The Enfantines are three sets of beginner piano pieces by Erik Satie, written with the aim of preparing children for the sound patterns of modern music. Composed in 1913, these are genuine children’s pieces, crafted for small hands, easy to learn. 

“Enfantines I. Small Talk” is the first of a set of algorithms that explore the basics of Generative Art, written with the aim of preparing artists for the script patterns of digital life. “Small Talk” experiments with grids, flow-fields, and brushes; all with a fresh, almost childish style.

“Give them almost a "naive" feeling (not to take it the wrong way though) similar to kids drawings which can seem simple and dispensable, careless, but you will always have a parent who wants to frame it and put it on the wall.” @LukaPiskorec

With two modes that won’t produce the same outputs, “Enfantines I. Small Talk” is best experienced twice. In music mode, the code uses Satie’s piano composition as a way of taming randomness, the sounds affecting the parameters of the strokes.

Hey, they have won me congratulations from the Shah of Persia and the King of Yvetot!



#### STORY ####

// Friday, 30 September 2022 - 18:00

I’ve been teaching P5JS to draw like a child. I thought it was a good idea to start from the basics. It is barely able to use the crayons, the coloured pencils and the markers, very rough and shaky. It cannot follow simple commands. I’m done for today, very infuriating.

// Wednesday, 5 October 2022 - 11:00

The robot can produce straight lines now. It is able to change colours without getting stuck. I haven’t been sleeping well, my desk is full of books on The Psychology Of Children's Artwork, it’s crazy to think that artists and philosophers were much into kid’s drawings in the 30s-50s. Herbert Read was sure that one could understand a kid’s mind by looking at drawings. I think P5JS is trying to tell me something, but it’s only capable of very basic movements. I’m trying to add complexity to the training as fast as possible.

// Tuesday, 11 October 2022 - 16:40

I feel close to a turnaround. The robot random strokes definitely feel like patterns. I cannot waste any time, I need to finish the algo and let it free. I’m sure that I can approach the AI’s conscience via its childish drawings.

// Wednesday, 12 October 2022 - 10:30

I was wrong. There are no patterns, P5JS is dead, the strokes feel dead. Something must be broken. I need to review my code, maybe I’ll need to start from scratch, maybe I’m crazy and this is not possible.

// Saturday, 15 October 2022 - 04:55

A few hours ago, I passed away in front of my computer. I had not been able to find the bugs, gave up, put some classical music. Just woke up in the middle of the night, 
¡The ALGO is alive!
The strokes are alive, so strong, so lively. I think it was the music. If I pause the music, the brushes lose their life. I’ve run some tests, looks like it works best with classical compositions. The logs show that it first woke up with “Menus propos enfantins” by Erik Satie. It is alive. I need to tell everyone.

####


# INTERACTIVITY

// Modes:
- Double Click/Tap or Press M for AUDIO mode
- Wait for SILENT mode
- Add “?res=171” to the URL for FULL SCREEN MODE (pseudo-deterministic).

// More
- Press I for Trait Info (desktop)
- Press 1 to download a .png (double tap on mobile)
- Add “?res=XXX” to the URL for HQ renders (XXX = width of the canvas).

# EASY-TO-READ CODE
The “Enfantines” are educational algorithms. The code has been commented to make it as easy to read as possible. Feedback appreciated.

# PRINTING
“Enfantines” are better printed in small size and big numbers, ideally on coloured paper that fits your iterations’s background. Contact me for a white background version of your iteration.

Enfantines I. Small Talk #79

The Decagon is the infinitely evolving, always unique, and eternally open membership token of the Decaverse. Designed by Kjetil Golid.

Decagon #157

Our studio, Aranda\Lasch, was formed in the early 2000s to explore algorithmic systems and generative processes as a means to understand the world around us and make things within it. Whether encapsulated in physical or computational techniques, these processes act with their own degree of autonomy from our own biases and as a result, open up new ideas and sensibilities while dismantling traditional notions of authorship. They allow one to code the possibility of discovery and surprise into the creative process in a manner that can be widely shared and because of this transmissibility, algorithms frustrate the idea of a single author, inviting speculation on the shared nature of creativity. For this reason we have always understood our work to be a collaboration between each other, those who share with us and those who inspire us. 

Over the years, the studio has indulged in a number of obsessions. One is the conviction that history is a generative source with which to constantly entangle. Whether it is through stories, characters, techniques, or events, history acts as a medium active with properties that constantly reshape and transform our concept of the present. We look back to move forward, like hitching a ride. It is here that we encounter Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and his masterpiece Melancholia I (1514) to inspire a deep dive into the process of engraving as a representational technique reinterpreted through the contemporary medium of code. By scratching metal away from a plate, an inversion of conventional drawing, engraving allowed a work of art to be reproduced and disseminated widely. In addition to the piece’s masterful delineation, its allegory resonates with us as well. In Dürer’s time melancholy was associated with insanity but also with creativity. In the engraving, the winged personification of melancholy -- the work is widely regarded to be a self-portrait of the artist -- is surrounded by the tools and elements of geometry. For Dürer, as for a handful of others who came before and after, who test the porous borders between art, science and religion, geometry is a vehicle for imagination, a shadow of the divine and a portal to the infinite. 

This work Primitives is a kindred meditation on infinity through an exploration of a novel geometric structure using algorithm and code, the tools of today's geometers and mystics, made visible through the anachronism of the engravers trade translated into pure 1’s and 0’s. Primitives grows through a single shape that can repeat and scale in specific ways that are never random, but rather tightly governed by geometric logics. It is about drawing infinity through a radical modularity; ordered but aperiodic. Unlike a regular crystal, whose molecular pattern is periodic (or repetitive in all directions), the distinctive quality of this quasicrystal is that its structural pattern never repeats the same way twice. Endless and uneven in aggregate, Primitive clusters can be described by the precise arrangement of a single modular part. As these small units aggregate together they form larger figures that themselves combine into ever larger movements, always a little bit different from any other. In this sense, quasicrystalline patterns have an infinite capacity to create and carry information. 

We are here because this is a medium for sharing in perpetuity. In the last couple of years, on the cusp of our third decade of practice, we have watched with awe and delight a renaissance in generative work as it's adopted by an entirely new generation around blockchain technologies. This inspired us to enter this new space with our own enduring questions of form and geometry, modularity and variability, historical continuity, and the thirst for endlessness. Primitives is what we selected as our primer into generative art on-chain because both the work and the medium grapple with these questions. 

Some Notes:
On the screen, Primitives is represented as a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional figure. Each invocation comes with a sequence of projections, or rotations, around this object. As Primitives spins, there are moments when its blocks snap into alignment with other blocks  revealing its underlying lattice and crystalline nature. Each projection can be saved as a high resolution image for printing. Primitives can also be saved in three dimensions as an .obj file for a variety of uses including the creation of a physical object through 3-d printing or fabrication. Below is a list of interface instructions:

'left' + 'right' arrow keys to rotate 
'up' + 'down' arrow keys to zoom in 
'g' regrows geometry 
'i' saves image 
'o' saves .obj

Thank you,
Aranda\Lasch
2022

Primitives #275

This project is generated from live code and contains animation with unique and infinite music. Activate the live view and press the space bar to begin playing.

“What you will see on the screen is a picture of the various abstract images that might pass through your mind if you sat in a concert hall listening to this music. At first, you are conscious of the piano. Then the music begins to suggest other kinds of things to your imagination. They might be… oh, just masses of color. Or they may be cloud forms… or great landscapes, or vague shadows… or geometrical objects floating in space.”
— Fantasia (Walt Disney Productions, 1940)

A fantasia is a musical composition with a free form and often improvisatory style, seldom following the rules of any strict musical form. *Fantasía* (Alejandro Campos, 2024) is a generative experience born from a machine-generated musical score that informs the visual arrangement of constructed shapes, algorithmic textures, and emergent compositions. This series continues Campos’s ongoing attachment to playfulness, unencumbered acts of creativity, and the pursuit of capturing the joy of imagination.

In a unique blend of generative processes, *Fantasía* uses a machine learning model connected to an algorithmic process, producing both classical compositions and playful visuals – everything happening in-browser and in real-time. The music’s AI model is trained on a large dataset of classical performances, creating a piano sheet that – as long as *Fantasía* remains open – continues an infinite improvisation that’s unique to each of the works. Each piece’s score is also used by the generative algorithm to produce a visual counterpart, like a map that traces the movements of notes on canvas: the colors capturing the different moods of each type of score, and the geometries expressing the musical structures of each composition.

Seeing these artworks can evoke the experience of listening to the music once again, and with each deeper exploration of the algorithm’s range, comes familiarity with this new fantastical language. The eye moving between shapes, the drawings conveying their musical narrative – *Fantasía* hides nothing, as if speaking in universal gestures.

This series uses brush.js (a library developed and open-sourced by Campos, now working without p5), TensorFlow.js (an open-source ML platform for JavaScript), Magenta.js for generating music with Magenta models, Tone.js (a Web Audio framework for creating interactive music in the browser), and several other open-source MIT license libraries. The music plays with Tone Piano, a multisampled piano implementation using Salamander Grand Piano Sounds.

Created in collaboration with Adam Berninger of TENDER.

Fantasía #439

The Enfantines are three sets of beginner piano pieces by Erik Satie, written with the aim of preparing children for the sound patterns of modern music. Composed in 1913, these are genuine children’s pieces, crafted for small hands, easy to learn. 

“Enfantines II. Enfantillages Pittoresques” is the second of a set of algorithms that explore the basics of Generative Art, written with the aim of preparing artists for the script patterns of digital life. “Enfantillages Pittoresques” experiments with predefined plots, colour blending, webgl shaders, and generative music; all with a fresh, childish style. This algorithm has been trained to draw basic shapes in accordance to Satie’s lyrics. However, it uses them in unusual ways and creates what looks like fantastic creatures, microscopic beings, or, to follow Corneille, Constant, and Appel: "human animals".

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child” Attributed to Picasso (falsely, probably)

With two modes that won’t produce the same outputs, “Enfantines” are best experienced twice. In music mode, the code uses Satie’s piano composition as a way of taming randomness, the sounds affecting the parameters of the strokes.

Hey, these have won me congratulations from the Shah of Persia and the King of Yvetot!


# INTERACTIVITY
Press M or Double Tap (mobile) for AUDIO mode
Wait for SILENT mode
Press I for Trait Info (desktop)
Press 1 for Canvas Save (desktop)

Introduce “?pixelDensity=171” after URL for FULL SCREEN MODE (pseudo-deterministic).
Introduce “?pixelDensity=X” for HQ renders (standard is 2, and 8 produces 400ppi 40x44cm prints).


# EASY-TO-READ CODE
The “Enfantines” are educational algorithms. The code has been compressed and minified for a performance boost, but can be read fully in GitHub: https://github.com/ratchitect/


# PERFORMANCE
Better experienced with Chrome.

Enfantines II. Enfantillages Pittoresques #246

Enfantines I. Small Talk #160

Enfantines II. Enfantillages Pittoresques #302

“to allow… even to desire that, after that earliest point where the pen touches the 
paper, something unfathomed emerges, something unexpected”

One of Erik Satie’s infrequent excursions into chamber music, the *Fugue à tâtons* (1913) is 
contemporary to his humorous piano compositions, and created in a similar spirit. *Fugue à 
tâtons* is a satirical reinvention of Baroque musical forms, enhanced by Satie’s characteristic witty 
titles and performance directions. A repetitive, childlike theme, a loosely woven fugue initiated by 
the piano “with silly but convenient naïveté”, and yet a complex and significant musical piece.

Curiously, Spanish architect Enric Miralles used the title *Fuga a tientas* (the Spanish translation of 
Erik Satie’s title) in 1987, for the second volume of his doctoral dissertation, a text that was 
deemed unreadable by the thesis’ panel. Miralles’ essay narrates how sketching can be seen as a 
form of writing, a creative act that happens when thinking moves forward through interruptions, 
when it stops at its beginnings, when it is produced by repetition. 

This *Fuga a Tientas* on Verse, 2023, explores how its form of writing, namely “coding”, can 
likewise be conceived as a form of sketching, or how unexpected shapes and colours emerge 
from simple geometric operations when imperfect repetition is celebrated. The artworks are fully 
composed by horizontal lines and simple shapes travelling through imperfect flow fields, offering a 
characteristically bright and cheerful aesthetic that is homage to both Erik Satie and Enric 
Miralles’s intellectual legacies. *Fuga a Tientas* is the coming-of-age of the Enfantines (fxhash, 
2022) algorithm, still childlike but now a more sophisticated and yet imperfect exploration of form 
and counterform, sound and colour.

“…form emerges at the air of its flight, it is not pursued, nor composed, nor 
constructed…”

With two modes that won’t produce the same outputs, *Fuga a tientas* is best experienced twice. 
In music mode, the code uses Satie’s fugue as a way of taming randomness, the sounds affecting 
the colours and intensities of the triangles. This is the last stop of the journey, gazing into 
unexplored lands.

“Large de Vue”

*Fuga a tientas* is part of the group exhibition *Imperfections*.

Fuga a tientas #104

Fuga a tientas #124

Fuga a tientas #132

“to allow… even to desire that, after that earliest point where the pen touches the paper, something unfathomed emerges, something unexpected”

One of Erik Satie’s infrequent excursions into chamber music, the Fugue à tâtons (1913) is contemporary to his humorous piano compositions, and created in a similar spirit. Fugue à tâtons is a satirical reinvention of Baroque musical forms, enhanced by Satie’s characteristic witty titles and performance directions. A repetitive, childlike theme, a loosely woven fugue initiated by the piano “with silly but convenient naïveté”, and yet a complex and significant musical piece.

Curiously, Spanish architect Enric Miralles used the title Fuga a tientas (the Spanish translation of Erik Satie’s title) in 1987, for the second volume of his doctoral dissertation, a text that was deemed unreadable by the thesis’ panel. Miralles’ essay narrates how sketching can be seen as a form of writing, a creative act that happens when thinking moves forward through interruptions, when it stops at its beginnings, when it is produced by repetition.

This Fuga a Tientas on Verse, 2023, explores how its form of writing, namely “coding”, can likewise be conceived as a form of sketching, or how unexpected shapes and colours emerge from simple geometric operations when imperfect repetition is celebrated. The artworks are fully composed by horizontal lines and simple shapes travelling through imperfect flow fields, offering a characteristically bright and cheerful aesthetic that is homage to both Erik Satie and Enric Miralles’s intellectual legacies. Fuga a Tientas is the coming-of-age of the Enfantines (fxhash, 2022) algorithm, still childlike but now a more sophisticated and yet imperfect exploration of form and counterform, sound and colour.

“…form emerges at the air of its flight, it is not pursued, nor composed, nor constructed…”

With two modes that won’t produce the same outputs, Fuga a tientas is best experienced twice. In music mode, the code uses Satie’s fugue as a way of taming randomness, the sounds affecting the colours and intensities of the triangles. This is the last stop of the journey, gazing into unexplored lands.

“Large de Vue”

Fuga a tientas is part of the group exhibition Imperfections.

Fuga a tientas #175

Fuga a tientas

Maps of Life is a generative cartographic experiment inspired by John Conway's Game of Life. The Game of Life is a zero-player game, its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input.

Maps of Life is a generative-player game, an algorithm that creates an initial random configuration and a collector that observes how the configuration evolves. Each mint produces a distinctly unique cartographic representation of an ideal town, with different color palettes, scales, and coordinates, an animation from its random birth to a stopped moment in time.

Maps of Life assumes that the built environment has a life of its own. And besides, only an automatic mind can name towns with Butterfly Names. Enjoy the view.

---
Interactivity:
Press LEFT and RIGHT arrows to speed-up or slow-down the evolution of the town.
Press "S" to save the current state to a PNG image.
If you want to change the resolution, just add "?res=XXX" to the end of the url.
---

(With these keys, you can possibly force the script to continue until its further completion. Could you get a deserted landscape?)

Maps of Life #44

Maps of Life #88

Maps of Life

“Sparsely Populated Grid” is the result of an architect’s fascination with Cartographies and a crypto-enthusiast love for Neo Punk aesthetics. The first sketch, drawn by hand with Procreate, was made in October 2021.

This is an exploration on the field of Generative Cartographies, an abstract diagrammatic representation of a randomly generated area within the virtual IPFS world. Everything starts with an GRID of varying sizes and angles, subsequently POPULATED by a random number of forms. But, how to populate the grid? SPARSELY, of course, with just the right amount of superpositions.

The algorithm produces varying compositions of fourteen different forms, with seven possible mixes and ten colour palettes. Movement, made possible by its generative digital nature, follows sinusoidal patterns, as if the forms breathed and danced to an unheard music.

Besides, they never forget to celebrate birthdays.


// INTERACTIVITY

- CLICK or SPACEBAR to stop movement.
- UP and DOWN ARROWS to Disable/Enable graphic elements such as texts (wink).
- LEFT and RIGHT ARROWS (when stopped) to Move frames back and forth.
- Press 1 for a low-res PNG.
- Press 2 for a medium-res PNG (3x).
- Press 3 for a hi-res PNG (6x).
- Press G for Glitch (low-res).
- Press P for PixelArt (low-res).

If you want a different resolution, you can also add ?&res=xxx to the url to get your desired output. Then simply Right-Click SAVE the canvas -- experimental

Sparsely Populated Grid #24

Sparsely Populated Grid #43

Sparsely Populated Grid

Enfantines I. Small Talk #106

Enfantines I. Small Talk #60

Enfantines I. Small Talk

fx(haish) is my contribution to #fxhashturnsone
fx(haish) is not a finished product
fx(haish) is a co-creation experiment
fx(haish) is a fun exploration of a mixed GenAI process

fx(haish) is my Happy Birthday to fx(hash). 

Have fun, collectors!


// HOW TO PARTICIPATE

Step 1. Mint or collect “fx(haish) - the Generator”
Step 2. Visit https://www.arqtistic.com/fx(haish) to generate your “fx(haish) - The AI City” based on your mint. You have 20 tries.
Step 3. Await further instructions.


// FURTHER INFO

This algorithm has been designed to produce images which are suitable for the subsequent AI generation. The token consists of a random number of randomly placed and sized rectangles, filled with a noise gradient pattern. In short, Diffusion AI Models thrive on noise.

The AI generation uses Stable Diffusion 1.5 through an API designed by the 330ai team (@Pixelmindai). The WebUI has been developed by Nik0gda (@AntonCebanu2). AI Prompt has been designed (by me) to produce images of Cities, but you can possibly make it do other things, if you try hard enough.

fx(haish) / the Generator #79

fx(haish) / the Generator #139

fx(haish) / the Generator

Enfantines II. Enfantillages Pittoresques #103

Enfantines II. Enfantillages Pittoresques #18

Enfantines II. Enfantillages Pittoresques

The PUNK Search. Where is V4LJ3AN?
Runners, as per the info gathered in my recent hack to the node, it seems V4LJ3AN was neutralised by robot-fucker Marcel Cartier, a token of commitment to Schäfer & Schäfer, part of an economic deal, f*ck capitalism. 
V4LJ3AN lives through us!

GAN_PostPunk - Storyboard

WIP - untitled
p5.js generated
png - 3282 × 3942

#HENreunion

Noisy Reunion

Hic et Nunc

"fx(haish) is my contribution to #fxhashturnsone
fx(haish) is not a finished product
fx(haish) is a co-creation experiment
fx(haish) is a fun exploration of a mixed GenAI process

fx(haish) is… a Happy Birthday to fx(hash). Have fun, collectors!

// LINK TO GENERATIVE TOKEN

https://www.fxhash.xyz/gentk/1335061

// FURTHER INFO

The original algorithm was designed to produce images which are suitable for the subsequent AI generation. The token consists of a random number of randomly placed and sized rectangles, filled with a noise gradient pattern. In short, Diffusion AI Models thrive on noise. This is the AI generation selected by users in a co-curation process at the fx(haish) generator app.

The AI generation uses Stable Diffusion 1.5 through an API designed by the 330ai team (@Pixelmindai)."

fx(haish) / #338

fx(haish) is my contribution to #fxhashturnsone
fx(haish) is not a finished product
fx(haish) is a co-creation experiment
fx(haish) is a fun exploration of a mixed GenAI process

fx(haish) is… a Happy Birthday

https://www.fxhash.xyz/generative/21554

"fx(haish) is my contribution to #fxhashturnsone
fx(haish) is not a finished product
fx(haish) is a co-creation experiment
fx(haish) is a fun exploration of a mixed GenAI process

fx(haish) is… a Happy Birthday to fx(hash). Have fun, collectors!

// LINK TO GENERATIVE TOKEN

https://www.fxhash.xyz/gentk/1330681

// FURTHER INFO

The original algorithm was designed to produce images which are suitable for the subsequent AI generation. The token consists of a random number of randomly placed and sized rectangles, filled with a noise gradient pattern. In short, Diffusion AI Models thrive on noise. This is the AI generation selected by users in a co-curation process at the fx(haish) generator app.

The AI generation uses Stable Diffusion 1.5 through an API designed by the 330ai team (@Pixelmindai)."

fx(haish) / #281

fx(haish) / the Generations

*This digital collectible is **artist curated and paired with a signed painting**, included in price. More info below.*

This series is a collaborative study on vectors and space, exploring the intersection of generative and intuitive, digital and physical, robotic and human. Alejandro and Anna engage on a creative game between artist and machine: creative coding, digital curating, pen-plotting, physical taping and spraying in several steps. A game of rules and interpretation, typology and intuition, all starting from the most simplest idea: the intersection of vectors.


What kind of serial artworks can be created by the clash of two vectors? What happens when layers of vectors meet and intersect? What are the vectors, and the space in-between, how are they arranged, are they dense, loose, well organised or chaotically laid? Is it possible to find a logic, to create some rules? Can we create individual, intuitive artworks following logical, automatic systems? How do we combine digital and physical?
 

Alejandro created a generative algorithm and a tool to curate vector arrangements in overlapping steps. The tool randomly defines a set of vectors and produces an underlying grid with hatches and rectangles that follow a simple rule agreed by the two artists: a rectangle appears once the vectors intersect, a hatch is created when the vectors meet within the grid subdivisions.


Anna selected a set of 53 iterations, fine-tuning the smallest details. The selection was plotted on paper by Alejandro. She then followed the second agreed rule: to connect the start and end points of the vectors in preset steps, and to make a painting out of it. What’s the size of the colourfield? How are the painting-borders, the size of the vectors and the colourfields? With different taping methods and the use of spray paint, she found a big field of possibilities, full of potential and unpredictability.


A generative algorithm produces a random output following an underlying logic. \
The artists react to it, intuitively leading it to completion. 
 

It is by no means different than the inhabitant creating a place within the architect’s logical system, finding a way to live in a meaningful in-betweenness. “On the other side of the subjective, on this side of the objective, on the narrow borderline where I and you meet lies the In-between Realm”.


Generativeness x Intuition \
Machine x Human \
Digital x Physical


**Redeem Details**:


- This artist-curated digital collectible is paired with a signed painting, included in price.

- The painting will be redeemed via artfora.com after mint, by holders of the token. Shipping and handling excluded.

&nbsp; \
**Format**:


A. 36x48cm, pen-plotted ink and spray acrylics on Hahnemühle 330g/m2 or Canson 400g/m2 paper. Signed by both artists. \
B. Generative p5js NFT. Interactive digital animation.
 


**Interactivity**:

This digital collectible is interactive.

On Desktop, move your mouse and use the top right menu to explore different possibilities. For a better experience, use Chrome and open the artwork in live view (bottom right corner). GIF export is resource intensive and takes a while. Enter KONAMI code to unlock generative sound and sliders.

On Mobile, rotate your device to change between DUET and SINGLE mode.

Draftwerk #15

This digital collectible is paired with a signed painting. [Claim Link](https://www.artfora.com/collections/draftwerk)

This series is a collaborative study on vectors and space, exploring the intersection of generative and intuitive, digital and physical, robotic and human. Alejandro and Anna engage on a creative game between artist and machine: creative coding, digital curating, pen-plotting, physical taping and spraying in several steps. A game of rules and interpretation, typology and intuition, all starting from the most simplest idea: the intersection of vectors.

What kind of serial artworks can be created by the clash of two vectors? Can we create individual, intuitive artworks following logical, automatic systems? How do we combine digital and physical? A generative algorithm produces a random output following an underlying logic.
The artists react to it, intuitively leading it to completion.

This collection si part of the Generative Architecture exhibition on Verse.works

Draftwerk #12

Draftwerk by Anna Beller & Alejandro Campos

Fantasía #191

This project is generated from live code and contains animation with unique and infinite music. Activate the live view and press the space bar to begin playing.

A fantasia is a musical composition with a free form and often improvisatory style, seldom following the rules of any strict musical form. Fantasía (Alejandro Campos, 2024) is a generative experience born from a machine-generated musical score that informs the visual arrangement of constructed shapes, algorithmic textures, and emergent compositions. This series continues Campos’s ongoing attachment to playfulness, unencumbered acts of creativity, and the pursuit of capturing the joy of imagination.

The music’s AI model is trained on a large dataset of classical performances, creating a piano sheet that – as long as Fantasía remains open – continues an infinite improvisation that’s unique to each of the works.

Fantasía #132

Fantasía by Alejandro Campos

Fun side project on Shape network
Code-based art. Once minted, the NFT is fully animated.
Limited to 200 editions. Claim yours!

La Medalla

As you may have noticed, it’s been a while since I’ve put any new works for sale. The reasons are manyfold and you have probably read some of them from my social network posts and interactions. In a few days, I’m launching a new work in collaboration with TENDER, on Verse.

“What you will see on the screen is a picture of the various abstract images that might pass through your mind if you sat in a concert hall listening to this music. At first you are conscious of the piano. Then the music begins to suggest other kinds of things to your imagination. They might be… oh, just masses of color. Or they may be cloud forms… or great landscapes, or vague shadows… or geometrical objects floating in space.” 
— Fantasia (Walt Disney Productions, 1940)

A fantasia is a musical composition with a free form and often improvisatory style, seldom following the rules of any strict musical form. Fantasia (Alejandro Campos, 2024) is a generative experience born from a machine-generated musical score that informs the visual arrangement of constructed shapes, algorithmic textures, and emergent compositions. This series continues Campos’s ongoing attachment to playfulness, unencumbered acts of creativity, and the pursuit of capturing the joy of imagination.

In a unique blend of generative processes, Fantasia uses a machine learning model connected to an algorithmic process, producing both classical compositions and playful visuals – everything happening in-browser and real-time. The music’s AI model is trained on a large dataset of classical performances, creating a piano sheet that – as long as Fantasía remains open – continues an infinite improvisation that’s unique to each of the works. Each piece’s score is also used by the generative algorithm to produce a visual counterpart, like a map that traces the movements of notes on canvas: the colors capturing the different moods of each type of score, and the geometries expressing the musical structures of each composition.

Seeing these artworks can evoke the experience of listening to the music once again, and with each deeper exploration of the algorithm’s range, comes familiarity with this new fantastical language. The eye moving between shapes, the drawings conveying their musical narrative – Fantasia hides nothing, as if speaking in universal gestures.

This series uses brush.js (a library developed and open-sourced by Campos, now working without p5), Tensorflow.js (an open source ML platform for Javascript), Magenta.js for generating music with Magenta models, Tone.js (a Web Audio framework for creating interactive music in the browser), and several open source MIT license libraries. The music plays with Tone Piano, a multisampled piano implementation using Salamander Grand Piano Sounds. 


Fantasía

OMNIA is a generative audiovisual experience, a collaboration between a musician and two generative artists.

The visuals build on simulated natural phenomena, exploring how sound-waves travel through fluids and surfaces. OMNIA has been heavily inspired by Chladni plates, stemming back to 1782 when Ernst Chladni was studying the behaviour of vibrating surfaces. He discovered that certain patterns would form when the surface was vibrated at differing frequencies. We used a closed-form solution to calculate Chladni patterns and govern a custom shader, where particles move according to the sound waves.

As for the music, there are 5 different “instruments” that make up OMNIA. There’s the Boom (drums), Hum (bass), Buzz (guitar), Drip (keys) and Swoosh (sfx). Each of these instruments has 5 different variations, effectively creating 5*5*5*5*5 different unique OMNIA songs. (that’s 3125 different possibilities!)

Alejandro

Alejandro

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