Codex 3 - Neophyte:

Collectors who minted one of the first 25 tokens may request an edition of Codex 3 - Neophyte a printed circuit board artwork designed to accompany Neophyte MMXXII. Please contact me for details.

Details :

During the token minting process, a unique hash is generated for each artwork, and is converted into numeric digits to control parameters of the simulation.

Each generative plant starts with a five digit seed value representing it's DNA. The DNA is then mutated using one of nine rulesets, which develop the plant into different species. When plants regrow, they generate a new seed value and use the same ruleset to grow. This results in new varieties of plants within the same species. Over time, this creates a wide variety of forms ebbing and flowing between stability and unpredictability.

It's a delicate balance to produce beautiful results, while still allowing for the emergence of unexpected forms. To achieve this, I carefully wrote the nine mutation rulesets for their aesthetic qualities, and then allow each artwork to mutate those rulesets by up to 15%. This results in each token producing familiar yet new forms, each with their own unique feeling.

In addition to the variety of rulesets, Neophyte MMXXII has three overall systems: the main floral plant generator, a shattered generator, and a bouquet generator. Each system can be populated with one of three flower styles, one of two flower structures, over a dozen color schemes, variable feedback over time, and cycles that can take several hours to complete.

Neophyte MMXXII is capable of generating thousands of artworks with meaningful variety and unique forms. However, the token release is being limited to 168 in total, roughly the minimum number of tokens capable of representing the system.

History :

I've been developing and using Neophyte throughout my artistic practice for the last ten years. Below is a history of that practice. I find plants and the growth of organisms deeply beautiful, and for me these plants represent the beauty of the world itself. But Neophyte isn't meant to reproduce nature, it's a simulation that acknowledges it's digital material and embraces the medium of software and 3D rendering.

2012 - 'Plein Air' :

The first artwork I created with the software was completed in 2012 and was written in C++. At the time the work was titled "Plein Air 001" and was an immersive algorithmic landscape and musical composition developed for the Allosphere, a large-scale immersive virtual reality environment and laboratory located at the California NanoSystems Institute. The Allosphere is a 30-foot diameter steel sphere that 25 viewers can walk into, and be fully surrounded in 360-degree 3D video content and spatialized surround sound. This unique research facility allows for one to quite literally step into virtual worlds thereby experiencing them in a visceral way and "develop bodily intuitions about environments into which the body cannot venture". To experience Plein Air 001 is to step into the space itself within the Allosphere and be fully surrounded by emergent plant life made of light towering fifteen to thirty feet tall, and listening to them suddenly echo into the virtual abyss as they vanish and reform.

2013 - 'Psyche Techne' :

"Psyche Techne" are a pair of holograms created using digital holographic technology funded by DARPA of the US Military. It depicts a fleshy landscape with growths that reference blood cells and bodily parts, as well as plants and landscape elements. I was considering how the body is becoming a programmable medium through genetic engineering, and how conceptually our bodies are becoming a new frontier, a landscape to explore and reform. I used my Neophyte software to generate most of the plant life in the hologram, to symbolically embody the concept of digital life./p>

2014 - 'A Particular Nowhere' :

"A Particular Nowhere" was refactored from the C++ version of Neophyte into JavaScript, for a web based artwork inspired by my previous holograms. I was thinking about the body as a landscape and new digital frontiers. My goal for this artwork was to create something meditative and calming, in motion yet stationary. I loved the idea that the viewer would be constantly traveling towards a distant horizon yet never reach it, as it's purely an illusion of motion. Although the plants grow and bloom, they also feel dry and bone like. There's a tension between life and death, between artificial life and nature.

2016 - 'Neophyte' :

This was the first version of the software I called Neophyte, and the first version that was a tool rather than an artwork itself. This version was refactored back to C++ from JavaScript with the goal of creating 3D printable objects. I used OpenFrameworks, rather than the Allosphere's Allocore library, then integrated DreamWorks Animation's library called OpenVDB, which is usually used to produce visual effects like liquid and smoke for feature films. This allowed me to generate plants at any arbitrary resolution, with sub-millimeter details, which would be 'water tight' and 3D printable. I used the Bullet Physics library to simulate movement and leafs. Each leaf was created by linking together dozens of rigid bodies, so that during the physics simulation they would twist and bend realistically while avoiding intersections with the rest of the plant.

2016 - 'Entropy Extropy' :

The first series of sculptures I created using this new version of Neophyte are titled "Entropy Extropy". Their forms are reminiscent of crypto currency mining rigs and ad hoc scientific and engineering prototypes. Conceptually, the sculptures represent growth and decay, technological progress and environmental destruction, the reordering of the universe and the loss of energy available for that reordering.

In the chrome work, Extropy, I had the 3D printed parts electroplated in silver so they would shine with a metallic brilliance. Each 3D print screws directly into the aluminum profiling and was fully generated using Neophyte.

2016 -
    'Alkaline-Cooled Life and Entropy Growth Index' ,
     'Amazon Alexa Powerwave Obelisk' :

This 3D printing focused version of Neophyte has become a big tool in my sculptural practice. I used it to create "Alkaline-Cooled Life and Entropy Growth Index " and "Amazon Alexa Powerwave Obelisk " later in 2016. They're a pair of sort of absurdist technological artifacts which collide emerging technology, nature, society and Doomer-Prepper culture. One is a kind of hydroponic growing kit and the other is shaped like a cellphone tower, with an Amazon Alexa device at the center. I was also interested in an emerging obsession in society with the end of the world, and so each sculpture contains ingredients to grow your own food or survive a disaster. The 3D printed plant elements in each sculpture are again, representing a tension between the human made world and the environment, and between life and synthetic life.

2020 - Future Tense:

The following ikebana vessels and series of fire extinguisher candelabras were exhibited during my first major solo exhibit in 2020, Future Tense, which I was very thankful to have the New York Times write a review of.

2019-2020 - 'Third Nature' :

Although not made directly using Neophyte, this series of ikebana vessels, titled "Third Nature" 01, 02, 03, 04, were heavily inspired by Neophyte. Traditional ikebana arrangements symbolically bring nature and humanity together in a harmony of composition and formal qualities. My concept was to introduce technology as a third nature, so that the relationship between humanity, nature, and technology could be considered in a spiritual and existential practice.

2020 - Candelabra series:

These three fire extinguisher candelabras reference two dualities: 'collectivism vs authoritarianism' and 'acceleration of technology vs deceleration to nature'.

These opposing dualities when considered together form a conceptual two-axis graph one can use to understand the position of individuals and large cultural forces, and their relationships to one another. I see these dualities as fundamental forces shaping the world and how they find balance with one another will be the story of the 21st century.

Three out of the four combinations of these ideologies became sculptures "Authoritarian Deceleration to Nature" , "Collective Deceleration to Nature", and "Collective Acceleration of Technology".

Each sculpture features small ornate gold plated plants created with Neophyte, to bring in some hopeful beautiful forms into otherwise tense sculptures.

2022 and beyond.

Neophyte MMXXII is the culmination of a ten year artistic process, and may be the final artwork in the series. It's expressed something I wanted to achieve ten years ago in the Allosphere. Tokenizing the artwork further finalizes the effort, and draws Neophyte to a conclusion.

View Neophyte MMXXII fullscreen.

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