Plotter drawing on paper with pencil hand drawing. Composition generated with the Mutant Garden algorithm.

Quadra

Ongoing series of plotter drawings on paper and PVC. Premiered in the exhibition <a href='https://harm.work/exhibition/angles-morts/all'>Angles Morts</a>.

Cloud Writings

The title of this exhibition is borrowed from [a musical piece](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIkImA_bBls) released in 1983 by the Belgian composer Wim Mertens, generally positioned in the ‘Minimalist’ tradition. There are aspects of the composition that I always find myself falling for, even though there are other aspects I find a bit kitschy. In thinking about the ways in which works of art that speak to me can have this dual dimension, one of immediate appeal and a kind of intellectual resistance, the ideas behind this collection began to germinate.

The tropes of musical Minimalism seem familiar at first glance, for example, repetition, or the arpeggio. They are used and they ‘work’. When listening to a work like Mertens, I find myself liking and resisting the work simultaneously. I don’t want it to work on me, but it does. It is a work that lives up to its title; it is a struggle but a pleasurable one. In thinking about struggling for pleasure in my own visual practice, I felt closest to the concept of the struggle initially. Specifically, how pleasure can often seem suspicious somehow, and why this might be. Working in the digital realm of visual production, there is a kind of rhyming element between the fundamental features of minimalist composition and the minimal units of digital display. Rather like the spare notes played in a musical composition, the rendering of pixels in certain positions and densities create a visual composition which our minds work upon, and which work upon our minds.

The pixel is fetishised perhaps in a lot of the iconic works of contemporary digital art and NFTs, and this is something that I do find myself struggling with. For example, works like [CryptoPunks](https://opensea.io/collection/cryptopunks) lean into pixelisation by exploiting nostalgia, which I found myself wanting to resist. The pleasurable hit of playing up 8-bit graphics has always seemed to me a kind of easy way out of the problem of making an interesting visual work in the context of digital display formats. The works become about the viewer, but less about who they are personally, than about their generational position. While this is pleasure, it didn’t seem to be a lasting pleasure for me.

In creating these works, I researched how we relate to pixels, how they reveal something about how we perceive and mentally construct images. They appeal to a general cognitive faculty, but each assemblage or organisation of pixels has a personal, individualised aspect. In this way, they touch on some of the same unsteady ground the Impressionists worked upon. The elusive coherency of strokes by Monet, or later Pointillist works by Seurat sought to find a place where perception, image, and emotion met. The point, particularly in the latter case of Pointillism, offers insight into the application of the pixel: the point is information, but it can only become meaningful in the presence of other points, and other minds. In these works, I seek to take the fundamental element of digital display and examine how it can be dialogic rather than simply nostalgic.

In creating these works, I built on elements of earlier uses of an algorithm in my practice. Historically, I dedicated myself to an iterative algorithmic process which in the end hermetically generated the final ‘pleasurable images’ to be released. In the past, that iterative process involved a great deal of loss, discarding all outputs before the final algorithm would be complete. For ‘Struggle for Pleasure’, I opted for a different, gentler process: keeping images generated at all points during the iteration process and curating them into a final selection. Therefore, the collection is not merely a product of the final outputs of the final state of the algorithm but a kind of historical and procedural window on the chronological process itself. 

Here, I chose very simple operations - rather similar to the austere approaches that define minimal music - to apply to the images, such as mirroring, rotation, repetition, and in particular subdivision. The outputs often paradoxically took on an exceptionally complex, transcendental quality not unlike, for me, the way the apparently straightforward components of a mandala can. Simplicity of operation can become a window into territories of complexity where knowledge itself breaks down. This openness to uncertainty and to the dialogic process of the realisation of a work is central to the struggle for pleasure that defined the creation of the works on show here. It is my uncertainty, but it appeals to a wider openness, an openness where pleasure can flourish.

– Written by William Kherbek based on a conversation with Harm van den Dorpel, 2023

Struggle for Pleasure

This solo show comes at the end of a very intense period of my life. After a run of successful exhibitions, the hysterical rise (and fall) of NFTs, and the acquisition by the Stedelijk Museum of Markov’s Window for their collection. These felt like a kind of vindication of the work I had been doing, the culmination of decades of work, and a sense of arrival at an institutional level for generative art. This was something I’d sometimes lost hope in over the years: the possibility that at some point institutions would accept generative art as an equal to the major artistic movements of the last century.

While I was delighted by the recognition, I was also overwhelmed. I found myself in a kind of frenzy of obligations and conversations, and it all became a bit too much to handle. Recognition made me want to become a hermit. 

During the period in which I felt this instability in my life, I sought out professional help and in doing so I became familiarised with “Inner Child” therapy. The form I came to experience is derived from psychotherapy and it made me consider aspects of my situation, and my own biography in more detail than I had ever previously done, and it also gave me a new perspective on my work. 

For a long time, I had been engaging in highly theoretical and technologically sophisticated approaches to art. This cerebral approach certainly brought me to ideas that yielded interesting aesthetic results, but also I felt I was obscuring a part of myself. The works in this exhibition grew out of this period of searching into my own psyche, and attempting to make contact with the feelings that first inspired me to make images. Where once I might have felt insecure that certain artistic choices, certain colourful compositions, for example, immediately appealed to me, and I might have sought something more supposedly ‘intellectual’ to buttress a creation I viscerally enjoyed, here I have chosen to embrace that immediate sense of joy and bring the viewer into those moments of creative freedom and excitement.
 
Something that became apparent to me was the sense that we must accept the complexity of our minds and not attempt to judge ourselves according to rigid systems of rules. We should embrace our curiosity and accept and integrate our moments of fear and anxiety. In my own story, this has meant thinking back to the religious orthodoxy that characterised my upbringing. I spent many years trying to figure out the rules - the algorithm, one might say - to being a good person. How could I do this and avoid the terrors of the Hell that I was told about, and which I was constantly at risk of being sent to. Therapy here has helped me understand the limits of narrow legislative approaches to morality, both towards oneself and towards others. 

These insights are part of the story of these works, but there is also an aesthetic element that is important to discuss in making the works legible. To create the images for this show, I used the same algorithm that was involved in producing Markov’s Window in 2004. In the ensuing years, computing power and my own abilities had become more sophisticated and in revisiting the technology, I began to think about the way that compression and decompression work in the artistic space. I thought about the way that painters such as Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg would look at, for example, a tree and take the enormous amount of complexity they would perceive and reduce it to a few shapes or lines to convey its essence. You could think of this as a kind of compression which perhaps reaches its highest level in Mondrian’s grid-like canvases. I thought about what could happen if you moved in the opposite direction, taking something very basic, and applying the capacities of generative art to that form. In that way it becomes a process of decompression, you can move from very simple geometrical shapes to extreme complexities, moving from shapes to the level of pixels.

My generative works are originally software, and originally were seen on screens with far lower resolutions than those of today, but any kind of screen display reduces visual complexity, therefore the only way these works could truly convey their full complexity was to produce them as material objects.

We often speak of our own inner child, but what would it mean to embrace a larger sense of a collective inner child, the vulnerability and joy that lies at the heart of everyone. I invite visitors to begin exploring that question, to begin looking deeper at things, and embracing the complexities around us, in their full resolution. 

https://www.upstreamgallery.nl/exhibitions/240/our-inner-child

Our Inner Child

This artwork uses an algorithm called 'Cartesian genetic programming', intented approximately twenty years ago by Julian F. Miller and Peter Thomson. It is called ‘Cartesian’ because it represents a computer program as a two-dimensional grid: nodes and layers. Althought the result of my specific use of this algorithm is also two-dimensional, the algorithm is versatile and can also generate completely different systems, such time based media, human language or three-dimensional structures.

As we also encounter in genetic encoding in "real nature", the genotype contains many redundant genes, which are well known to assist in effective evolutionary development.

In Mutant Garden, clicking one rectangular 'mutant' will cause its siblings to be replaced with newly mutated offspring. This breeding strategy requires only one parent to be selected because the algorithm utilizes mutation, rather than cross-over.

As many people nowadays tend to equate articial intelligence with neural networks, I wanted to highlight the evolutionary progress in this recent history of computation, approaching it as algorithmic archeology. Each new innovation in this lineage aimed to improve or declare its predecessor obsolete, yet would simultaneously stand on its shoulders.

Mutant Garden

Four generative animations inspired by the work "Study for Camino Real" by Anni Albers from 1967. Each triangle (cell) its rotation is based on the configurations of its neighbouring cells. This algorithm could be described as a combination of a cellular automaton and a Markov chain. 

The grid is reconfigured in intervals, and scans from top left to bottom right, referring to the process of weaving, or writing text. Each time rotation completes, touching triangles transition to one shared colour, forming groups.

Anni

In this exhibition ‘Angles Morts’, LOHAUS SOMINSKY is showing new works by the artist Harm van den Dorpel in combination with works by Vera Molnár, who is known for her pioneering work in computer and generative art. The exhibition presents the result of an impressive exploration of Harm van den Dorpel's artistic engagement with the roots of generative art.

Since 2019, Harm van den Dorpel has dedicated himself to researching artists such as Anni Albers, Vera Molnár, Charlotte Posenenske and Tauba Auerbach, who are known for their work with two-dimensional grid patterns. This research is part of his endeavour to explore his own roots in generative art and to identify his influences.

It should be noted that the artists listed are all women. In his research, Van den Dorpel recognises a dominance of female artists in the field of generative art. He considers a historical connection between the systematic arrangement of recurring elements in grid patterns and the craft of weaving, an activity traditionally dominated by women.

In his work, the artist explores the complexity of works by female artists such as Anni Albers. While it would have been technically easy to programme an algorithm that replicated her triangle patterns, it turned out that randomly placing the triangles did not achieve the desired aesthetic effect. Van den Dorpel realised that Albers must have formulated clear rules in her head, which she applied algorithmically to each cell of the grid. This realisation led to a deep respect for the invisible structures and thought processes hidden in the works of Albers and other female generative artists.

Unlike Albers, Vera Molnár worked with computer technology, but it was very limited, had no screens and provided only simple outputs that she had to manually translate into physical objects. These processes were labour intensive and resulted in small imperfections, which Van den Dorpel particularly appreciates.
Van den Dorpel uses modern algorithms and a plotter to imitate and further develop the aesthetics and methodology of his role models. A plotter is a specialised printer that creates precise technical drawings and graphics by moving pens or markers across the paper on an X-Y axis. Unlike conventional printers, which apply ink in lines from top to bottom, the plotter draws lines in different directions. This process gives the work an organic quality that goes beyond the precision of digital prints. The plotter draws lines in all directions and through the slow, mechanical movement creates unique and unrepeatable results that bring a human unpredictability to the digital works.

His interest in the methods of these artists led van den Dorpel to question and optimise his own processes. Despite his technological tools, he seeks a connection to the artisanal and intellectual approaches of his predecessors. The exhibition ‘Angles Morts’ offers a deep insight into these complex interactions between historical influences and modern technologies.

A recurring theme in van den Dorpel's practice is the instability of the digital medium, where any specific idea or form of expression is difficult to grasp. This instability avoids a fixed, definitive statement and emphasises an open system. Reflecting on the historical role of women in computational art and their often overlooked contributions, van den Dorpel honours the rigorous and visionary work of these pioneers.

[More info...](https://lohaussominsky.com/exhibitions/angles-morts)

Angles Morts

A remake of a Flash animation I once made in 2008, but now 100% on-chain: no IPFS, no webservers, no dependencies. All code is contained in the smart contract. Responsive and Interactive.

This fullscreen software autosurfs the massive genealogy of the 'Death Imitates Language' project, containing the first 12.000 specimen, bred by a genetic algorithm, and selected by micro-feedback of the artist.

Field

Duo exhibition with Achraf Touloub

Galerie Noah Klink    
Kulmer Straße 17, 10783 Berlin

12.11.2022 – 29.01.2023

Context Switch

My work Markov's Window is part of the permanent collection display of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. It will be installed as a "transhistorical intervention" into BASE, the modern section of the display, where it will be in close proximity to sections on Bauhaus, Mondriaan, and the Russian Avant-garde. According to the museum: "It will thus be the only contemporary work in this section of BASE, which will give it a unique emphasis. This positioning will be a strong statement, intertwining such a forward-thinking digital work within the canon of abstraction."

On display from the 22nd of September 2020.


Harm van den Dorpel

NFT