Himinn is my first long-form generative art project and was released on September 30th, 2021 on Art Blocks.
The program is a painterly cloud study exploring light, color, and the generative composition of clouds in the sky. It creates natural forms and the illusion of ever-changing atmosphere through carefully structured layers of color and shape.
Himinn uses a combination of many different algorithms to create each painting, and relies more on an artist-defined system than any particular math algorithm. I wanted to probe into the concept of exploring an entire possibility space within a painting and see what kind of variations might emerge. I also wanted to explore the minimum amount of form I could give to a cloud so that it would still be recognizable, and what I could do using color and shape to build a sky.
I’ve been interested in generative painting for a while now, and my approach to form and structure up until this project was to use a photograph as the under-layer for the painting. My program was similar to glitch art and pixel manipulation, in that I would explore the pixels in a photograph and then use certain ones to define the color and brushstrokes I built onto the canvas. I enjoyed this process because I really had to force chaos into the system to get the results I was looking for. Computers are so good at drawing straight lines and shapes, but creating organic, natural looking structures requires a lot more finesse.
When I was contemplating using my painting program for Art Blocks, a new issue arose. I could no longer rely on using a photograph for my structure, because you can’t efficiently store a photograph on-chain. This is a central reason why generative art is so special. A normal jpg has a huge byte size, and would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to store on-chain. One Himinn, for example, at 2155 x 1212 pixels is approximately 1,142,543 bytes. The entire Himinn code to create ALL the clouds is only 6595 bytes. Generative Art is really the ultimate form of image compression!
I was able to develop a new system that allowed me to create my own underpainting entirely within the coded program. This was a wonderful challenge and helped me develop so much as a generative artist. I really appreciate all of my collectors and the support this project has received!
Exhibitions
2023 – Collecting the Future: Photography and Generative Art on the Blockchain at Assembly. Houston, TX
2022 – Perceive(Light), Art Blocks Gallery, Marfa, TX
2022 – Personal Structures for the 2022 Venice Biennale with Superchief Gallery NFT x Art Blocks.
2021 – The Digital by ARTXCODE in Miami during Miami Art Week.
Prints
If you are interested in a physical Himinn print, please contact me and I will give you all the details!