This is a series of works shown at Art on Paper, Booth G19, New York, 2024. For more, please follow my IG: @artdblockdotorg.
While Josef Albers is mostly known for his “Interaction of Color”, it is “Despite Straight Lines” that impressed me the most. After reading it in 2021 I started experimenting with the geometries in the book using a computer. I reimplemented four works in JavaScript using p5.js without using any generative algorithms, drawing lines, rotating angles, and finally drawing more lines. I chose to ignore the complex constructions suggested by Albers to produce something more primitive using 21st century technology. Finally, I decided to carefully remove any unnecessary steps, generating subsets that I found visually satisfying.
I wondered whether I was in any way copyminting Albers, a term describing duplicating NFTs to be sold as fakes, where the seller pretends to be the original artist. After all, I was using Albers’ algorithms and geometry! Would Albers object to the use of JavaScript as a medium in 1968? Or would he be minting NFTs on Tezos and listing them on Hic-et-Nunc and objkt.com like I did?
I also appropriated ideas while making Tezos NFTs that year. Here’s a quote from Man Ray’s “Self Portrait”.
“My mail, which I have just collected from the post office, lies on the table in front of me. On top of the little pile of letters is a book of poems by my not-so-old friend, Georges Hugnet. Its title is - 1961. Upside down as seen from my seat it still reads 1961. As Hugnet points out, it will not be possible to read a date upside down until 6009. However, we are concerned with the present, a form of eternity - at the moment, time seems to be marking time.”
Some limited editions of these and other works are still available as NFTs on objkt.com/@dblock.