gremlin (@gremlin_bb) • Hey

Publications

the second of two, the pair in a diptych, it's my new audiovisual whatever-medium-genre for Lens @creators i want to put on six rings, dance in the mirror in my best dress, make the cheese straws from the hand-me-down waspian cookbook. pretty girls lie on the floor in front of the subwoofer, 'heart shaped box' playing for the 20th time, oh baby can't we just have a party and forget all this junk about society and duty and personal responsibility? suffering tastes sweeter when you put cream in your coffee "when are we having a party??" is now live to collect 😎
decided to thrash out with some guitars and vintage cars for my first piece here 😎 tryna invent a new genre, smash together the subconscious whispers you don't listen to, rage out in the public sphere but keep it classy (ascii is always cute 😇) hope u enjoy!! in collaboration with lens @lens/creators 💕
took the day off to tan on the roof and read rock bios, bless ✨
my mainnet collection, 'different rooms' (4096 audiovisual still lifes based on the i ching) is live now weeeeee super excited to share these with the world omg. these last 5 months or so have been a whirlwind trip of deepfried cyber-mysticism, soulsearching, and friend making. in releasing a collection on mainnet, i had the desire to do my very best to make something thoughtful and good. as i talked to my friends on the internet and looked around at the scene that existed here, i felt a feeling of fondness. i want to contribute to this scene and help it grow and prosper. sometimes some people refer to ethereum as an "internet sculpture hall" so i started with something to put on the walls and a soundtrack to dance to. enjoy xx <https://baggy.industries/different-rooms>
Today’s art writing will be on randomness and the importance of its application within algorithmic art. Thanks for reading, as always, it's been fun to bring this writing to this part of the web :) **On Randomness** Algorithms are stories, and a good story is extremely simple: You start somewhere, you end up somewhere else, and there are some stops along the way. This is how we arrive at the concept of “from a simple set of rules emerges complex phenomena.” Essentially, randomness applied within constraints creates a balance between longform cohesion of a set and the novelty of variation that exists within it and its subsets. Like our orders of signal, too much or too little randomness creates fungibility (sameness) and produces weaker collections. The most important factor in making collection art is the artist’s use of randomness within the collection. The purpose of an algorithm is to generate sequences of objects with varying parameters. These sequences can be considered “signals,” or manifest renderings of the sequence’s progression. Some common examples of these include audio and visual signals (.wav and .mp4 files). Randomness can be applied to these sequences in different magnitudes, which produce different results both in terms of aesthetic rendering and the variation of that rendering within a set. **Order of Signals:** \[ Least random ] Silence → Basic orderedness (sinewave) → Stochastic orderedness (complex waves) → \[ Most random ] White noise In examining the scale of signals as they apply to randomness, we can make aesthetic choices about how we incorporate randomness into our work. No randomness and we get no signal (boringgg, even if Cage is right and there is no silence, this defeats the point of making a cute and quirky NFT collection and also, has already been done). Too little randomness and we get pure mathematical signals such as sine waves. While simple signals can be combined to produce complex ones, oftentimes their simplicity adds a flavor of unnaturalness or sterility that fails to mirror the richness and excitement of reality. In another way, sine waves sound cool and spacey but that can get old, limiting, and just sound the same after a while. However, too much randomness turns into noise, and most listeners don’t care about the difference between white noise and brown noise. In addition to this, extremely complex ordered signals can come across as “just noise,” despite their underlying structures. This leaves us with stochastic noise, an ordered signal with slightly random variation between instances. Visualize a wave on an oscilloscope where one data point moves up or down by a few steps each frame. In the instance of sound, the pitch of this signal will stay the same while the quality (timbre) changes subtly over time. If one expands the scope of randomness and begins changing the position of multiple points or increasing/decreasing the length of the wave, the sound will begin to variate more apparently between instances. Pausing before we get too technical, stochastic math is cool because it’s the math of the stock market, the quantitatively realized signal of human fear and greed. Like collective sentiment, cycles of bull and bear emerge, each with their own unique technicalities but that share similar narrative arcs. I imagine that the stock market turned into signal sounds like a distorted guitar: patterned, but noisy. But how do these patterns of signal relate to the artist’s approach to randomness in their work? The underlying algorithm used to generate the set provides structure, or the cohesion linking instances of the set as a unified collection. The randomness in the system does the heavy lifting of variating the set. Algorithms decide when and how to apply randomness to instance parameters. In approaching this next collection I was taking on a technical challenge. Our previous collections were at most 500 pieces, a size where randomness is easy to control and algorithm weakness is easy to conceal. Collections of this size also allow for more manual work, adding the natural randomness of human imperfection as seasoning. In doing a midsize collection (1-5k pieces), I had to pay special regard to balancing fungibility and creating a sense of “commons” and “rares” within the set. A collection at this size where each token felt the same would have the effect of an immature painter creating a large scale canvas: It would fall flat and seem excessive. In looking for a set of constraints on which to base my application of randomness, I settled on the I Ching, the original random number generator. The “story” of this collection’s algorithm then is as follows: Here are 64 characters represented by their interiors. Different facets of a character interact with aspects of other characters in different situations. There are a fixed set of states these situations fall into. A simple story, played out over 4,096 iterations: Each one is peculiar in its own right, but some are more than others. This essay is an ode to computers and random numbers. I love algorithmic collections for the same reason I love recurrent themes in the Beethoven Piano Sonatas and covers by the Heartbreakers: Each instance allows you to hear the same tune with new ears. Sometimes you realize something about the song that you didn’t realize in other instances. This listening experience mirrors life: You see the same old people doing the same old things, but sometimes they do something different. That’s when life gets interesting.
hi everyone, have been posting some essays over on twitter and thought it'd be fun to post some essays here. in anticipation of doing a lot of writing about art, i thought it'd be fun to talk about why that's important. enjoy!! **On Writing About Art** How should artists talk about their work, and should they even talk at all? This is a question facing the world of art at the moment. As I embark on the mission of writing about my art, it is also one that weighs heavy on my mind. A wise person once said that it’s important for artists to know how to talk about their art properly, which includes discussing the references and inspirations that went into a specific piece. I tend to agree, but let us discuss the situation in more depth. One camp would say that the art should speak for itself. Factoring in ideas such as memetics and the fast-twitch muscles one uses scrolling through social media, they argue that art that requires an explanation to be understood fails at the missive directed by the conditions of 21st century society. Simply put, tldr next. There is some truth to this line of thought. In the traditional art world, it’s become fashionable to have the thesis encompass the art. In this case, the aesthetics of a piece matter very little, if at all. Sometimes there is no physical art piece and it is just the thesis. I think this approach to art-making is stupid and defeats the point. God gave us eyes and ears to interact with art, and mouths to say “Jesus Christ this sucks.” While I remain open to the idea that the thesis isn’t the most important part of a work, some would take this theory further to suggest that the art doesn’t even matter: In this space, the percentage return on a collection happens first and the narratives around what the art is and what it means come afterwards. This means that if a green candle doesn’t accompany your collection release, then the piece fails to gain significance in the space. If one is to approach the crypto-specific medium of digital art, this green candle then indicates a piece’s idiomatic success within the medium. Without cynicism, I believe all these things are true. I think having the thesis hold up aesthetic weakness in your work is wrong and that one should provide a pop facade with which their audience engages with. Additionally, I think understanding how one can potentially manufacture “green candle situations” goes hand and hand with art-making, both here and in the wider world. However, I still believe the thesis should exist. The first reason is that narratives tend to follow green candles. If there’s no writing or insight accompanying your work, then people will just invent things. While this could be a fun experiment with interesting results, most artists would like some degree of control over the public’s understanding of what a piece is and why they made it. Yeah, people will make shit up even in the presence of an existing narrative, but making information around your work widely available increases the likelihood that some threadoors propagate your narrative. Additionally, depth brings passion. While some people may initially come in contact with your work by way of green candling or pop facade enjoyment, if they really like a piece they might want to learn more about it. In this case, providing information turns a like into a passion and can turn casual collectors into diehard fans. We like diehard fans because they stick around after the froth subsides. Therefore, one could make the argument that while theses can be extremely dumb, providing some level of deeper engagement with the work benefits the artist in multiple ways. This means the wise person is correct (in my opinion): It is important for artists of the 21st century to be able to think deeply about their inspirations and references and communicate those thoughts to an audience. In preparing for my next collection, I spent a good time researching my material and focusing on how I structured my internal narratives around the art. At times I worried about putting the thesis before the horse (the art) and whether any of this labor even mattered. I debated about writing about the collection with the fear that doing so would make me look desperate or like I was attempting to cover up my failures of aesthetic realization. In reconciling these fears, I thought of a debate I had had with my favorite music history professor over program notes at concerts. I argued that program notes served no purpose, and if the audience member didn’t connect with a piece then they were stupid or the piece was bad. His argument was that program notes allowed people new to the experience of enjoying music an entry into understanding. Additionally, program notes could provide depth and context to a specific concert experience that would enrich the performance. After many years, I see the wisdom in what he said. This is all to say, I create to ignite passion, not passiveness. Therefore, I will continue to write about my art and plant narratives for future green candles to water. Hopefully someday they’ll turn into crops I can eat. thanks for reading, chat soon :) love, gremlin
hi everyone weee, have some good thoughts cooking that i'm excited to start sharing, in the meantime enjoy this piece 😇