Erik-West

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‘tur1ng’ consists of audible image architectures based on the principle of Turing machines. These systems are mathematical models of computation that manipulate symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. The following text is an overview of the process on turning a generative token into a physical installation to be placed into real-life environments.

This piece is an extended, updated version of an article, originally published on 'Becoming Human: Artificial Intelligence Magazine'. The text aims to understand generative intentions and methodologies within the visual arts from an epistemological perspective, by introducing early examples of artworks, algorithmic thinking and cognitive aspects of complex systems and decision making mechanisms.

Using our project, Ratio, as a starting point for a discussion around the intersection of time perception, the mathematics of musical harmony, and digital sound processing in the context of generative art.

This article is an in-depth overview on the concepts and motivations behind the Terrain project. The initial idea was to explore some of the medium-specific aspects of generative tokens and blockchain based artifacts. These include different ways to work with metadata, understanding their network effect and cohesive properties and invite interested participants to take part in the formation of a collective artwork.

An attempt at unwrapping the layers: Today I'd like to invite you on a lengthy but hopefully interesting explanation of where my newest algorithmic piece FSM comes from and what some of its details are. If you are curious enough and would like to dive deep, I think now is a good time to grab your favorite beverage before I jump in.

The virtual crypto art exhibition hic et nunc x 2021 is featuring 115 artworks by 70 artists, who minted art on the smart contracts of the art platform hic et nunc in 2021 using the Tezos crypto currency.

Quadrangle of My Being began as an entirely different project. Along the way, the outputs started to remind me of landforms seen from high above and I found my original inspiration giving way to maps.

A view from behind the artwork, the second interaction.

Art reflecting our increasingly digital age, where AI is pervasive, overcame initial challenges through determined communication and code adjustments, ultimately demonstrating technology's potential as a powerful artistic instrument.

New to fx(params)? Here's what you need to know before to buy your first ticket! A step by step guide, with a hint of snark and no bullshit.

Olga Fradina is a Kiev-based artist and designer whose work I discovered on the Tezos-based marketplace Objkt.com in mid-2022. Since then, I’ve managed to collect quite a few unique pieces, on both Tezos and Ethereum, and as a collector I’m always eager to see what comes next from the artist.

Generative Art has been gaining popularity alongside the rise of blockchain technology, and academic institutions are showing a growing interest in offering courses on the subject. This article documents the experience of teaching a semester-long course on Generative Art at National Chengchi University. The course covered various aspects of Generative Art, including blockchain-related knowledge, marketing strategies, aesthetic evolution, and coding. Students learned to create Generative Art pieces using p5js, starting from simple algorithms to more advanced topics. To encourage student discussion and reward good behavior, the course introduced a course token, MXC (MixMix Coin). The article provides detailed information about the course structure, student feedback, and showcases of the final projects, which were published on fxhash. Overall, this article is a valuable resource for anyone interested in teaching or learning about Generative Art and blockchain technology.

Generative editable posters

A selection of some of my favorite outputs from my generative art collection The Artifact.

Hey there, I wanted to make a little introductory post about myself and my latest art project 'paintflow'.

The question of what constitutes generative art has been a subject of ongoing debate within the art community, again, as of late. As generative art receives its debut on the international stage like never before, it’s worth remembering what got us here and where we hope to go.

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

A brief description of how The Artifact works, how it was implemented, and how it came to be.

This article provides a non-technical overview of “Impressions of Order”. I start by discussing some of the conceptual underpinnings and inspiration for this project, before providing an easy-to-read overview of the core algorithm and showcasing some of the finer details and project features. I then wrap-up with some tips and recommendations for printing.

What If, my first project of 2023, marks my New Year’s resolution in visual form and begins a new experiment in the sales and marketing of my work. I’ll dive into both aspects below.

Generators are a bit of an obscure feature of Javascript, and their usefulness might not be immediately evident. This article aims at explaining how they work and what they can be used for! We’ll first have a look at the syntax and how generators are typically implemented, followed by some use cases where generators come in really handy! We'll also briefly dip our toes into the concept of iteration, iterators and iterables and lastly also have a look at the lazy evaluation programming paradigm and how generators are one way to implement it!

Making White Mountain Winter was a labor of love in Winter 2022. A project designed to undo the fading of a memory, and extrapolate a seed of magic into an imagined scene through the use of generative techniques.

Is this it?

A p5 + WebGL approach to RealisticColour Blending

In this project, I aim to discover inspiration for my own ink work. 山水, literally is mountain and water, that is landscape painting. As most Chinese landscape paintings are fictional landscape, mountains and waters are just literally and figuratively ink or no ink or some ink.

k3rnel is a continuation of my ongoing investigation on some of the new possibilities within dynamic formats. This piece is constructed using several autonomous systems and computational concepts that are about to be introduced below.

This tutorial provides you with a full list of required hardware and software needed to run your own Tezos bakery as well as steps to get it up and running. (continuously updated)

A recap of the Art Basel contest and an introduction to Artifice.

OR is an independent, unapologetic and irreverent publication without an established periodicity. Its foremost ambition is to articulate the questions so many of us ask ourselves as we frantically collect jpegs at the end of time: What is Art and what is its significance? What is it worth? Why are we collecting? And other challenging questions, ranging from the epistemological to the downright uncomfortable.

Projects overview with details on their origins, their design as well as their composition and some technical details.

The KAKOFONI ORQUESTRA is an audiovisual work that develops in the field of generative/ambient music and abstract/glitch art, using the Hydra.js livecoding library to create the visual part and the Ableton and MaxLive for the musical composition. A collaboration with @RanggaPurAji

Interlocutor is a series about curiosity and dialogue that focuses on my use of smartphone cameras and stock photography apps to create generative photographs. The process is tied to using the apps in ways that the designers did not intend. This sometimes crashes the application causing glitches and "bad outputs". The challenge of Interlocutor is to define a set of instructions that will allow others to create images that work within a collection. This series relies heavily on contributors and makes use of the Teia collab contract for those mints.

The question I had on my mind when starting this process was whether a natural language processing AI like GPT-3 could be creative. One of the avenues that ended up being disappointing was the creation of metaphors and poetry. GPT would combine and rearrange existing metaphors into semi-meaningful sentences, sometimes outright stealing poetry. Unlike DALL.E 2, GPT is only able to generate text and not diffuse/generate images. To circumvent this, I decided to try to make it create generative artworks from the p5js JavaScript library. I knew GPT could create simple code and source it from a large codebase already presents in the training data. What I wanted to see was whether I could push the system to produce something that could be considered “original”. This article follows selected inputs and outputs from the generative art journey between GPT-3 and me, a collaborative article. I have never written a line of Javascript code in my life. (Free mint on my page!)

WTBS is celebrating a year of fxhash with platform founder, and returning guest, ciphrd. Join us as we look back at the 1.0 features, talk about the greater market, and look ahead at what's to come in year two. Interested in fx(params), consumable tokens, and the future of live events? Read the interview below to learn more and, as always, collecting this article is one of the best ways to support the show!

I originally published this article on Medium, December 14, 2021. During that time, the floor price was below 5 tez, so I released my spotlight on BINGO under the title "fx(hash) undercurrents". For today's BINGO first anniversary, I'm bringing this article "home" to fx(hash). I hope you enjoy reading it.

Discussing Verdant Brut, its palettes & inspirations, and a way to pack palettes in a terse way.

fxintell is an advanced analytics tool for all the Tezos NFT markets, including fxhash, objkt, Versum, Teai/Hen, 8bidou, and typed. fxintell covers each of the Tezos NFT markets individually, and provides real time data of all activity in each market. Do you want to see what is happening live on fxhash or objkt? Then simply use any of our analytics tools to zoom in and get instant alpha.

Some artworks are still mysteries to me, and Contrapuntos is one of them. It was this piece that made me fall in love with generative art. It was this work that gave me this sparking moment when I came to understand not just intellectually, but at my very soul, how an artist's imagination, algorithms, and randomness play together in generative art to create beauty and meanings. And yet it turned out to be the most challenging piece to describe in writing. As I looked at it, thoughts and words vanished and a sense of joyful silence filled my mind. As much as I wanted to share it, I struggled to find the right words.

A brief chronicle of the development of "Absorbed," leading British hi-end audio maker KEF's generative art collaboration on fx(hash). To summarize: transforming noise into pattern meant discovering the unexpected and incredible in between.

Welcome to the companion article for the 44th weekly episode of Waiting To Be Signed! Please follow along as you listen (or peruse to your heart's content), and if you like what we're doing smash that 'collect' button as way to show your support to the massive amounts of time and energy that goes into producing the show.

We know that generative art has a rich history, but what of generative music? It too shares a rich history, yet remains a passive subcomponent within generative arts, playing an auxiliary role, or even, occasionally, added to works as an afterthought. Yet I’ve found many examples -- on both Ethereum and Tezos -- where musical elements have become more of the primary focus. Join me as I rifle through some select choices, after offering a bit of history and context to it all.

A little about the making of Coronado, the guitar it's named after (but not really about), an appreciation for imperfection and how to work around a blending bug in Chrome.

👋 fx(update) is a community newsletter bringing you platform updates, bug fixes, integrations, upcoming product releases, and more. This issue covers upgrades from our recent development cycle, a recap of Live Minting Experiences, new team hires, and a sneak peek at the fxhash 1-year anniversary plans.

POEMS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN [PITPD] is a brick-and-mortar love letter to reading. Behold the masonry—as told in two parts by Ana María Caballero and Jason Sholl (AKA hieroglyphica).

Everyone who has looked into Enfantines’ code might have noticed that the tools I’ve used for the development of the project could be described as the very basics of generative art. This is not only because the collection has an educational purpose, but also as it aims at documenting my journey into a field which is new to me. In this article, I’ll briefly outline the concept behind Enfantines, and explore two of the tools I’ve used at length in it: brushes and music.

The creative processes, algorithms and journey behind Leviathan - the latest generative collection from S.F.Batchelor.

This document outlines your rights and terms of useage as an artist/writer, as a collector, and our rights as a platform on articles produced via fx(text), as well as what actions will result in moderation of your ARTKL from the fx(text) frontend.

Capturing clouds... an old dream of mad scientist... coming true... But wait... are they real clouds ? Maybe... maybe not... Is it the real life ? Is this just fantasy ? Cables and Clouds has been published on June 23, 2022 with a 256 editions size. This article will review the details that can be found in the whole Cables and Clouds collection.

A short essay about how generative art sits in the greater context of art, and how it's been shaped through 2021 and 2022 by the blockchain and NFTs.

As always, we present to you an absolutely perfect companion piece to the forty third episode of our show. Follow along as you listen, and please consider purchasing this article to support the substantial effort that goes into producing this podcast each week.

So... after almost giving up, previewing thousands and thousands of iterations, and dreaming of hatched buildings for months... @Laxraven and I have finally released our most ambitious collaboration project to date. Here is, illustrated with (very often awful) WIP pictures, a peek into the history of "The City".

Women of Iran, as I started writing the first edition of this article on Sept. 26, have been fighting and protesting in hundreds cities in Iran and around the world for days for their rights for freedom after 'Mahsa Amini' , An innocent 22 year-old woman, brutally was killed by morality Police in Tehran on Sept. 13, 2022, a week before her birthday. *100% mint and secondary sale of this article will be donated for these brave women.

A comprehensive compendium of questions and concepts for consideration during the creation, curation and coding of generative collections.

No one sees the imperfections like the artist does, but is there a way to reach perfection?

I am just over a month into my adventures as a creator on fx(hash), coding generative art in p5.js. This article is addressed to others who are new to this world. The template encodes what I have learned through many hours of struggle. I hope it eases your journey. The first question you might ask is why I, just a few weeks into this learning process, feel qualified to offer a template for the platform. Shouldn’t that sort of thing come from a seasoned veteran? Perhaps. I do not claim to be any sort of platform or language expert, but I have found my way to building successful work, and my efforts are recent enough for me to have some perspective on what fellow newcomers might be experiencing.

An update

基本篩選條件為版次必須大於300以上、價格低於50tez，我會說明推薦與挑選的原因，一共分為三篇或更多，這是第一篇 (floor price lower than 10tez)

Learn more about the creator behind rings(∞), Tych, Disrupt, "unfinished", Garabatos and many more generative collections...

A companion piece to episode 37 of our weekly podcast. Follow along while you listen to the show, and consider purchasing this article to help support the show!

An introduction to Ty Vek and their debut project, Commune. Also, some boilerplate code for setting up Vanilla JS projects using SVG.

Some background information about the artwork: Internal Monologue. It differs from other work and has changed so much thinking about the platform for me as an artist. all the images in this article are WIP outputs.

I often get asked this question. The answer is quite simple...Once my algorithm can produce 95% high quality outputs.

I am immensely excited that after being with fxhash since the start, almost ten months later, I am joining the team to wear my many hats full-time! This means I will engage with the team behind the scenes and continue my work with total commitment. Just as importantly, going full-time allows me to further immerse myself within our community to continue building a platform that best represents the needs and wants of the creators, collectors, and curators who call fxhash home.

December 2021 — October 2022

FxText has just launched the latest contract upgrade which has enabled marketplace features for ARTKLs. This is a free mint for all to enjoy.

Images in digital art and photography are frequently purposefully perturbed with grainy textures, often intending to evoke a tactile feeling and to add an ounce of ruggedness to an artwork. In this manner, grain is a valuable tool on your generative artist tool belt to elevate your artwork. This article discusses several techniques to achieve grain with p5, texture overlays, SVG filters, and shaders. We’ll discuss each one in great detail and the ups and downsides.

The anaverse is a collective generative art project. It sets up a frame made of a three immutable constraints for artists to cope and play with. In its simplest and most abstract form, the anaverse is a question asked: what does your art look like in a generative and textureless three-dimensional world?

Breeding Grounds is inspired by the assumption that both the brain and the cosmic web are very similar in structural design. This can also be found in many other subsystems of the universe, such as Social Networks or molecular clouds. Thereby either biological or physical factors play a role and influence these systems in a certain way which leads to these similarities. Breeding Grounds should not be another fractal algorithm, but more an abstract idea of the topic. Especially since a distinction must be made between fractal systems (self-similar) and those described above (not self-similar). Fractal systems are an important component of the universe, therefore I didn't want to leave them unmentioned at least in a lyrical way.

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

Full text of the manifesto of *the seed* drafted by Aether Cavendish (aka Aether Dada). This manifesto is minted as a companion piece to the eponymous visual poetry artwork created by Ariel Malka and minted by *the seed* on Teia/Objkt on this day, on the occasion of the zine reaching 500 followers on Twitter.

A companion piece to episode 36 of our weekly podcast. Follow along while you listen to the show, and consider purchasing this article to help support the show!

Today I’d like to share an exciting conversation with Mark Knol. He is one of the most popular artists in the generative art Tezos community, and his Smolskulls can be seen all around this blockchain these days. He has published generative art for a while across multiple platforms - hit et nunc, fxhash, objkt.com - and his collectors are one of the most vibrant communities out there.

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My view on where we are now and where we are going with the gen art movement...

No mountain is not (like) a mountain. In the compilation of Buddhist text Pointing at the Moon Catalogue (指月錄), Qingyuan Xingsi (青原行思), wrote the following: 「見山是山，見山不是山，見山祇是山。」 Seeing mountains are mountains. Seeing mountains are not mountains. Seeing mountains are just mountains.

The development of the Dencity project was particularly complex and required months of intensive work... Here is an EXTREMELY SIMPLIFIED summary of the many stages of the development of this crazy project.

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