Analog Pixels: A Fusion of Code and Craft

I love how randomness and probability are everywhere, subtly influencing our lives. The fact that you’re reading this right now, rather than doing a million other things, is a perfect example of how chance shapes our daily existence. It’s intriguing to think about how many random variables had to align for this moment to happen. This is also what I love about art and its ability to capture the essence of unpredictability. Each creation, much like a moment in life, is shaped by countless unseen forces.

Coming from a physical art background to digital presented a lot of unique challenges in terms of adaptability and integration, especially since most of the work I did was in analog, tactile art, mainly cyanotypes.

Consider this: photons are essential to the cyanotype process. When UV light, made of photons, hits a photosensitive surface treated with iron compounds, it triggers a reaction that creates the cyan-blue print. The journey of photons from the Sun’s core to its surface is fascinating, taking anywhere from 10,000 to 170,000 years due to the dense environment. This intricate dance of energy, which fuels the cyanotype process, highlights the profound connection between cosmic events, chaos, and artistic creation.

With cyanotypes, each outcome is unique; two prints can never be exactly duplicated, even if the subject is the same. 

When you add in the factor of environmental conditions, the possibilities become even more endless. 

These are the things I think about, and drive me to push the output further, in my physical and digital work, always exploring how much more randomness and uniqueness can be infused into each art piece.

Which brings us here. To this article. At this moment in space time. 

Randomness.

Grab some coffee. I’ll wait.

Above is an image of a woman in orange. 

Before a few days ago, she never even existed. 

I made her up.

She is the creation of words. Strings of letters slung together and put into an AI generator… in this case, Midjourney, an AI-powered tool that generates images based on text descriptions.

I chose her out of 4 random generated images.

Nothing about her is real, except for the pixels that make her up.

Let me explain.

My girlfriend and I were recently in Washington, DC, visiting family and friends. While there, we went to the O Street Museum for the first time. If you’ve never been, it’s a must-see.

It’s a unique and eclectic museum housed within five interconnected townhouses, featuring hidden doors (over 80 to be exact), themed rooms, and an extensive collection of art, music, and memorabilia.

Their mission is “to inspire creativity, diversity, and imagination through the fusion of the arts, music, science, and sports.”

As we were getting lost and exploring the never ending mansion, I came across a particular piece of art, a watercolor mosaic. Diamond-shaped cuts of watercolor pieces arranged in an abstract pattern.

Mission accomplished, I was inspired!

When I got home, one of the first things I did was cut up cyanotype photograms into small 2x2 inch pieces. As I was arranging them into different patterns, a thought popped into my head: these look like zoomed-in pixels of a digital photograph.

I stopped arranging and decided to scan each tile into my laptop. I didn’t know where I was going with this (which is sometimes the case) and began meditating on the idea of how and what I could do with these. 

A few days later, I came across some generative art on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter), and I went down a rabbit hole of possibilities. 

Generative art involves creating artworks through algorithmic processes, where rules and randomness drive the final outcome. 

As cool as it sounds, that alone was always enough to keep me an admirer from afar. 

It’s intimidating as hell, even for someone like me with a history of technology dating back to Commodore 64’s, building an 8086 computer from scratch, and over 20 years in countless tech roles throughout my career.

Programming code never fully made sense to me. I mean, from a 30,000 foot view, I understand the concept. But the nuts and bolts always alluded me.

To put this into perspective. Early on in my digital NFT art journey, someone tried explaining to me how generative code using JavaScript, particularly the p5.js library, to create algorithmic artworks that are rendered in the browser, worked. 

I zoned out 2 minutes into the conversation.

That is, (fast forward a few years) until I had a conversation with ChatGPT. 

She (I mean, ‘it’) never judges you for the questions you ask, or the constant, “explain it to me again like I’m a 5 year old” requests. It never complains or gets tired, it just answers you until you get it. 

Until it clicks well enough to make you less intimidated. 

I’m not gonna bore you with the details of how I finally understood the basic components, like I said, ChatGPT can be a great teacher… well, a good teacher with some teeth pulling. 

So I had the tiles scanned, I decided on the code, now I needed to drive this somewhere. 

For me, there are times where the road is short and the concept to fruition part of the process just works. 

Then, there are the days where that road is an interstate highway, and not the straight through to California route… more like the long way up through Canada then all the way down to Mexico and back up to San Diego — route. 

I literally spent hours and days tweaking the ideas, starting over, coming up with paths, refining pixel sizes and tweaking those bit by bit until the road started to smooth out under my wheels. 

Here’s the nuts and bolts:

24 tile images — 2x2 inch cyanotype photograms, one of which I made gold leaf for random rarity

24 base images — AI generated faces, mostly high contrast black and white, one of which is a Male/Female representation, also for random rarity.

White areas = randomly selected color outputs

The concept:

Use the tiles as pixels. Map those pixels to the base image using Gray Scale Mapping, a technique used to convert grayscale values in an image to specific visual elements or patterns. 

Here’s how it works:

1. Grayscale Image: Start with a grayscale image where each pixel has a shade of gray, ranging from black (0) to white (255).

2. Mapping Values: Assign a specific visual element or pattern to a range of grayscale values. For example, darker grays could be mapped to one type of tile or shape, while lighter grays could be mapped to another.

3. Replacing Pixels: Replace each pixel in the grayscale image with the corresponding visual element based on its grayscale value. This creates a new image where the original shades of gray are represented by different visual elements.

In the context of my outputs, each grayscale value in the original image determines which of the 24 physical tiles is placed in that pixel’s location, creating a visually cohesive artwork.

Like you’re a 5 year old: 

Use my paper tiles like glitter to stick to the glue we put around the pretty face. 

Yes, each pixel is a physical, analog piece of art, embedded within every pixel of the digital artwork.

Let that sink in a minute. 

(I’ll wait and have some coffee while you do)

Back to my original thought when I started writing this… randomness is insane.

Each piece in this collection involves several factors:

• Gray Shade Mapping: Each image has unique gray shade mapping.

• Pixel Tiles: 24 different tiles randomly fill the gray areas.

• Image Mapping: 24 random images are randomly selected and mapped with unique tiles.

• White to Color Randomness: Additional randomness in color placement.

Here’s an example of the gray shade mapping for one image:

{0: 3, 5: 9, 10: 15, 15: 9, 20: 1, 25: 11, 30: 15, 35: 11, 40: 9, 45: 1, 50: 10, 55: 15, 60: 15, 65: 12, 70: 1, 75: 15, 80: 11, 85: 9, 90: 15, 95: 1, 100: 15, 105: 22, 110: 15, 115: 15, 120: 9, 125: 15, 130: 9, 135: 15, 140: 15, 145: 13, 150: 8, 155: 18, 160: 4, 165: 19, 170: 20, 175: 11, 180: 10, 185: 17, 190: 3, 195: 21, 200: 21, 205: 18, 210: 12, 215: 15, 220: 1, 225: 13}

• Area Mapped: The first number is the mapped area.

• Tile Used: The second number is the tile used for that area.

Each generated image places tiles differently, meaning, there is a 0.00000000000000047% chance of minting the exact same piece twice in a public mint of 1000 outputs. This is an exceedingly low probability, emphasizing that the likelihood of producing duplicate editions is practically negligible.

To put it in easier terms:

Comparison:
Powerball Lottery: 1 in 292.2 million.
Duplicate NFTs: 1 in 2.13 quintillion!

Like you’re a 10 year old:

You have a better chance of finding a 1964 Silver Quarter on your walk to school, while wearing a blue shirt, on a Tuesday morning in April, than you and 999 of your friends getting a duplicate from this collection.

^^Read that again.

Am I the first person to use this concept, probably not. 

Am I the first to do it using cyanotype photogram tiles as pixels in digital art? 

I hope so!

Like with all my work in the genre, I can only hope my contributions to the varying applications of cyanotypes, advance the interest in it, overall. 

Did I do this alone? 

Not entirely. 

I had guidance from a couple of great artists and incredible coders in their own right.

Much thanks to Ben Kanizay and CodeCrafting for their input, their knowledge and explaining things to me like I'm a five year old— follow them both through the links in their names. 

Analog Pixels: Faces is my first-ever generative art collection and perhaps the first of it’s kind!

Exclusive Collection:

• Every artwork in this collection is generated using a unique combination of elements, ensuring no two pieces are alike, making each single edition a unique 1/1.

• Only 500 available to Mint

Pricing:

• 2.5 Tezos $XTZ each

Unique Artworks:

• Generated using a unique combination of cyanotype tiles, base images and gray area mapping.

• No two pieces are alike

Special Elements:

• Includes “Gold Tile” and “Female-Male Duality” images

• Each piece has its own distinct character and rarity

Explore the collection and own a piece of digital art that not only fuses technologies spanning 180 years but is also a truly one-of-a-kind artwork.

And if you made it this far…. thank you!