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).

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Alternate Ploy

Plural Shim

Grand Formation

Zwour

UltraChrome HD print on archival fine art paper

Decent Fabric

Moksi

Odd Motives

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.

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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.

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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

Mod Two

Symbol No Aggression

Push Forth Specter

daisies

Decompression

Untitled (1554993052565)

Trebles

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