About "Taiwan Architectural Memory"

Jul 9, 2023

This article is the Chinese version of an article previously published on the Japanese blog platform, and it adds some things that were not originally written.

Start of original text

The recent new work " Taiwan Architectural Memory " will be exhibited and sold at " Proof of X - Blockchain As A New Medium For Art - " held in Daikanyama, Tokyo from 2023/6/17 ~ 6/25. This is my first time to participate in an overseas physical event, so I specially wrote an article to introduce this work.

Before starting

In May, I saw this message on fxhash's Discord. Although I was worried that I would not be able to do a good job or finish it in only about three weeks, I still didn’t want to miss this opportunity so I signed up.

In my understanding, Proof of X is a physical art exhibition based on Web3 and held in the real world. Last year they held the first session with the theme "NFT as New Media Art". This year they expanded the theme to the entire blockchain, and the options included more works focusing on smart contracts. The part I participated in was an option project led by KUMALEON (Toshi) in cooperation with fxhash : a total of five Japanese and five foreigners were selected to produce generative art works within a specified date, and put them on the shelves of fxhash. The exhibition site allows visitors to adjust parameters and purchase finished products.

When I saw this year's theme of "Blockchain As A New Medium For Art", I originally wanted to create generative art using on-chain data such as sales or transmission records. For example, half a year ago, I made a total of five coral series works. The first four works were released on fxhash, and the last one was released on akaswap in Taiwan. The last one will check whether the viewer's wallet has the first four works. If If so, the resulting coral will have corresponding changes.

The more previous works you hold, the more corals you will eventually produce and the more diverse the types will be.

However, fxhash is not such a platform, and they do not allow any external HTTP requests in their works. So I changed my mind: because of the convenience of Web3, it can be so easy to cross borders. Not only can the works be "sent" to the scene, but the audience can also live mint (purchase the works produced at the scene). Taking this as a starting point to start thinking, I finally thought that among the ten participants, the theme that I was most suitable for was "Taiwan".

Among the common objects in Taiwan, what are the things that are very Taiwanese and very generative art? I think of barred grilles. Then I started using Pinterest and Google to collect information. Flowers behind bars are a very common theme in Taiwanese cultural and creative industries, but few people have played with them in generative art. Thanks to this situation, a lot of photos can be easily obtained.

Regarding the iron window grille, this article (in Japanese) has a more detailed introduction.

process and diversity

At the beginning, I only made windows. I used a cutting method that is often seen in generative art works, which is to cut a rectangle into two rectangles horizontally or vertically, and repeat this cutting behavior until the specified maximum recursion depth.

It looked too monotonous and the image of "window" was weak, so I tried making tiles, and the picture immediately became much more interesting.

Now looking at the screenshots at this time, they seem more interesting than the final product😢

Start treating time as a factor

I also wanted to make other walls, so I made cement walls (and air conditioners)

For reference, anyone who has seen the building on the right near Taipei Main Station will be very impressed.

There weren’t enough variations in windows, so I made several more types of windows.

Because it rains very often in Taiwan, we made many types of rain. (After checking, I found out that Taiwan’s rainfall is three times the world’s average rainfall, but it cannot be retained, so it is still often short of water)

Fog and rain, and a wall inspired by the Taipei Confucius Temple

↑Taiwanese architectural memory #7 held by Lin Yiwen, thanks to Brother Lin

Another one is that it rains non-stop, but I only posted screenshots here so I can’t see it clearly.

↑ This isTaiwan architectural memory #2 held by Mattsun02160, thanks to Matsuhashi さん

Perhaps I was a little greedy, so I made gravel washing and a tin house. (Actually, this doesn’t seem to be good for the work. Because for long form generative art, although diversity is important, consistency is also important. However, my memory of Taiwanese architecture is quite messy, so I still want to get involved.)

↑Taiwanese architectural memory #30 held by arttseng, thanks to arttseng

Here is a small detail: Iron house + If it rains, the rust will be more serious

Taiwanese architectural memories held by sanjrow #11 . Thank sanjrow

Use fx(params)

This time there is a rule like "Use up to five Params (parameters open to buyers to adjust)", which is surprisingly difficult. First of all, we don’t know how well people who will go to the exhibition understand generative art. If they don’t understand enough, they may not be able to accept that the preview screen is different from the mint result. Because I was worried about this situation, one of the Params was used to specify the random seed. When editing parameters, I can have a WYSIWYG effect.

The remaining four can only be used to make some basic settings (recursive depth, color, select preset); rain, canvas ratio, time, light and shadow, etc. are random.

There are two other performances that are also random:

How to draw: The lines on the right show "pen pressure"

Type of pen: The one on the left is more like a rollerball pen, the one on the right is more like a pencil

The description of the work ends here. Thanks for reading.

For those who want to buy

Currently only private messages are open.

at last

This time, because of Proof of Only those who can participate in this project) can I participate in the exhibition. Then Takawo さん suddenly added a lot of Japanese followers to my twitter. Many thanks to them.

The easter egg on the cement wall is a plant called wall-creeper in Taiwan.

End of original text

postscript

There were a lot of rewards after completing this piece that I didn't expect.

This was my first time using fx (Params), so I was not sure about it, and I didn’t like it psychologically during the production, because the decision-making power for some works was not in my hands, so I felt very insecure; but later I found out It’s great to be able to allow collectors to adjust the parameters, because almost all collectors are very serious about the adjustments, which somewhat makes up for the “randomness out of control” (completely letting the program determine the result, resulting in an unattractive picture). Although some collectors have very different aesthetic preferences from me, the results are still great; another collector (Zhang Mingyao) spent an entire night adjusting the parameters and was flattered.

↑ Zhang Mingyao’sTaiwan Architectural Memory #18 , the result of adjustments based on the premise that the negative film will also look good. Thank you Mingyao

In addition, this work was originally set to be sold only on site, but gradually people asked about it, so I started a semi-open channel of private message sales, which allowed me to meet collectors from Japan, South Korea and France. In the past, even if they sold out quickly in a short period of time, I knew almost nothing about my collectors and had no communication with them.

Finally, in addition to Ming Yao, Yuyin (former editor-in-chief of ARTouch.com ), who usually does not write about what he has collected, and Huang Xin, who is also very active in creating generative art, also posted updates about what they have collected. I am very grateful to them for their encouragement and inspiration.