The universe is profoundly beautiful.

When making art, throughout history, we’ve tended towards literal representation and realism: capturing the interplay of light and shadows, the subtle language of forms and compositions, a quest to imitate human visual perception - the image - and how it can make us feel.

Now, with software as a medium, we’ve opened up a most infinite possibility space for new kinds of representation. Not just of light, but of any other physical law, real or imagined - the system - and how it can make us think.

Through math and logic operating at unfathomable speeds, human expression is expanded; in addition to images and physical objects, we have behaviors and digital worlds. Concepts can be precisely codified, rather than loosely outlined by our low-bandwidth written languages.

With all of this sprawling thousands of lines of complex and technically rigorous programming, it can be immensely difficult to fully appreciate how this nascent medium guides an artist’s hand.

So, I want to show you.

One Concept, Two Worlds

By bringing to life a physical implementation of a digital system, the artist’s adherence to constraints, aesthetic decisions, and search for the medium’s boundaries reveal themselves in stark contrast.

I partnered with my wife, an excellent exhibit designer and artist herself, to build a physical reinterpretation of Proscenium’s world-canvas and bouncing paint. Seeing the two side-by-side will reveal more about digital systems art than my words ever could.

The Experience

This collaborative event will take place at Art Blocks’ Marfa Weekend (details below).

Each visitor plays the role of an “Agent” within the Sunrise Protocol. To join the protocol, you must first interact with a pseudorandom script that assigns a ball type - just like the initialization of a generative algorithm. However, all choices afterwards are in your hands: paint color, drop height, initial velocity, etc.

The introduction of entropy sourced from the whims of each individual is not new in and of itself, but it’s a worthwhile lens to consider. We’ll create an artwork that’s randomly generated both by an algorithm and by the myriad human hands working together. Perhaps, if the two truly exist, the work will simultaneously exhibit properties of both free will and determinism. Or maybe we’re just bouncing paint.

Agents can also take home a piece of the art: the rubber ball you used to bounce and splatter paint. Around 20% will be able to use and keep custom Art Blocks golf balls. The script will also be assigned three official Proscenium prints from my personal collection to distribute randomly to participants at the event.

Sunset

The naming and brief description around this work has some personal context, so I’ll briefly summarize with a stream of consciousness from the thoughts and feelings as I worked.

While prototyping a physical concept, I created this first painting with the same oil paints I had sampled for Proscenium’s “From Zero” palette, using only the kinetics of rubber balls to make marks. Anyone who’s used oils would tell you this is a bad idea. I learned the hard way why acrylics were the right choice, but I had wanted so badly to match the algorithm as closely as possible.

Over two days, I worked tirelessly to get a feel for the medium; the shapes and paths illuminated the viscous interaction and energy transfer in each bounce. It was so wonderful to witness! I wanted to find ways to express myself compositionally. I wanted sunshine peeking over the horizon. I would end up taking my three-year-old to see his first sunrise a week later. I wished we would see it everyday; how can we forget to appreciate something so close, so common, and yet so brilliant and glorious as to burn the sky with its colorful grandeur?

As I stubbornly pushed forward, pacing around the paint-splashed canvas, the fumes building up began to seep in, to overwhelm. I found myself growing dizzier by the hour, internally aching; by the end, despite having so much fun, I was delirious, exhausted and in physical pain.

I was furious with myself. I’m now five years sober, but I felt I’d dragged myself into a hangover, and was forced to remember how I had struggled with depression and substance abuse in my teens and twenties. I was confronted by those self-destructive nights, like the feeling of smoking a cigarette when you’re sick. A sort of misdirected determination. You know better, but fuck it.

It’s hard not to think of Pollock; he probably inspired me more than I realize. I wondered if he suffered while he worked, splashing and mixing chemicals and paints. How many of his mistakes, his troubles, at least in part, arose from the invisible particles he inhaled while immersing himself in his paintings? I thought about how our understanding of material science and biology is still so prehistoric. How when I was a boy, my grandfather passed from a likely combination of pesticide exposure and tobacco. I take after him, but I’ll be damned if I don’t let him teach me a lesson.

My thoughts swirling, I was reminded of how it felt to unravel the nightmares we weave for ourselves in those darkest moments. We are the authors of our own stories, the narrators of our inner monologues. Write yourself the best story with everything you’ve got. Take control. Happiness is a choice, my father always told me. It’s perspective. Always look forward, always be learning, always keep going. Every sunset is a sunrise from another angle.

The Details

Phew! It’s been a journey, but we’re never more than halfway there, and “there” is not really where we’re going. All and all, making these physical pieces has been both a great joy and a great lesson.

I humbly invite you to join me in making a collaborative bounce painting in Marfa!

Sincerely,

Jimmy Griffith (aka remnynt)

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• Date … Friday, November 15, 2024

• Time … 11am - 3pm

• Place … Saint George Hall, 113 E El Paso St, Marfa TX