I never thought that I would be interested in art created from code.
As someone without coding experience, much less an appreciation for the technicalities and intricacies of software programming, the applications of code in any form have never seized my curiosity or imagination. I know that code forms the substrate of our increasingly digitalised lives, but I was content to simply remain a passive user.
However, around six months ago while nursing a COVID-19 infection, I stumbled onto the field of generative art, which can be loosely understood as art created from code. At that time, my fiancée and I were in the process of purchasing our new home together, and had just begun consulting our interior designer on the renovation works. With the copious amount of personal time while on quarantine, I started thinking about featuring elements from my growing interest in the crypto space within our new home. Somehow or another, I soon found myself spending more and more time looking at non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of long-form generative art.
Generative art and NFTs
Generative art is not a new phenomenon. It can trace its roots to artistic movements in the early 20th century, such as Futurism and Constructivism that introduced technology and industrial modes of production as key themes, as well as Dada and Surrealism that incorporated elements of spontaneity and randomness to challenge established norms. The term “generative art” itself was coined in 1965 by Max Bense, a German philosopher, to describe works that can be made through a set of rules, while retaining some degree of chance in the creation process.
As the influence of digital technology on society became more pervasive throughout the later half of the 20th century, more artists inevitably began to explore the intersection of art and computer science. This laid a firm foundation for digital art, including generative art which is often created via digital processes. (For a more thorough background on generative art, check out this excellent overview of the history and significant developments in the generative art space by Jason Bailey, who is behind the art and tech blog, Artnome.)
Nevertheless, digital art is often perceived as less relevant or worthy compared to physical art, perhaps due to the fact that it is less tangible (you cannot hold it in your hands) and is inherently replicable (you can easily “right click and save” a digital file indefinitely). The emergence of NFTs on blockchains in recent years has started to change this state of affairs, however.
To understand the impact of NFTs on digital art, we first need to be clear on what they are. In essence, NFTs are unique digital certificates that live on blockchains, with meta-data that links each token to a particular asset, such as an artwork, a music clip, or anything for that matter. So NFTs are not the artworks themselves. Instead, they are more akin to certificates that represent ownership over the artworks that they are linked to.
The game-changer with regard to NFTs is that the provenance of each token is immutable and can be easily verified by anyone, thanks to the design of blockchains. These qualities enable digital art, for the first time, to be considered scarce. While the underlying digital art piece can be reproduced infinitely, the NFT serves as the only authentic certificate linked to that art piece and it cannot be forged or tampered with. As a result, NFTs have dramatically expanded the market for digital art, allowing digital artists to better monetise their works while spawning a whole new generation of digital art collectors.
Long-form generative art
Specific to generative art, blockchain technology and NFTs have led to a new and dynamic genre of generative art, what is often referred to as long-form generative art.
As the generative artist Tyler Hobbs explained in this essay, the creation of generative art has historically involved a process of curation, in which only a single output from a particular generative algorithm, or a small set at most, is selected and showcased. However, blockchain-based platforms for generative art, in particular Art Blocks (on the Ethereum blockchain) and fxhash (on the Tezos blockchain), have popularised a different approach, where the artist places the underlying algorithm on the blockchain and pre-determines the number of iterations that can be “minted” as NFTs from the algorithm. The term “long-form” arises from the fact that collection sizes on these platforms are typically in the range of a couple of hundreds to 1,000, far greater than the norm for generative art projects before.
Another distinctive feature of long-form generative art is that the outputs of each iteration go directly to the collector, and the artist cannot intervene to decide whether a particular iteration should or should not be part of the collection. Once an iteration is created from the algorithm, it is linked to an NFT that will permanently and immutably live on the blockchain, and that NFT is transferred to the collector’s wallet.
The appeal of long-form generative art
Over the past couple of months, I have collected several works in long-form generative art projects, and I intend to collect more of them if my real-life wallet allows. Besides displaying a couple of these works as prints in my new home, I also regard some of them as assets that could serve as a good store-of-value, or even appreciate in value in the future, at least when denominated in their native cryptocurrency (i.e. ETH or XTZ). But perhaps more important than their monetary value, my intent is for the works I collect to have a certain longevity, and to continue to fascinate me (and hopefully others) over time.
To me, the appeal of long-form generative art can be outlined via three aspects: content, context, and community.
Content
Fundamentally, I regard art as a subjective experience, which is first and foremost informed by the content of the artwork—in effect, how it looks, sounds, or feels like, depending on the type of art. I do not think I can appreciate a piece of art if I do not intuitively like how it appears to my senses or manifests in my mind.
On this front, there are sufficient examples of long-form generative art projects that have captured my visual interest to make me fascinated about the genre as a whole. In particular, I find it incredible to witness how lines of code can generate compelling forms and patterns, reflected in compositions that span the gamut from being simply beautiful to those that are breathtakingly intricate.
One of my favourite long-form generative art projects is Meridian by Matt DesLauriers, which was launched as a 1,000-edition collection on Art Blocks in September 2021. As described in the artist’s notes on the project, Meridian is essentially “a 15kb JavaScript program that constructs stratified landforms using hundreds of thousands of small strokes of colour”, and the hash of each token in the project “describes a coordinate within a multidimensional generative space, locating a unique composition that lies along one of many possible longitudes.” Beyond any verbal description, however, I think the works in this collection have to be appreciated visually, both at a distance and when zoomed into the details.
Go to the project page on Art Blocks and scroll through the different iterations—notice the ways in which the different layers flow. They are simply sublime!
Context
Of course, having appealing content per se does not distinguish long-form generative art from other forms of generative art, or digital art more generally. Any art work can look nice. But what makes long-form generative art distinctive is its context, in terms of how it is created and therefore how it can be perceived.
As earlier mentioned, generative art refers to art that is created from a set of rules, with some element of randomness thrown in. In the case of Art Blocks, the algorithm for each project is stored directly on the Ethereum blockchain. When someone creates an output by minting an NFT, a random string of hexadecimal characters is generated and placed in the NFT, which then serves as the input “seed” for the algorithm and determines how that particular output looks and operates.
Understanding this context allows one to appreciate the output not only based on its physical manifestation, but also consider how it is the product of what is effectively controlled randomness. I find it fascinating that the creation process of generative art is embedded with a certain paradox—the artist uses a highly-deterministic medium, i.e. code, but yet incorporates the role of chance in determining the final outputs. In my opinion, this paradoxical creation process adds another layer of beauty to the works, reflecting how they are born from a delicate dance between rules and randomness. This is perhaps also testament to the symbiotic relationship between the artist and the collector, which is all the more pertinent in light of the role of blockchains and NFTs in facilitating closer relationships between both parties.
At the collection level, the important contextual feature of long-form generation art is the lack of curation on the artist’s part. As highlighted earlier, there is no opportunity for the artist to selectively feature or hide the outputs from the project’s algorithm. Each output after the project is launched becomes permanently and immutably part of the collection on the blockchain, limited only by the pre-determined collection size.
In this sense, each output in a long-form generative art project should not only be perceived as a standalone art piece, but also appreciated in relation to the entire collection. With long-form generative art, the range of outputs from the algorithm will be highly visible to collectors, which imposes additional demands on the project. Firstly, the algorithm must be able to produce outputs in a consistent and coherent manner at scale; a good long-form generative art project cannot have an algorithm that is tuned towards producing high-quality outputs for only a small subset of works, while generating garbage outputs for the rest. Secondly, there should still be enough variety across the outputs to justify the collection size, otherwise the collection as a whole may appear repetitive. As Tyler Hobbs has written:
“With a top-class algorithm, every output will have something new about it, a little surprise that teaches you more about what is possible.”
To me, this interplay of coherence and variety at the collection level provides a rich context to appreciate each individual output from a long-form generative art project. For example, I can look at each output based on specific parameters as programmed by the artist into the algorithm (e.g. the colour scheme, or use of specific patterns or elements), and think about how they manifest in different ways across the collection.
More broadly, I can also consider how the central theme in the project is expressed and pushed in different boundaries by that delicate dance between rules and randomness inherent in the genre itself. In fact, I would have to reckon that Charles Darwin’s poignant conclusion to his treatise on evolution would apply to the very best of long-form generative art as well:
“[F]rom so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
Community
Finally, the relatively larger collection size of long-form generative art can also make the experience of collecting generative art much more social, as compared to projects with only a small selection of outputs that is showcased. Given that more collectors can have a stake in a long-form project, there will naturally be a larger collector base to tap on for community-building.
For long-form generative art in particular, the coherence of each project can serve as a common frame of reference to anchor a community of collectors, while its inherent variety can serve as fodder for continued engagement within the community. In fact, collectors or fans of a certain project often share their favourite outputs on social media, highlighting what makes them special in their eyes, and finding unique pairings or combinations with other outputs. Collectively, such sharing can sustain discourse within the community, and enrich everyone’s appreciation of the project as a whole.
A number of platforms have also been developed which enable creators and fans to create their own NFT galleries. Of note, Deca allows users to curate galleries featuring NFTs that they do not own, while also giving them the tools to add custom backgrounds and text to present their galleries in unique ways. Members of the long-form generative art community have used Deca to curate customised galleries of outputs within and across projects, creating shared digital spaces to enhance collective appreciation of these projects. The entries in Deca’s Zancan x Zeneca gallery competition, in particular @meta_charsiu’s winning gallery, demonstrate how thoughtful curation and commentary can elevate the display of generative art works.
At the platform level, Art Blocks and fxhash have also engendered vibrant communities. Using just Art Blocks as an example, in terms of numbers, the cumulative number of unique Ethereum wallets holding at least one Art Blocks NFT stands at around 75,000 as of 1 January 2023, reflecting a more than 50% increase from just a year before, despite an extremely tumultuous 2022 for crypto in general. Art Blocks has also been organising numerous online and offline events for its community, including a 24-hour “Blocktalkathon” on Twitter recently to celebrate its two-year anniversary.
There have also been initiatives by many other organisations to spread the joy about generative art, in particular Bright Moments, which seeks to organise in-person events centred around unique minting experiences for generative art. Kaloh, who publishes an informative newsletter on NFT art, had many positive things to say about Bright Moments’ last event in Mexico City. I have never attended any of these events before, but it is good to see that the impact and reach of long-form generative art extend beyond the digital realm.
Based on my general observations, the long-form generative art community is also open, friendly and highly dedicated. Unlike many other NFT projects, there is a much greater emphasis on the art and the underlying blockchain technology, instead of the financial returns of each project. As Zeneca, an NFT collector and thought leader, has written about the Art Blocks community in 2021 during the last hype cycle:
With Art Blocks, almost everyone comes first for the art and the revolutionary utilization of the Blockchain. You are buying great art first and foremost, and it just so happens that an amazing community has formed around all of it. Creators and collectors come together in an environment that is friendly, informative, inspirational, relaxed. If you’re feeling the FOMO from all the other projects and want to be a part of a killer community, take a step back from the next panda-cat-donkey-cow project and perhaps take a gander at Art Blocks.
Prospects for long-form generative art
To sum up, I believe long-form generative art as a genre can have lasting appeal, and my framework for evaluating this potential value is based on the three “C”s:
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Content: Do I like the outputs of a particular project?
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Context: Can I appreciate the creation process of a particular project, and how the different outputs relate to each other and as a whole?
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Community: Is there a sustainable community with much positive vibes surrounding the project, the artist and/or the platform?
I know art is inherently subjective, and it is futile to try to forecast how the market will shape up in the next few years and decades. But just based on the simple principle that what is appealing will have value, I think long-form generative art is worth exploring, collecting and investing in—in particular, projects with compelling content, rich context and a strong community.
The advent of long-form generative art has also come at a no better time than now. I think we are on the cusp of witnessing several technological shifts converging in the not-too-distant future, in particular, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchains. As we have seen from the outputs of text-to-image AI-based generative tools (i.e. DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion), the marginal cost of content production is going to approach zero. Blockchains will therefore become all the more relevant. We will need NFTs to anchor a semblance of authenticity amidst the deluge of AI-generated content that will descend upon us. And if I may exaggerate a little, NFTs will be critical to preserve our humanity, by ringfencing and securing some portion of art, and the act of creation itself, as a fundamentally human craft.
In this regard, I will hazard a prediction that long-form generative art, as a blockchain-native genre of art, will only increase in cultural relevance, in tandem with NFTs becoming a core building block of our digital lives. Moreover, I think many of today’s projects in long-form generative art will go on to hold tremendous historical value, representing pioneering efforts at a then-nascent stage of this new and dynamic genre of art. Perhaps, the user WhiteRabit1111 puts it the best in an article on Medium:
“There is no limit to the supply of tokenized assets that will emerge in future, but there is an iron-clad hard cap on the scarcity of those in the past.”
On this note, I shall end with this beautiful piece—Meridian #820—the latest entry in my little collection of long-form generative art.
Disclaimer: Nothing in this essay constitutes financial advice. Please do your own research and be mindful of your own investment objectives before investing into any cryptocurrencies or NFTs.
