Art Blocks & Generative Art: Intro

Let’s talk briefly about Art Blocks Inc. & Generative art.
I see a lot of posts / talks happening when it comes to generative art and not all are covering some basic topics. So let’s get into it.

Here’s a Squiggle on a Blank Canvas from Snowfro for GM.

What’s generative art?
In short, generative art refers to a style of art where one part or the whole artwork is created by some sort of an autonomous system. (Computer)

This is not a new form of art. Some of the first pieces date back to 1960 with Georg Nees but the mainstream adoption came in the 1990’s due to the rise of personal computers and hardware which enabled the ease of visualization.

Now how is this tied with blockchain / web3?
Generative art is programmed these days, be that thorough Three.js / P5.js or other libraries / languages. This in term means that the code is the paint that the artist uses.

Connected with blockchain and smart contracts, it provides permanent, immutable and verifiable print of the artwork itself.

Now the era of Art Blocks.

Artblocks is the platform which enables generative artists to publish their pieces of work on ethereum blockchain. Founded by Snowfro It is curated, meaning artists need to apply to publish pieces and has published some of the most mesmerizing generative art pieces to ever be created such as:

Tyler Hobbs — Fidenza
Snowfro — Squiggles
Emily Xie — Memories of Qilin
Jason Ting — Bubble Blobby
Dmitri Cherniak — Ringers.

As the Art Blocks restructure process gave us more and more insights we have seen their announcement of the Engine Module.

Art blocks Engine provides a white-labeled generative art minting technology towards the brands and corporations. Already powering the platforms such as Bright Moments, Doodle Labs, Artcode.

The main goal is to explore new areas of interaction and innovate the technology around generative art while working with world-renowned partners.

I personally just recently got into generative art thank’s to Grails S1 | S2 from Proof Collective and started to closely follow the space and the more I am discovering the more I realize how amazing the world of gen art is.