[PILOT] Art or Asset?
Generative Art In Context of Dynamic Canvas Of Web Design
Designers crafting UI, studious and creatives setting up your personal websites, or anyone, really, who can appreciate a bit of extra pixels colorfully piercing white canvas of the webpage - this one might be for you.
Be careful navigating the intersection of art and utility, as there will be critics on both sides: those who will shout “art pour l’art”, and those who will diminish any aesthetic approach to products which are supposed to be merely functional. But if you manage to do so, you will discover that art has the power to not only captivate our senses but also enrich our experiences.
Digital art has been there for decades, but has resurfaced in the past few years, probably stronger than ever, in the context of crypto and NFTs. In the modern landscape of digital art the special place is dedicated to generative projects (they are also the most relevant to this write-up). Often dubbed as 'wallpapers' due to their format (full-screen enabled, with intricate patterns and mesmerizing visuals), they have this capacity to adorn the webscape. Instead, after being glorified shortly before and after their release in social media feeds, they reside quietly in the virtual vaults of collectors. Not necessarily intended to be functional, they still harbor the transformative abilities as digital assets in context of the dynamic canvas of web design.
Generative art is super diverse and more sustainable than stock images.
“Generative” art means code-based. A program that renders graphic output is set to generate (depending on the complexity) an infinite number of variations (or iterations). Generative art projects are usually made with the web-native programming packages, like p5.js. So they run smoothly in the browser, and can be adjusted to any screen size or viewport without losing an important part of the composition "behind the scene” or level of detail when moving to a smaller screen. Not to be confused with “Generative AI” art, which is also computer-based, that's true, but produces a fixed-size file format: image or video.
Generative art is often associated with something ‘abstract’, ‘geometrical’, ‘pixelated’. That's true, it's easier to write code for a non-figurative output, but it doesn't mean that generative art can't be topical, or express a certain style. Later in this text, we’ll look at some examples of ‘bauhaus’, ‘sci-fi’ and other fine specimens of generative art. For now, just trust me, the landscape is so rich that it can satisfy the most particular scouts of imagery.
Another measure of scope is the variety of outputs within a single project. Due to the ability to generate many variations, so-called long-form generative art projects are released as series. But what it actually means for you, dear Designer, is that you can construct the entire design system with a series of digital assets that will be visually coherent, but not identical (=boring).
Now we get to the most interesting part - the Blockchain side of things. You can argue that generative art in terms described above has existed, and was available for use long before. Web-builder engines, like Squarespace, had a collection of animated pattern-like templates for the container’s background. One could also go to some open-source creative coding platform, like processing.org, search for a visualization template, recreate/adjust it and embed it in their website. And you will be completely right. But there is one crucial novelty inherent to blockchain technology - immutability of the source asset. While stock photos run the risk of being deleted or relocated (same as assets in creative coding platforms), the Blockchain promises the ‘forever-ness’. Now, you can say: “Hah, why the heck should I care about this ‘forever-ness’? My website will probably change its identity (or go into oblivion, like most of the personal / start-up sites) in the next couple of years”. Fair enough. Maybe another argument will be more appealing - the decentralized architecture. Imagine, if all content creators, instead of following the conventional process of downloading assets, uploading them to their CMS, generating duplicates, would just point to a singular, always open location. How much ‘lighter’ the Internet could be!
Finally, another compelling aspect that comes together with the Blockchain - is the provenance and authenticity. In an era rife with ethical concerns surrounding AI-generated imagery, those who still attack the Blockchain art for reasons long time irrelevant - sound a little inadequate, tbh. We should at least give it for transparency, irrefutable authorship / ownership. So, if you are susceptible to ethical dilemmas (like me), when deliberating on your content strategy - choose lesser evil - Blockchain art. 😈
I made a website for my studio look 100 times cooler with generative art.
I started Uncorporated Studio at the end of 2023 as an experimental space. I don't change my website every time while I am iterating on the service offering, but I could have put some sort of a ‘coming soon’ page. Check this out: uncorporated.studio (better on Desktop, and beware of sound).
Instead of a blunt ‘coming soon’ statement, this temporary page became something more thanks to the work by Leander Herzog and Milian Mori. I hear a lot these days that websites are too Web2, and that a company doesn't need a website if it only works a “business card”, while the most engagement is going via social media. And it's true. Unless you want to manifest an identity of your venture or try to win a battle with social media for your audience’s attention span to be longer than 15 seconds. We'll see how uncorporated.studio will be represented across the channels in the future, but for now, it's a sound-visual experience.
Not an NFT maxi, but…
Dear reader, if you came all the way to this point with the haunting feeling that I'm trying you to buy into NFTs, I apologize. I’m not some kind of an NFT maxi, but I am genuinely curious about the techno-cultural context of them though. More explanation here. And again, you don't have to buy an NFT to make your site look cool. But, if you want to explore this medium, here are few tips:
Every NFT has a set of metadata open to anyone, including the one and only (and forever) location where the visual asset is stored. This location has a URL and can be embedded as an i-frame in any external site. Make sure to check the license and terms of use (also a part of metadata). It's usually safe to work with CC0 (Public Domain). In other cases you might need to own an NFT to publish the assets.
If you are not sure where to start, check out platforms like objkt.com and fxhash.xyz - they have a vast collection of generative / interactive / animated and still art on Tezos blockchain. You are welcome to check out projects on Ethereum blockchain as well, but let’s just say without going into details, they are much less affordable, economically speaking.
Depending on your goal, pay attention to the visual traits of the project. E.g., in my case, the fact that Dom1 has a good proportion of the negative (clear) space, helped me to deal with the text on the page. Likewise, this piece from CENTURY-XXX-METAKELLY series by Casey Reas could work perfectly together with the text overlay.
Webpage mockup. Artwork by Casey Reas Pay attention to the work’s aspect ratio. Generative art usually comes as responsive (like the one by Casey Reas, or this piece from the Mountain View series by Florian Berger) and would re-size nicely (try to minimize the window where you have this piece open and play with its width)
Dynamic poster mockup. Artwork by Florian Berger As promised, some examples of styles: bauhaus, abstract, sci-fi. You see, it can be topical. My personal favorite is the Universal Rayhatcher by Thomas Noya, a huge collection of sculptures / structures. If I were running an architectural firm, I would definitely get one of these for my website!
Universal Rayhatcher (fxhash.xyz) And if you are confused with the price tag so far, don't worry, there are plenty of affordable collections out there. To name a few: SEKKEIZU, Ryokou, Linear Perturbations.
Linear Perturbations (objkt.com)
Not a fortune teller either
.. but if my senses are correct, generative art will soon inhabit microsites, dynamic marketing content, and other creative outposts of the Web. I can also see collaborations sparking between generative artists and web builder engines (like Cargo). One of the things I am really looking forward to, is the more advanced search across the generative art collections (not only by tags, but also by the parameters that might be interesting for designers, e.g., color schema or dimensions). But to go beyond those creative outposts more into the big corporate media, digital art should rather be perceived as an ART, not as an ASSET. Hopefully for that we could learn from the good traits of the physical world: when we walk in the lobby of an office and see art on the walls - we immediately feel the character / traditions / stance of a place. At the same time, corporate web spaces are only about clicks and sales. Why?!
I am curious what you think about it, and if you have seen other examples of utilizing digital art throughout the Web. Let me know in the comments!