HUGGA

HUGGA is an idea.

HUGGA is an artwork to be.

HUGGA is my artistic process, naked, transparent, for everyone to see as it evolves over time.

I want to study the urban patterns of cities. How these cities have changed and evolved through time. How terrain, landmarks or historical events have affected their size, shape and density. I want to collect, analyse and repurpose all this data with an artistic approach; to make it mine and put it to the service of creativity and visual abstraction.

HUGGA will be a long-form generative collection that will showcase evolutive urban growth of (hypothetical) cities through time.

Urban growth is at the core of humanity. From the first sedentary farming settlements of the fertile crescent 10000 years ago to the dense, diverse, ultra-productive cities of today. I feel, history of human-kind is reflected in the process of urbanisation and I want to analyse, discover and explain it from my artistic lens.

At the same time, the different visual ways to portray cartographic details and the information that maps can provide, have always fascinated me. By subtracting concise meaning from these maps, we are left with a plethora of elements that can be interpreted from an abstract and purely emotional perspective that I hope will be a great creative foundation for me.

While I got my Master's Degree in Architecture (over a decade ago), my artistic practice has rather gravitated towards my design experience, namely color theory and minimal composition. It is true that, occasionally, I've worked on art where my architectural and urban planning knowledge has surfaced, namely the impossible transportation systems in Transit and the whimsical landscapes in Gustibus Coloribus.

Architecture has never been at the center of art I've created. However, lately I've felt a deep desire to re-connect, through art, with my roots. As it happens, I'm from, and studied architecture in, Barcelona, a city with deep architectural and urban planning roots that are ever-inspiring.

HUGGA is my personal rekindling with architecture by connecting it to the algorithmic art journey I've been devoting myself to since 2021.

When I think of creating HUGGA, I think of all distinctive elements that have helped shape the cities that we know today and I think of how I can creatively incorporate their urbanism into a work of art.

How, why and where are cities born? What man-made artefacts become significant through time? What are their shapes, size and relationship to their surroundings? Off the top of my head, I can think of city walls, temples, fortresses, parks, train tracks and stations, bridges, ports, airports, markets, paths, roads and highways, government buildings and museums. But I'm sure there are more.

On growth, cities change over centuries. We can usually compare the narrow streets of ancient times to the rational expansion of industrial times, when cities size exploded. But even then, throughout the world, this growth is not monolithic and comes in all kinds of form factors.

Aesthetically, I'll need to approach the tectonics of my algorithmic drawings, to find the right tone between water bodies, terrain, buildings, streets or landmarks.

How will I draw and represent streets, houses or different types of buildings? What is the right girth or fill to achieve a balanced composition?

How can I best explain the growth from garrison to megalopolis? HUGGA will need to be an interactive artwork that changes scale as its cities expand. HUGGA will need to accommodate not only growth but transformation too, as cities tend to partially self-destruct to leave way for new constructions in the name of progress.

As you can see, I currently have many questions that require a systematic approach to answer. I anticipate this process will take considerable time, at least a year, as I gradually work through each concept, month by month, to uncover the details of Historical Urban Growth and compile this new knowledge into a Generative Automaton.

Working in isolation for what will be 12+ months of artistic research & development would make the outcome of HUGGA unpredictable, as well as make my documented process potentially incomplete and unreliable.

Here's where Hypersub comes into play.

Through a Hypersub subscription you get (from me) a monthly exclusive-to-Hypersub-subscribers HUGGA Sketch edition, a unique 1/1/X from a theme I will dig deep each month on, as well as some extra perks too! And (from you), I get the support and encouragement I need to undertake such a thorough endeavour.

At the end of the journey, HUGGA will become the final artwork that combines all these themed conceptual sketches into a single work of art.

If you want to support me on this adventure, subscribe to my Hypersub here.

The first theme I will focus on for HUGGA will be Terrain.

Although a city's birth doesn't always depend on the orography around it, all cities sprawl, adapt, transform, and morph according to the surrounding land. This potential terrain is what I need to define as the background for a HUGGA city to grow on.

What shapes can a coastline take?

What sinuous patterns do rivers naturally follow?

How do hills and mountain ranges form and combine?

What is the ideal ratio of land to water for an interesting city to eventually emerge?

How do I write an algorithm that recreates terrain in a credible and realistic manner on which I can then grow a city from scratch?

The sea, the lake, the river, the island, the hill, the mountains, the valley, the flatlands, the cliff, the slope, the coast.

"HUGGA Sketch #0, Terrain" marks the beginning of the path for HUGGA. It aims to be the solid foundation on top of which all research will be then drawn on.

On June 20th, I will release "HUGGA Sketch #0, Terrain" as a Hypersub subscriber-exclusive collection where each subscriber will get 1 free mint edition. More details TBA.