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Gorilla Recap 9

It's been a wild week again - The Goose got auctioned off at Sotheby's for 6.2 million, several online and offline shows kicked off and there's been a number of interesting reads about generative art and web3. Here's a recap about all of it!

By Ahmad Moussa



8 min read
Gorilla Recap 9
My submission for @sableraph's weekly creative coding challenge - the topic this week was succulents 🌸

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!

You may have noticed already but I've shuffled the sections around a bit again, I'm still in the process of figuring out how to best structure this newsletter - and depending on how many interesting things I can find every week the sections might still change, until I can find a good rhythm and a meaningful layout!

Genart Updates

It's been a wild week again - here's noteworthy events from the world of generative art and creative coding 👇

Dmtri Cherniak's 'The Goose' auctioned off at Sotheby's for 6.2M

The biggest event of the past week by far! Dmitri Cherniak's Goose was auctioned off at Sotheby's for a whopping 6.2M:

This also ensued a wave of covers and spin off artworks as homages to the Goose:

Dmitri Cherniak's statement after the auction is also very worth reading:

Proof of X kick off in Tokyo

Proof of X kicked off this past Saturday - and even though I'm not physically there, it was still humbling to see all of the hard work that went into it! I had the honor to participate with a token of mine 'Somewhere in Between' for the FxHash live minting section of the exhibition. Here's a sneak peek:

Many more pics were shared over on Twitter

Also, if you want to hear my stupid voice you can do so in the Twitter space that will be held on the 21st of June at 2:00 PM CEST/8:00 PM JST via the Proof of X twitter account - there should be an announcement about it soon!

Alba's Group Show 'FLATLANDS' - 3 months in the Making

I'll make some more announcements over on Twitter in the coming days - I'm super excited to be part of Alba's first group show. Working with Haiver was a real pleasure - check out all of the details 👇

The dedicated page for the group show is also already up, with some beautiful words from Haiver:

Processing Community Catalogue

The processing community catalogue has been slowly rolling out over the past few weeks and arriving to members of the community - look at this chonky orange unit:

It's been such a joy flipping through the pages and seeing so many familiar names and artworks, you can check out the online version of it here:

20th Anniversary Processing Community Catalog : Processing Foundation : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
“What does being a part of the Processing community mean to you?” In response to this question from our community of contributors, we’ve created a…
Internet Archive

Interesting Reads of the Week

What is Archetype by Kjetil Golid - A Thread

Twitter user aramunu compiled a in depth thread about all of the aspects that make Kjetil Golid's Archetype an impressive feat of generative art:

Archetype explores the use of repetition as a counterweight to unruly, random structures. As each single component look chaotic alone, the repetition brings along a sense of intentionality, ultimately resulting in a complex, yet satisfying expression - Kjetil Golid

Writing - An act of Seduction

Substack recently released a Twitter-like section to their platform called Substack Notes. And it's been an interesting alternative space, Substack as a platform primarily revolves around written content - and that it reflected in Notes, giving rise to a new type of short form writing. Laurie Stone uses it as an interesting literary vessel:

Laurie Stone is using Notes to seduce new readers
In Notes, the ultimate goal is not attention or likes; it is to form deep relationships between writer and reader
On SubstackHamish McKenzie

AI Corner

ChatGPT and the Intelligence Explosion

Emergent Garden is a youtube channel that I recently discovered and that makes some banger videos a la 3blue1brown - in this one he goes over recent advancements in AI - many of the animations in the video were made with help from ChatGPT:

An Interview with Ivona Tau

Ivona Tau talks about working with AI, GANs and Neural Networks - the interview goes in depth about her practices and how she envisions the future of AI in it's current form:

Gorilla Articles

A Beginner's Guide to collecting Art on Tezos

This week we got an article that's not been posted on the blog itself, but rather on FxText - my submission the the Temple x FxHash #Web3Writers contest. You might already be well versed in navigating the Tezos eco-system, but for anyone that isn't this article serves as a starting point. So, if you know someone - send them this!

A Beginner's Guide to Collecting Art on Tezos

I'll have the article up on the blog as well once the contest concludes! Another post that I really enjoyed here was Agoston Nagy's entry:

fxhash - Tezos Art Communities
This article introduces some earlier phases and the current state of web3 art communities, platforms and marketplaces in the Tezos ecosystem. It is focusing on sharing novel visual arts with experimental aesthetics that emerged out of the rapidly changing landscape.
fx logo

It takes a little bit of a historic approach to the current marketplaces on the Tezos eco-system, which I found quite interesting!

Javascript generators for animated generative sketches

A big part of my sketches recently have been generators - a convenient way to visualize the drawing process of the initial phase of a sketch. Completing my FxHash project 'Somewhere in Between' recently felt like the perfect moment to reiterate on the topic and make a proper write-up:

Javascript Generators for Animated Generative Sketches
In this tutorial we’ll have a look at javascript generators and how they can be used for animating the drawing phase for our generative sketches. We’ll cover everything from syntax to actually implementing a simple example using p5’s draw loop.
Gorilla SunAhmad Moussa

If you want to learn more about generators, here's an in depth post from last year:

An Introduction to Javascript Generators
In this post we’ll go over everything that you should know about Javascript Generators. Javascript generators are a versatile feature of ES6 and allow for interesting programming strategies, that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.
Gorilla SunAhmad Moussa

Gorilla Sketches

This week I didn't have too much time to spend on sketching but I got a few sessions in - yesterday I made a little succulent sketch for sableRaph's weekly creative coding challenge:

And just today I started work on a new project - it doesn't have a specific purpose just yet but I don't want to lose momentum - feeling really inspired and motivated from my recent releases:

The vision for this one, still a very early #WIP:

I find that sketching out things on paper is the best way to visually test if ideas are interesting.

Tip of the Week

Struggling with finishing projects? Do like Presstube and sign a contract in blood with yourself:

I think that we all struggle with procrastination.

Music for Coding

If you haven't listened to Tycho - then do your ears a favour and put this one on. Again one of those things that you should have listened to at least once in your life. I've been a big fan of Tycho for years, and his music helped through some tough times of my life:

And that's it from me again this week - cheers, happy coding, see you in the next post, and consider sharing this one on your socials, or with friends and family ~ Gorilla Sun 🌸