INSOMNIA: A Nocturnal Cryptoart Journey

By k0ch

ALGORITHMIC ARTIST LOST IN A RECURSIVE LOOP. His work combines the beauty of nature with the artificial decay of big cities, represented by organic algorithms that grow like neon lights in the middle of concrete. He is inspired by internet culture, dystopian/sci-fi films, old video games, punk, mathematics and generative art.

IMPORTANT: There’s a puzzle with prize at the end of the article.

Insomnia is an artwork series that are compose of eleven pieces (a beautiful prime number). The first piece come to my mind in a sleeplessness night during Coronavirus quarantine, but is not the product of lockdown. The lockdown allowed me to think about myself, and what happen when all the world is stopped and you’re only connected through internet.

I’m working with generative art since 2015. I started to work with interative technologies with Corvus Project, a project that uses kinect to generate real-time images with dance/performance pieces. I learned that the graphics that we generate doesn’t have any sense without the beauty of dance, without this element the computer pieces in Corvus has no sense, but in the other side, the dance without the graphics still express poetry and feeling. Dance is a form of art really well developed, with centuries of history.

Corvus Project video:

I want to do the same with the programs that I write, express beauty in the same way, but generative art is something relatively new compared to other art expressions. I found that several generative artworks are more compromissed with the technology and the innovation itself, that with the fellings that we can express through art. And, surprisingly, I found in cryptoart world the missing piece to start to build this poetry. Following the cryptocurrencies philosophy, the value is not in something that you keep jealously in a vault, is the entire network that put the real value. Without this, you don’t have any precious thing, you only have a number. Insomnia is about myself, but without the network, is nothing. I’m the product of the network, i’m a son of internet, and I’m the product of thousands of nights sleeplessness searching things in the network and connecting between us. Insomnia is a network state. This is why I consider Insomnia a cryptoart artwork, and not only an artwork that is sold through ethereum network.

Why GIF? The GIF format allow me to work with perfectly looped animations and working with the concept of infinity. All the Insomnia pieces are created without start and end, you can see the GIF for a long time without noticing any break. If you want, until death. The fractal draws that you see are created using Lindenmayer Systems. I created a program that you can found here (https://www.k0ch.art/ceres/) that creates random l-systems. All the pieces contains a fractal created by CERES (with some hand modifications to fit in the piece correctly).

PUZZLE!
I will put a puzzle here that involves all the Insomnia pieces, and the first one that can resolve it, will receive an artwork for free. You only will be able to solve this with the eleven pieces. At this moment, I only uploaded nine to Superrare, so for now you cannot start. Insomnia is composed by two types of pieces. If you found the two groups of pieces and tell me which piece is in each group and the justification behind, I’ll create a new piece only for you. If you have the answer, you can mention me in a tweet with the explanation.

Only a clue: There’s a mathematical relation between the groups.