Man and Machine: Generative Art, featuring radarboy3000

Generative art is a category that is gathering pace in the Tezos ecosystem with many popular artists leading the charge in this new realm.

On 28 September, 4-5 PM, TZ APAC will be presenting a lecture by leading generative artist and organizer of Crypto Art Week Asia 2022, radarboy3000.

What is generative art?

In generative art, humans rely on autonomous systems (e.g. software, AI, machines, or natural language rules) to create artwork.

One of the earliest examples of generative art was a musical game created by the famous composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1972. In this game, fragments of music were randomly picked from dice rolls, which were then joined together to complete the piece.

Here are some key principles of generative art:

Collaboration between man and machine

Generative art is about a partnership between two parties - the human artist and the system. It isn’t about replacing the human element, but rather about creating synergy between human creativity and automated efficiency.

While generative artists aren’t the ones holding the brushes, they create the code and work with the system to create masterful pieces. Through the input of code, prompts, and instructions, artists passionately communicate their inspiration, emotions, and desires through shapes and colors. This is a skill on its own — the degree of skill reflects the quality of the output. In fact, AI developer/NFT artist CS Lim firmly believes that for the best results, the designer and user of AI for artistic endeavors should be the same person.

Further, despite all that machines can do, they cannot fully replicate the human sense of aesthetic judgment, philosophy, and emotions. For that, you need a human to be the conductor, guiding it with creative vision.

Autonomy must be involved

Generative art requires some degree of autonomy from the system. This is also known as “randomness”.

When creating the generative code, artists set the parameters of randomness - the set of variables (what colors, thickness of lines, number of circles) that determines the final product. This is usually done through algorithmic functions.

With NFTs, the ones with rare traits are highly valued. Collectors all hope to get rare pieces - this randomness is part of what makes the game so exciting.

What’s the link between generative art and NFTs?

CryptoPunks, the first historically significant NFT project, was born out of a generative algorithm by Larva Labs. 10,000 NFTs were generated, every single one unique with a combination of random attributes like hair, color, and species.

Credit

CryptoPunks “OG” collector Snowfro was inspired to start Art Blocks, the first platform solely focused on generative blockchain art. The first generative art project launched there was Chromie Squiggles, which successfully proved that generating tens of thousands of non-identical outputs was possible.

Smart contracts are a great tool for making generative art. Essentially, actions are triggered upon hitting certain conditions. For example, when minting an NFT, the transaction hash itself may act as the random condition upon which NFT traits are selected. Since then, it has become increasingly popular for artists to make generative art on blockchain - through smart contracts, instead of algorithms.

However, veteran generative artist and teacher at MIT Media Lab Zach Lieberman point out a barrier commonly faced by artists - the cost of minting an NFT on Ethereum. However, he also notes that “many in the generative art community have turned to the Tezos blockchain for lower-cost experimentation”.

On Tezos, the open platform fxhash was created with the philosophy of being accessible to all artists, with no curation nor gatekeeping. Artists publish Generative Tokens (GT), stored on the Tezos chain. When collectors mint the GT, the minting transaction generates a unique hash that acts as a seed alongside the original GT, creating a completely unique piece of generative artwork as an NFT.

For artists or collectors interested in generative art, come find out more from experienced generative artist radarboy3000 on 28 September. He will also cover how to mint a generative NFT on fxhash.

Who is radarboy3000?

radarboy300, also known as George Galanakis, is a well-known generative artist with an incredible body of work in the NFT space. He describes himself as a crypto artist, creative hacker, and techno utopianist. Living in Singapore, he’s also the organizer of Crypto Art Week Asia 2022.

Since young, George has always been attracted to code and computer graphics. Starting his career in experimental new media design, he soon became an award-winning designer and disc/video jockey. While success in the advertising industry naturally followed him, George’s nature dictated that he would be drawn to more experimental work like data/generative art and sound, and motion reactive graphics.

“I never really fit, being this weird hybrid artist, technologist (before there was a thing called a creative technologist), I don’t think they ever knew what to do with me.”

In order to push himself and further explore the world he loved, George started the practice of coding daily, building his own Javascript library. The process of creatively coding artwork every day has truly allowed George to find his own monochromatic minimalistic style and vibe that his fans enjoy today.

In 2020, George discovered crypto and unsurprisingly dove in head first.

“Although I was still comparatively early, I was annoyed with myself that I hadn’t paid closer attention to what was going on and jumped in sooner. I’ve always loved tech and art, so it felt like this new crypto art world was made for me."

George’s work and NFTs are inspired by the aesthetics of dance music culture, 80’s computer graphics, and early generative artists. Of course, for George, NFTs are more than just a trend or artistic medium.

“I think of myself as a creative hacker and a techno-utopianist, so my work always has an element of that in it.”

“For me, my interest has always been in crypto art, which is different from NFTs. Crypto art is a techno-utopian art movement that’s using technology as an integral part of the art.

Crypto art is already paving the roads to an ideal society - it enables us to think in new ways, imagine, and build new realities. NFTs have enabled an art explosion never before seen in the history of the world.

Art, culture, and freedom are heavily interlinked. More art means more-vibrant sub-cultures, free-er societies, and more social justice. Some may look at art and think it’s trivial. But artists define civilizations and artists imagine our future into reality. So, really, there’s nothing more important than art.

While wild NFT speculation in the bull market has polluted the movement, NFTs have given so many people a creative outlet and given a whole new generation a new love and appreciation for art. Now, everyone can collect - and most people have collected more art in the last year than in their entire lives. This is amazing.”

Being the maverick that he is, one of George’s art projects is to hack and disrupt art itself. He decided to create a community of like-minded artists who shared a similar goal of bubbling up weirdness and brilliance and supporting each other to grow. This was the path to the creation of Crypto Art Week Asia, which George is convinced will blow people away by the sheer amount of talent taking part.

“I hope visitors to CAWA can take away that art can be experienced, which is what CAWA is all about. The movement has evolved and matured, and so has the talent in Asia.

Art and music will forever be intertwined, and experience design and AV performances are the future. As I mentioned previously, the NFT bubble helped a lot of artists but also did some harm in terms of perception. So, most importantly, I hope people come away with a new love and appreciation for this new form of art and the artists. And I especially hope they have a good time. We have over 150 artists, dancers, musicians, DJs, performers, and more. This is not your usual art show!”