Sign in Subscribe
Newsletter

Gorilla Recap 8

This week we made a lot of art! We talk about some interesting developments in the world of generative NFTs, watch Alba launch, discuss the future of Tezos, as well as the dangers of AI. And we have a look at what I've been up to genart-wise!

By Ahmad Moussa



6 min read
Gorilla Recap 8
Somewhere in Between - A generative project for Proof of X

Hey everyone 👋 and hello to all new subscribers that joined since last week! Thanks for signing up and joining along for the ride! This is the weekly newsletter, in which I recap everything noteworthy from the past week. Hope you have a good stay!

This week again there's been a lot of new stuff! 👇

Genart Updates

Creative Code News #100

Tune in tomorrow to Raph's twitch stream for the last issue of CC News. It'll be a little celebration in which Raph looks back on over two years of curating updates and news from the world of generative art, creative coding and computational design.

You should join the discord as well, it's by far the most welcoming creative coding community on the internet!

Non Fungible Conference Lisbon - Feels Like Home

Past week NFC Lisbon took place, with a live minting event titled Feels like home with some stunning pieces from Elsif, mjlindow, and Leonardo Solas among others.

Slice of Life by Elsif, Rooted by mjlindow, and Before the Strom by Leonardo Solas

Kaloh attended the conference and covers everything that you need to know about the conference in his newsletter, check it 👇

In Case You Missed It - Non Fungible Conference 2023
6 artists and artworks worth sharing + a bonus upcoming collection…
Kaloh’s NewsletterKaloh

Alba launch and first collections

Alba had a smooth launch last week and saw the release of it's first two generative collections.

It's going to be a wile month full of releases in the coming month, so keep an eye out for that. I'll talk a little more about my upcoming Alba piece later in the newsletter 👇

Interesting Reads of the Week

Anna Lucia and the Quilters of Gee's Bend

Anna Lucia talks about her biggest project to date, a generative collaboration with the Quilter's of Gee's Bend:

Anna Lucia and the Quilters of Gee’s Bend
As generative art collides with quilting, the artists discuss their masterpiece of co-creation with ARSNL
Abigail Miller

Essentially each iteration of her project doesn't only exist as a token on the blockchain, but also as a real quilt IRL, and the patterns are simply stunning:

Andrew Ng and Geoffrey Hinton chat about the future of AI

What actually happens in the human brain when we reason about the real world? How close are we to creating a simulation of the human brain? Do LLMs like ChatGPT and Bard actually understand the text that they generate? Andrew NG and Geoffrey Hinton discuss all of these topics in their chat:

They argue that it is crucial for the research and AI community to come to a consensus: what it means to understand something, and if the current AI models are capable of doing so.

Zancan on the Tezos eco-system

There's a big disconnect between the Tezos foundation and the community. In this Twitter thread Zancan calls on the community to voice their concerns, gripes and worries with the current state of Tezos:

fridgebuzz captures my exact thoughts in their reply

Gorilla Sketches

This week was full of generative - working on two projects in tandem was a bit stressful, therefore there have been no articles. But we're back to our regular scheduling this week! I already have several cool posts in the pipeline!

Conundrum of Color

This week I learned a lot about colors - more specifically, that I suck at choosing colors. Color selection for generative art is tough; most palettes that you can find on the web aren't well suited for this purpose, well at least for my sketches... or maybe, like I said, I'm just very bad at picking colors.

In the future I might try a different approach, where I spend time on colors first and build the sketch around a given palette, rather than leaving it as a final step in the overall process. On the other hand, it's easy to quickly grow tired of your working palette - so only one way to find out.

In other news, I surprised myself with how much art I've already made this year - besides all the blog work that I've been trying to keep up with. It's important to look back sometimes and give yourself a little pat on the shoulder:

Proof of X - Somewhere in Between

I put the finishing touches on this project and Gah! the colors really bugged me out in the end - but I think I ultimately found a good selection. As I kept refreshing the piece while working on it, the more I started to dislike the colors, which lead me down a slippery slope of endlessly tweaking colors to no avail.

I am really happy with the current state it's in, and I need to remind myself to look at it not from a hyper critical perspective - and most importantly, to give your eyes a little break when you start to hate the color palettes

I'm also very happy with the emerging geometric patterns, the algorithm that splits the rectangles into different polygonal regions actually does something really cool - I'll eventually share it in a 'making of' post.

Using a stroke color that isn't pure black can have a nice hazy effect on the final composition.

I'm really really excited to mint this one and see what collectors ultimately put together with the FxParams editor!

Alba - The Great Traversal

In the meantime I've also continued working on my Alba project and submitted it for review - Haiver who's organizing the group show has helped me tremendously with some invaluable feedback! And I'm pretty stoked about, it'll be my very first piece on ETH, and since it's become a clean chain there's nothing in the way of this genesis.

Random walkers consume points from a Poisson disk distribution. Combined with Hobby curves they form interesting squiggly paths!

Music for Coding

Really enjoyed this playlist while coding this week - if you're looking for something serene that teleports to a sunlit office somewhere in the rainy north, then this playlist is for you:

That's it from me again this week! Thanks for reading, cheers, and happy coding ~ Gorilla Sun 🌸