I’d say the code roughly follows the same percentage of adherence to the imposed restrictions as the random variables.

The sweet spot is “part-time purist”

Having more or less followed the purist’s perspective, I can say that it forced me to think differently and change my development cycle to one of rapid iterations where I test new ideas or adjustments. I think this is because having full value ranges means a wider domain of potential outputs and greater chance for them to completely diverge. When making a code edit I knew roughly what the changes might produce but far less than in my previous works. I also found this project was far more challenging because many outputs ended up ugly or pure black/white pixels. On the flip side, these same generations would produce a few amazing outputs I had never seen before. I had to find ways to creatively shape the outputs without straying too far from the spiritual intent behind the project. Finding that sweet spot was difficult, but did I end up achieving my goal of producing emergent design in the project?

Evaluating the test outputs, I believe the answer is yes. The design of my artwork is inherently abstract and doesn’t produce organic structure, so it’s a bit more difficult to identify but having seen 100k+ outputs I can safely say there are examples of this. I do think the framework helped me to achieve this to some degree, but as part of pursuing long form generative I feel I may have lost some of the magic along the way. In order to ensure the chances of an undesirable output you must restrict the output domain, which unfortunately also means losing some of the spaces in which a brilliant output might have existed. I think if I were to explore this idea again, I’d relegate it to either an open edition with a burn to mint mechanism or manually curated collection.

I must therefore conclude that the purist’s perspective I came up with is ridiculous to follow in whole — as most purist ideals are — but has merit as a methodology to use within a greater creative strategy. One which I will continue to use, but only part-time.

There are many ways one can practice meditation; using audio as an aid is a popular method. Soothing music, rustling sounds of nature, chimes of singing bowls, or low octave chants are among many of the popular auditory aids. Elements common to all include a mix of constant tones, pleasing chords, overlapping octaves and subtle variations over time. I used these elements to shape the synthesized audio frequencies in the omnipresent drone as it reacts to the slowly shifting light and dark areas within the visual art.

While my primary objective was to create an audio-visual experience someone can become lost in, I also wanted to ensure the first static frame would maintain this sense of motion and be suitable for a high quality print that could hang on the wall.

Unwrapping Twisted Tori

Continuing my creative exploration of a technique I discovered while studying raymarching, used previously in my Quarantine collection, I experimented with different shapes (sphere, cube, torus), boolean operations (union, subtract, intersection), and spatial transforms (twist, displacement, move). Using this “unwrap” technique. Ultimately, I discovered that a smooth union of two twisted tori of varying diameters and thicknesses would produce a temporally stable and pleasing render, while allowing for an infinite cyclical motion.

The Lissajous curve technique was used to calculate the rotational values for the combined object resulting in the ever-flowing and cyclical animation. Smooth gradients were achieved by additive color mixing based on the normal tangents of the object, with specular highlights coming from a colored light position. After rendering, a second pass applies glow and adjusts the overall tone of the image. Diversity in visuals was increased by adding a temporal offset in the animation, varrying bubble-like displacements applied to the twisted tori producing repeating peaks and valleys, and finally warping the (x, y) camera view rendering coordinates.

Synthesizing Audio Reacting to Visuals

Directly correlating the visuals with the synthesized audio was critical in emphasizing the sense of connection I wanted to express. While other projects have paired drones and melodic compositions with stylistically matching visuals with great success - such as Aaron Penne & Boreta’s Rituals Venice - I felt having a direct link between them was important to expressing my creative intent.

In recent years, I've been making music as a hobby (nothing released yet) using analogue synthesizers, sequencers and controllers. I've enjoyed learning not just how to craft a unique timbre, but also how these generated signals relate to music theory. I yearned for a way to use this new knowledge in my art, then I discovered the ToneJS Library which provided similar methods for creating audio synthesis in the browser. While this would mean having to learn WebGL from scratch in order to render my shader - I had been using ThreeJS as my single library selection for Art Blocks - it was worth the effort to be able to craft uniquely shaped timbres for each artwork.

Having made the raw data available, I began experimenting with different oscillators, filters and effects to create the drone timbre I was after. I couldn’t quite get what I wanted at first by simply mixing basic wave shapes (sine, square, triangle) but then I learned I could modify the partials that directly construct the waveform and thus craft a unique timbre for each note in the chord.

Of course, I couldn't possibly capture all of the fine details and exact configurations in the code for the audio and visual elements, but I hope that this overview gives you an idea of the complexity that went into making each edition in this project uniquely connected.

After Dinner Mints : Behind the Code

If you'd like to know more, I share a lot of details in this video:

Breaking a Raymarch Algorithmn

While learning how to develop a fragment shader for the first time - aiming to draw 3D geometry using signed distance functions via a raymarching algorithm - my curiousity was piqued. What would happen if I reduced the number of rays? What happens if the raymarch always returns a cummulative value, even when missing geo? After testing many "what if" thoughts, I discovered a "broken" raymarch function and set of variables that would produce what I call an "unwrap" function for SDF geometry. Exploring the creative bounds of this function eventually lead me to this project. Below is an illustration of how the art is constructed and finally unwrapped.

To learn more about the techniques used in this project, I've written an interactive article which gives more information on the creative process of experimentation behind it: https://observablehq.com/@owenmoore/unwrapping-signed-distance-functions

Features Breakdown

While developing the artwork there were many obvious technical features that produced interesting visual results - scaling equations, tinting colors, polar reflections, adding noise, etc - but the real challenge was constraining them to a consistent range and mapping a subset to mint features such that they help tell the story. Each set of features describes both the visual attributes of the artwork and the categorization you, as the scientific observer in this story, would determine by studying the sample.

Hazard

What is the origin of the hazard causing the global quarantine?

The predominant shape and type of patterns generated.

Stage

What is the condition of the patient from which the sample was collected?

Which colored tone is applied on top of the randomized base colors.

Risk

How much risk of permanent health effects or death does this pose to humanity?

The amount of visual noise and subliminal reflections.

Variant

How many mutations / transformations have occurred since first observance?

How many polar rotation reflections are used? (2 to 10)

A Breif History of Spaghettis

Despite the fun nicknames people have given the mints on Discord and Twitter, the work isn't meant to represent actual spaghetti. Rather, the word "spaghettification" is actually a scientific term that describes the vertical stretching and horizontal compression of objects into long thin shapes, resembling spaghetti, as they are torn apart by the tidal forces as they enter a black hole. This terrifying, but humorously described, reality of what will inevitably happen to all matter is what this artwork represents.

This project was a huge learning experience for me; learning how to programmatically build color palletes, how the primary and secondary NFT markets operate, how to set up an Ethereum wallet and interact with the network, and even how to use P5js as a complete beginner. In the end, I feel this project really set me up for success going foward as a generative artist.

Features Breakdown

During much of the development of this script, I wasn't fully aware of the importance and value of features as they relate to the NFT secondary marketplace. Thankfully, I was able to pull in the variable attributes I was making and build a set of features right before launch. The feaures pictured below are Hue, Count, Scheme & Style, while the Effect, Scale & Rate are best seen in live mode.

Count

How many noodles does it have?

Scheme

What color scheme does it use?

Style

What stylistic treatment does it have?

Creating a Synthetic Photograph

Generative artwork that use photographic samples is nothing new, but as a new artist exploring the space for the first time, it offered me a means of using skills I had already developed to produce something visually unique. I could leverage the existing composition, visual tone, contrast, saturation, etc. in my photographs to instruct the computer where and how I wanted to draw shapes. Below is an example (not from the collection) of each step in the process of creating this style of artwork.

1 - Find a Source Image

Why cry over spilled milk when it's got a beautiful shape, high contrast and subtle blue tint excellent for photo sampling?

The source photos I used in this collection range wildly in quality. Many are beautiful shots of nature or posed photos I've taken of my girlfriend, while others are ugly "lifestyle" Instagram shots via cellphone

What makes an excellent source image for generative scripts doesn't necessarily align with beautiful photography. I looked for images that had distinct shapes, relatively few primary colors and tonal mood. In the next section, you can see a few before and after images from the actual collection.

2 - Resize to Output Resolution

First step, simply resize the photo to match the 4000 x 4000 output resolution.

3 - Fill the Canvas with Average Color

Sample the photo and determine the light or dark background average.

4 - Draw Large Round Shapes to Buffer

Focussing on higher luminance samples, this phase draws many low opacity, round shapes with minimal outlines. The goal of this pass is to create a soft foundation on which the next layer can be applied.

5 - Draw Darker Details to Buffer

Sampling lower luminance values and running fewer iterations, this layer draws squares and triangles with progressively increasing opacity and stroke weight to produce a layer that gives it definition.

6 - Blend the Two Buffers Together

Using a Hard Light blending method, apply the details on top of the round shapes to give the rough output composite artwork.

7 - Manually Post Process the Final Artwork

Using an iPad, manually adjust the values, colors, and saturation to bring some artistic life to the final image!

Hundreds of photos and thousands of random generations went into this project. Only 50 images survived the culling process and I feel the collection resulted in a fairly equal distribution of quality artwork as a result.