Takuro Someya Contemporary Art is pleased to present a group exhibition with works by Kenjiro Okazaki, Chinoko Sakamoto, Harm van den Dorpel, and Goro Murayama.

This group exhibition presents an opportunity to consider the natural process of artistic production in which there are no distinctions between the virtual and the real. The abstract is conceptualized not merely as an expressive form but rather primarily as an omnipresent element of nature that exists irregardless of human perception. We hope that visitors will experience this notion of abstraction as a guiding force in the evocation of history and the present in these works by Okazaki, van den Dorpel, Sakamoto, and Murayama.

https://tsca.jp/exhibition/kenjiro-okazaki-harm-van-den-dorpel-goro-murayama-chinoko-sakamoto/

Okazaki, Sakamoto, van den Dorpel, Murayama

My contribution to this group exhibition consisted of 3 Mutant Garden Seeder mutation prints of mutant "Coralena" presented as triptych and the Mutant Garden Autobreeder software (AP).

https://www.nahmadcontemporary.com/exhibitions/the-painters-new-tools

The Painter's New Tools

We all know DNA forms the blueprint of life. Through mutation and crossover, genetic information is passed to our children. How exactly this information that builds our bodies, and organises our trillions of cells, each line in our skin, is encoded in our genes is miraculous. Equating our DNA to a "map" of our body, where there would be a one-to-one relationship between genes and cells, makes no sense. Such a map would exceed the territory. The genome is limited to contain a relatively small amount of information. 

Instead, it is better to think of our genetic information as a repository of many highly efficient intertwined strategies, recipes, methods – algorithms, if you will – from which the huge amount of cells that compose our bodies are generated, recursively. These instructions in our DNA are parsed and executed, over and over again, based on local conditions: if this, then do that, or else do this. Genetic information could be considered as a [compressed](https://www.pnas.org/content/117/31/18489) collection of computer programmes, from which life emerges.

It is my conviction that this tension between relative simplicity of computational rules, but enormous complexity in outcome, holds the key to understanding life, and by extension, our aesthetic appreciation of it. We are attracted to visual systems which are to some extent complex, novel, tantalising, yet at the same time contain familiar, repeating elements. Difference and variation, surprise and expectation, have provided essential building blocks in the history of human expression.

To that end, I have developed evolutionary algorithms to research and optimise this trade off. But just as mutations in biology often result in death of specimens, mutations in software often result in programmes that get stuck in an [infinite loop](https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/gzqsnrse/release/8#n2qbnx82rci): the notorious blue screen of death or endless rainbow spinner on MacOS. My engineering challenge was to devise an environment where I could freely let programmes mutate without crippling them. To achieve this, I turned to an existing algorithm called Cartesian Genetic Programming, invented by Julian F. Miller and Peter Thomson in 1997 (see [my interview with Julian](/writing/a-35-billion-year-old-technology-an-interview)) to come to the Mutant Garden software.

In the "Autobreeder" on display in the main room (the "garden") specimens undergo mutation, and siblings are evaluated based on measuring their visual complexity versus cost of computation. Complex compositions that were relatively quick to generate are favoured over simple images that took disproportionate effort. I used the outputs of this algorithm as input for my own aesthetic wetware: I curated, and optimised the highly complex compositions, emphasised desired traits in a painterly, subjective, and labour intensive process.

Some of these works are materialised as digital exposures on photographic paper (lightjet), others are printed on archival paper using UltraChrome inks. These are installed alongside the Autobreeder.

In the smaller room (the "lab"), an additional software work is installed which visualises how the genetic code is formatted as a two-dimensional network, and how this is parsed to generate the layered visual compositions.

On one wall, as a timeline of my larger project of algorithmic archaeology, from each iteration, one work is installed, highlighting my own artistic practice as a genealogy as well.

To conclude, a series of light emitting tablets connect the various algorithms, series, works by myself, by other contemporary artists, and historical art movements. These help me define my activities in a broader artistic and historical frame, and appreciate associations in their own right.
    
– Harm

Mutant Garden

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

"Proof of Work" brings together works engaged with the culture around cryptocurrency, bitcoin and blockchain as a possible new infrastructure for money, computing and organizing. This includes artwork made by crypto builders, crypto experiments built by artists, and paintings and drawings that resonate with cryptocurrency but predate the invention of bitcoin. 

Curated by Simon Denny in dialogue with Distributed Gallery, Harm van den Dorpel, Sarah Hamerman and Sam Hart, Kei Kreutler, Aude Launay and Anna-Lisa Scherfose

Proof of Work

Group exhibition with work by Forensic Architecture, Cao Fei, Rachel Ara, Zach Blas, Simon Denny, Chris Shen, Sylbee Kim, Woonghyun Kim and Harm van den Dorpel.

Vertiginous Data

In his first solo exhibition with Upstream Gallery, Harm van den Dorpel features works from multiple series’ that react to different moments in the history of cybernetics.

Pattern and Presence, the title of the show, is taken from the book ‘How we became posthuman’ by N. Katherine Hayles (1999), in which she describes the historical development of cybernetics and politics of disembodiment.

Van den Dorpel employs various information technologies from this history of cybernetics in his artistic practice. He wants to demystify both the romantic notion of the ‘artistic genius’ as well as the ‘black box’ of computer algorithms, which increasingly influence our personal lives and forecast our political future. Where other traditional artistic mediums require the artist to create the work with their own hand, Van den Dorpel rather programs software and trains it by looping continuous feedback through its output in order to produce works with unpredictable aesthetic outcomes. In this hybrid process, genetic properties are ascribed to the elements and composition that make up his artworks. By selecting and crossbreeding across many generations, “optimal” artworks emerge.

For this new series of printed transparent work (which is a continuation of his earlier series “Death Imitates Language”) Van den Dorpel focuses on the structure of ‘nesting’: a strong organizing principle found in architecture, software development and human language. The artist draws on this system in order to compare the construction of language to the construction of artworks, and in doing so, refers to the painterly question of how to fill the two-dimensional plane using composition and layering. The genetic algorithms he uses, originate from developments in computer science which emerged in the 1960s through to the 1980s and include: ‘Turtle graphics’ by Seymour Papert (late 1960s); research of feedback, reflexivity, nesting and recursion (Autopoiesis, Varela & Maturana, 1972); and Artificial Life (Christopher Langton, 1986).

Van den Dorpel also draws on recent developments in blockchain technology, specifically the Ethereum blockchain, in order to assign each work a unique identifier (a hash or fingerprint). This functions as a token which can be traded on the Ethereum blockchain and changes the status of the artwork to a form of currency – or a representation of itself – which circles back to the initial question of embodiment: are the works in fact the works? Or, are they representations of an external, less material essence? 

Pattern & Presence

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.

Shunned Mass

Umbilical Dramatoxin

Bloated Taunt

Defenseless Qualm

Unheard Estimator

Audit Myth Buzz

Bemused Aversatility

Unscripted Relinings

Fickle Particle I

Eponymous Seedling

Algues Artificielles

Hybrid Vigor .bio

Torn split

Dechayotic

Adoreway

Availablesky

Frouters

Bluena

During the summer of 2016, I spent a few weeks with my family by sea in Bretagne, France. During these times when one is expected to relax and not work, somehow ideas come more freely. I liked how the seaweed and jellyfish washed ashore and formed shapes and compositions which were always different, but, also, somehow always the same.

I tried to programme a simple piece of computer code to simulate these smooth, round curves. The effects were surprisingly satisfying. Somehow, my shapes reminded me of the sculptural works of Hans Arp.
Instead of randomly generating those shapes, which was quickly becoming a bit boring, I tried to define a mechanism by which I could influence the outcome. I was wondering what would be the ‘most interesting’ composition. Could a process of feedback between me and the software be considered a kind of dialectic?

I devised a system in which the drawings - consisting of multiple lines and shapes - would evolve and improve over time. In many iterations, the system would give me a generation of works; each time I would pick two from which more ‘children’ would be bred. Because the breeding always happens between ‘siblings’ - a sort of mechanical incest - the diversity would gradually converge.

Technically (or biologically?), all properties of a drawing (angles, smoothness, shape, colour, transparency, scale, position, etc.) are stored in a long sequence of 0s and 1s: a digital genome. These genomes hermetically define the appearance (or phenotype) of each work (or specimen).

When two people (or, in this case, two drawings) are selected and mate, both of their chromosomes are aligned, and ad-random genes are selected from either parent (crossover). From this game of recombination, both iterative and diverse offspring emerge.

The process of selecting candidates for breeding, examining the results, and using those results to further breed to eliminate or emphasise particular traits in animals and flowers is called 'hybrid vigour'.  My website, 'Hybrid Vigor’, is publicly accessible to crowd-source this process in an evolutionarily selective way, using the internet visitor as the fitness function.

Big Pablo Ferenc Zatlas

Juancar Zolim Juancar

Vvgdamn Pipikaka Yozdczmi

Hatter Epot Xgeubke

This fullscreen software autosurfs the massive genealogy of the 'death imitates language' project, containing the entire population, bred by a genetic algorithm, and selected by micro-feedback of the artist

offline, duration infinite, not interactive, silent, macOS


Autobreeder

Shtonk Vtejuwoh Bonifac

This website contains an enormous population of speculative works. Each of these works is generated by inheriting sequences of information — a sort of DNA — from its ancestors. These ‘genetic’ codes determine which elements appear in the work and in what form or constellation. The population changes over time by means of subjective ('natural') selection by the artist: micro feedback or 'likes' about which of the works can live on, which ones should die, and who can procreate. This feedback, combined with visitor statistics and simulated aging, causes the genetic program to mutate and (arguably) improve over time.

When creatures reach their optimal state they are 'frozen' and potentially translated into physical objects.

Death Imitates Language online genealogy

Vuwtvvyft Zcuviey Dayssuck

In the years leading up to ‘Death Imitates Language’, I was trying more and more to be an ‘artist artist’, someone who fitted into the gallery space and the art markets in conventional terms. I had some success, but I also had a sense of sadness about the process. It felt a bit hollow and disconnected from the Net Art which I saw myself as coming out of. For a while, I thought about turning away from the art world and doing what I really enjoyed most, which was programming. While I was in this unsettled period, I was doing a lot of generative graphics, but I was somewhat bored. I felt like the graphics needed a bit more development and direction to add to the randomness created by the programmes. 

It was around this time that I saw a video by the programmer, philosopher and general provocateur, Vinay Gupta, about algorithms and dating apps. Gupta estimated that Tinder and similar apps were responsible for essentially engineering about 10% of the dates that took place in the countries where the app was used. The idea of a dating app that works ‘too well’ and ends up in a long term relationship was a serious risk for the apps’ business models, or so Gupta argues. Apparently companies decided that for their purposes it was better to use machine learning and AI to engineer the algorithm to bring people together who were likely to feel attraction, but whose relationships were also likely to be volatile. I started thinking about what might happen if a child was conceived in one of these short and sharp relationships. That child’s biology would be, in part, algorithmically determined. The biopolitics of that were quite a lot to get my head around, but it did give me a direction for the graphics project, an idea that breeding aesthetic populations might also provide a way to visualise how machines understand data and ‘create’, and how art might emerge from that process. The work has now gone on for some time; probably longer than a lot of the relationships that gave me the idea in the first place.

A series of works exploring the development of meaning in generative aesthetics using micro feedback and a genetic algorithm. It consists of a website and a series of printed and boxed collage works.

The public website contains an enormous population of speculative works. Each of these works are generated by inheriting sequences of information - a sort of DNA - from their ancestors. These ‘genetic’ codes determine which elements appear in the work and in what form or constellation. The population changes over time by means of subjective ('natural') selection by me: micro feedback or 'likes'. This feedback - combined with visitor statistics and simulated aging - causes the genetic program to mutate and (arguably) improve over time.

When creatures reach their optimal state they are 'frozen' and translated into physical objects. These objects are layered in construction, partly transparent and square. They can be hung and watched from all sides.

[Featured in Rhizome's Net Art Anthology](https://anthology.rhizome.org/death-imitates-language)

Death Imitates Language

Assemblage (new)

Assemblage (About)

Assemblage (chain)

Assemblage (canvas)

Assemblage (shell)

Assemblages dates to the time shortly after I graduated from art school. At that time my friends and I were often experiencing artworks through the images posted on sites like Contemporary Art Daily. The images we saw were of pristine spaces with perfectly realised works. I wondered how it would be if I rendered the exhibitions using 3-D software - programmes like Cinema 4-D were among the programmes I used for the works. Once I created these renders, I could post them and see if they would be featured on the blogs alongside the exhibition views on which they were based. 

The idea worked a little too well. A gallerist in London saw the images online and she liked them. Thinking they were IRL works, she asked if she could show them. It was a very generative dilemma. I could either admit they were digital works and had no physical dimension, or I could create the works IRL. I decided to accept the challenge, and it was challenging. The works are spheres, the easiest shapes to create digitally. It’s three clicks, assigning an image as a texture on a sphere and then making adjustments. To make the same shape in physical material is among the hardest things you can do.

For the surfaces, I printed some images from Google image searches - mostly textures from ready-made render kits. I chose mostly images that represented complex systems, network cables, intestines, whatever I could find that was interlocking and complex. The works became sculptures about the ways in which systems fit together, interpenetrate, and elude each other. The sphere is a kind of container, but also a fixed border, holding these complexities in tension and in place, not least the complexities behind their own creation. 

Assemblages

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.

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

Exhibitions

Okazaki, Sakamoto, van den Dorpel, Murayama

The Painter's New Tools

Mutant Garden

Stedelijk Base

Proof of Work

Vertiginous Data

Pattern & Presence

Series

Mutant Garden

Algues Artificielles

Death Imitates Language

Assemblages

Works

Fernand

Typographic Trace

Markov's Dream: Orb (lite)

Modular Mind

Mutant Garden Seeder

Mutant Garden Autobreeder

Assemblage (About)

Big Pablo Ferenc Zatlas