The large-scale group exhibition Systems of Belief brings together artistic positions that explore alternative belief systems. In a world in which political and ecological states of emergency determine everyday life, constants of social life such as science, economics and politics are increasingly being put to the test in public debates. As individuals, as a society and as an entire ecosystem, we are currently facing great challenges. Challenging, even overwhelming, is often the subjective processing of the complex world events that flow into us through various streams of information and shape our view of the present.

With work by Jordan Belson, Harm van den Dorpel, Storm de Hirsch, Antonia De La Luz Kašik, Richard Kriesche, Paul Laffoley, Irina Lotarevich, Lee Scratch Perry, and Marta Riniker-Radich. Many thanks to Jan Tappe.

https://halle-fuer-kunst.at/en/exhibitions/systems-of-belief/

Systems of Belief

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 will be 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.


Stedelijk Base

Currently working on a new large series of generative animated compositions. The possibility space of the algorithm is huge, and its curation will be crowd-sourced. People will be able to search and navigate all outputs using filter controls. The artwork graphics are generated by an Ethereum smart contract, so it's fully on-chain.

<a href='https://eu-central-1.linodeobjects.com/harm/3r5zh-eNXv6Hqgnw3EyVY/51961572.svg' target='_blank'>See animated example 1...</a>

<a href='https://eu-central-1.linodeobjects.com/harm/3r5zh-eNXv6Hqgnw3EyVY/137595720.svg' target='_blank'>See animated example 2...</a>

Work in progress

I'll be participating in the summer group exhibition "Mixed Feelings" at Upstream Gallery Amsterdam, opening Saturday July 1st, 17:00 - 19:30.

With work by Frank Ammerlaan, Marc Bijl, Kévin Bray, Harm van den Dorpel, Mandy Franca, David Haines, Auriea Harvey, Jen Liu, Noor Nuyten, Ronald Ophuis and Tabor Robak.

[More info...](https://www.upstreamgallery.nl/exhibitions/234/mixed-feelings)

Mixed Feelings

It was a pleasure to collaborate with Eva Jäger and Victoria Ivanova on the Serpentine Gallery's Future Art Ecosystems Vol. 3 Art × Tech publication.

> FAE3 identifies new patterns for organisational and creative innovation within the broader space of decentralised technologies, variably dubbed as 'web3', 'crypto' and 'dweb'. Through a series of interviews with specialists across art, web3, crypto, dweb, innovation policy and civic, the briefing articulates various horizons for reconfiguring how practitioners and the cultural sector at large can operationalise production, distribution and financial support systems.

This print + web publication features several monochrome images based on Markov's Dream screen captures, pulled through a custom rasterizing algorithm. 

Two works that were not included in the publication have found their final form as tokenized prints:
[Molly Blob 1](https://harm.work/work/molly-blob-1) and [Molly Blob 2](https://harm.work/work/molly-blob-2).


[Request hard copy or download PDF...](https://futureartecosystems.org/)



Future Art Ecosystems Vol. 3

Thank you Adina Glickstein & Artforum for featuring our exhibition [Context Switch](https://harm.work/exhibition/context-switch) in Artforum's Critics' Picks.

> Like snowflakes, Harm van den Dorpel’s light exposure prints bear an organic geometry, internally harmonious and each one unique. Like snapshots, their patterns register moments in time, fixed in place by technological means.

[Read article...](https://www.artforum.com/picks/achraf-touloub-and-harm-van-den-dorpel-89969)

Artforum Critics' Picks

Typographic Trace

Unique edition + 1AP

Light exposure on photographic aluminium paper, mounted behind acrylic glass, framed

Modular Mind

Blush Array III

Eventide Paramour

Wednesday, April 3 2019, 15:19:55 CEST (Pleasant  Modules)

Blush Array II

Blush Array

Pejorative Highlights

Mutant Garden Seeder consists of 512+1 generative unique Ethereum NFTs by artist Harm van den Dorpel, released in collaboration with Folia in 2021.

Mutant Garden Seeder

High resolution render of the Mutant Garden algorithm, manually calibrated. When this one was made the renderer did not use Gaussian blur yet. Its composition primarily benefits from the alternating AB/BA grid structures and its colours from a balanced pastel palette (HSL colour space).

12000×12000px

Alternate Ploy

Plural Shim

Grand Formation

Zwour

UltraChrome HD print on archival fine art paper

Decent Fabric

Moksi

Odd Motives

Mutant Garden Tracer

Generative animated artwork, based on evolutionary programming. Dimensions variable, duration infinite, silent.

Edition of 3 + 1 AP

Mutant Garden Autobreeder

Hissed Hyphen Flicks

Hazy Sparkle Boost

Poly Fill

Run Too

Early high resolution render of the Mutant Garden algorithm, manually retouched.

9331×9331px

By Harm van den Dorpel, 2020

(title by William Kherbek)

Neural Dust

Trivializer

Triddle

While developing the Mutant Garden algorithm based on Cartesian Genetic Programming, my programming error produced this unexpected recursive structure.

8000×8000px

Mutant Garden (early bug)

Source Unknown

Crystallophobia

Floppy Candour

Untitled Decompression

A website where users can live breed and mutate specimen.

Mutant Garden Website

Autobreeder (single screen)

Multi Dimensional Zoom

Crud

Untitled (pleasant modules II)

Symbol No Aggression

Push Forth Specter

daisies

Decompression

Untitled (1554993052565)

Trebles

Field

SPARCStation

Rendered using Cartesian genetic programming

Friendly Conglomerate

1554994948963

Bars

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

A remake of a Flash animation from 2008, but now 100% on-chain: no IPFS, no web servers, no dependencies ✲ responsive and interactive.

The background gradient and spinner colour adapt to your system settings for dark or light mode.

Field 1

Field 2

A remake of a Flash animation from 2008, but now 100% on-chain: no IPFS, no web servers, no dependencies ✲ responsive and interactive.

Field 3

Field 4

Field 5

A remake of a Flash animation from 2008, but now 100% on-chain: no IPFS, no web servers, no dependencies ✲ responsive and interactive

Field 6

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.
 
[Read more about this series...](https://harm.work/writing/field-2008-2023)   

[OpenSea](https://opensea.io/collection/field-harm-van-den-dorpel) | [Smart contract source code](https://etherscan.io/address/0xc1cb5ea3a3541af83b0417dc26e04628193a53d3#code)

Based on the original IBM CGA (Color Graphics Adapter) 16-colour palette from 1981

Markov's Dream: CGA

Untitled Nested Composition 1

Twenty-five drawings, each based on a work by Fernand Léger, drawn with a laptop touchpad, overlapping in time, in ever changing order, by Harm van den Dorpel.

This work was commissioned by the Triton Foundation Collection, in collaboration with Upstream Gallery. Premiered at the Kröller Müller museum alongside original paintings by Léger.

Fernand

This NFT is a fully on-chain spin-off of Markov's Dream: Orb. Its colours, amount of rings, rotation speed and curvature are determined on mint and remain fixed. The animated vector graphics that compose this artwork are entirely generated by the Solidity code that the smart contract was programmed in. It does not rely on any web server or off-chain storage solution like IPFS, which means that this artwork is indestructible and will live on as long as the Ethereum blockchain exists.

Holders of Mutant Garden Seeder were eligible for a free mint of Orb (lite). Holders of Markov's Dream received their tokens airdropped. Further minting schedule will be announced on Twitter.

A maximum of 512 tokens could be minted.

[View minting page](https://markovs-dream.harm.work/orb-lite)

About

Harm van den Dorpel

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