BOSQUE DE CHAPULTEPEC BY DCA
This was part of an ongoing series of articles that was released digitally in November 2022. They were first published in the print edition of the Bright Moments Quarterly that was distributed at NFT ART CDMX in Mexico City.
Malte Rauch: Hi Dan, thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview! You are an artist and you also teach art at the University of Houston. How did you find your passion for art?
DCA: One of the crucial factors was certainly that my grandparents in Mexico were painters. Growing up, I saw their paintings and was surrounded by their art. But I never studied art in school. On my own, I did things like drawing, painting, and even clay animation with Super 8 film, but these things were just curiosities for me.
When I went to College, I earned a degree in Economics. But I really wasn’t satisfied since I had more of a creative side that wasn’t getting expressed. So I went back to school and studied sculpture. First, I got a BA in sculpture from the University of Houston and then I returned for my MFA degree. This led me to become involved with teaching. I really love transmitting knowledge. Now, I teach courses on digital art at the University of Houston and that is really an ideal situation for me.
Apart from your work as a creative coder, you also work in sculpture. How do you experience this contrast between the digital and the physical in your practice?
Yes, I've mostly been working on sculpture. I use plaster, wood, stone, and a lot of other things in my work. As a sculptor, I tend to have a lot of different ideas. As a student, I was interested in how abstract and arbitrary language is, and I try to connect this interest to the formal vocabulary of my sculptures.
Working in the digital realm is very different from working as a sculptor. You have to touch and work with the materials, and you have to understand what they can and can't do. The way time works is also very different. On a computer, you can quickly change between any color in the world. As a sculptor, you might have to work for hours to change the tiniest thing.
I got into 3D modeling and digital fabrication at some point. The work is done on a computer, but it uses the same design language as traditional sculpture. Switching between the digital and the physical requires finding a balance. Learning to sculpt digitally has helped me understand real sculpture more deeply. Computers reveal, if you will, easier and more algorithmic ways to get to a goal. I find it interesting that the physical doesn't help me understand the digital in the same way. But over the past two years, more and more of my work has been focused on creative coding and generative art.
That’s fascinating. How did you first get into crypto and what led you to explore on-chain generative art?
In 2017, I started using crypto. My brother Erick (Snowfro) told me about Bitcoin and a lot of other projects that use blockchain. He knew a lot and was excited about the new things that were happening. So, we started to explore the space together. For Erick, CryptoPunks was more of a spark. The project changed the way he saw what blockchain technology could do. For me, it was the CryptoKitties project and, more specifically, the idea that hash strings could represent totally different visual entities. That totally blew my mind and made me realize how much this new technology could do.
At first, I was just messing around and getting a feel for the art. Over time, I learned how to make compositions that change over time. Erick had the idea to use "Genesis" as the test project while he was making Art Blocks. And I liked that idea a lot. You know, I have a strong connection to that time at Art Blocks, which was important for the space as a whole and for me personally. Now, I think of myself as a generative artist who works full time. All I do is, essentially, code-based work.
Let’s talk about your “Genesis” trilogy on Art Blocks, which really stands out through its aesthetic diversity. The first and second project explore very different compositional techniques, and the third series is – as far as I know – the first conceptual on-chain generative artwork. How did you conceive this trilogy and what did you want to achieve with it?
My idea with the Genesis trilogy was to open up the field and to really push my own boundaries with generative art. You know, art that presents a challenge to the viewer is something that fascinates me a lot, and this is partly due to my early interest in language.
The third, conceptual project was a challenge for myself and the community at the time. Crypto art and generative art in particular had something of an anti-conceptual, even anti-intellectual vibe about it. This is what this third series revealed to me. The work was meant to be a sort of time capsule that captured the terminology of the space about a year ago. It really pushed my own limits and the conversations that were going on in the space.
How do you approach creative coding as a teacher? And do you have the feeling that the perception of generative art has changed over the last two years?
Since art is their main subject, my students are naturally interested in the digital art they see on social media. But some universities are actually quite behind when it comes to offering digital art courses. So, I have to figure out how to teach creative coding to art students who don't do much with technology. Still, once the students get past the learning curve, they are very receptive to the medium.
You know, I teach an introductory course on creative coding, and it took me a while to figure out how to make sure that by the end of the semester, students knew the basics. Teaching is pretty cool because it helps you boil down your knowledge and go over ideas again in your own mind.
P5.js has made everything so much easier when it comes to tools. Before that, I taught Processing, which was much harder for students to grasp. Now, you can find all of the tools online. We can work in the p5 web editor right away. This has made everything easier and even fun to learn.
I teach at a university, but I've also led workshops for kids in elementary and middle school. I teach classes for free to kids in a poor neighborhood, and that has been a very rewarding experience.
Last week, MoMA made headlines with the announcement that it plans to acquire digital art in the future. As a generative artist and teacher, you are in a great position to view this development. Where do you see the place of digital art in our future canon?
The MoMA's announcement was a big deal, and I hope they will start acquiring things soon. This is important not only for generative art, but also for the wider institutional recognition of NFTs.
But I think art students, not museums or universities, will drive the change toward more digital art in the future. Students will ask for this change, and they are already doing so. NFTs are made to spread through social media and other online channels. And I'm sure that this is one of the main reasons why art students in college are becoming more interested in digital media and creative software. So, I think that a large part of the push for NFTs to become part of the art canon will come from academia.
Your installation at Prim will contain strong references to Mexico City. Currently you are still finalizing the exhibition design, but the space will be conceived like a picnic scene in a park. And minters are invited to try a local pastry. How would you describe your personal relationship to Mexico City?
I can't wait for NFT ART CDMX. The fact that it's such a big event makes it a little scary, too. Most of the time, though, I'm just very excited. Mexico City is where I was born. It's where a lot of people in my family still live. And there, my grandfather exhibited his art, which is very important to me.
In 2005, I spent a short amount of time in Mexico City. During that time, I had a feeling of belonging that is not present in Texas where I live now. I felt something there that I can’t seem to find here. The cultural awareness and colorfulness of the city are things we don't have enough of in the United States. When in Mexico, I feel deeply connected to all of these things. In my project for NFT ART CDMX, I want to show how beautiful Mexico City is and share the associations I have with it.
To make the work, I close my eyes and picture myself in a place I love, which is Bosque de Chapultepec, the central park in Mexico City. This name literally means "the forest of Chapultepec," and with my work I really want to lean into the idea of the forest. In fact, the way the piece is put together—with a circle-packing algorithm—reminds me of my grandfather's compositions, which are also very visually dense. It’s also a nice new challenge to develop a system that is partly representational.
Does the fact that this project will be minted and exhibited IRL change the way you approach the work with the code?
I basically want to make a cultural event that has the colors, textures, tastes, and sounds of Mexico. This was partly inspired by Jake Rockland's "Patchwork Saguaros" edition on Art Blocks, which taught me about the Saguaro cactus, which only grows in a certain part of the country. I really liked the idea that someone's art could teach me something new. In the same way, I want to let people know about the park I mentioned and how special it is. The space for the exhibition should make people feel something.
We are currently iterating the setup, but I want it to be very ambient and immersive. The visitors will receive a specific pastry that is beloved in our family. And there is a beautiful coincidence here insofar as this specific type of pastry is covered with tiny little sprinkles that echoes the aesthetics of the circle packing algorithm to a certain extent.
The Bright Moments IRL event makes this possible. For me, this is the opportunity to create a new dimension of generative art that is in line with my interest in pushing the boundaries of the field.
The last two years have been an incredible period for generative art. Where do you see the space headed in the future and what would you like to pursue personally?
I see two main developments. First, I think that things are changing in the artist's studio. Before NFTs, artists like me had to have a lot of space. Things were a mess, and I needed a lot of space for materials and ongoing sculptural projects. Now, I only use my laptop to work. Most of the time, my clothes are clean. Even though this is just my situation, I am sure that studios will change as digital art becomes more popular. And this will also have an effect on art galleries. I think that when we are working as independent artists, we will have 3D printers and other tools to help us make things on the fly. Maybe artists' studios will become a new kind of gallery where collectors can go to see new algorithmic works and choose one to have produced on demand by a machine.
Second, I think I'll move into a place where I can tell stories in the future. I want to use generative art to tell stories and include characters in my work. And this ties in with something else I'm interested in, which also seems to be a trend. I've been leaning toward figurative art: how can I use figures in generative art? I want to make something that looks like a person but is also based on math and can change: a human shape that we can relate to but is still on a different scale. These options ignite the imagination, and I think there will be more of that.
As someone who is so curious about new technical possibilities for art, I would like to ask you finally what you think of the new AI image tools?
That's a very interesting turn of events. I've been messing around with MidJourney for a while. And I think these new software solutions are mostly tools for coming up with ideas. It gives you new ideas and accelerates the imagination. So, I think that in many fields, these tools will be the first thing people use when they want to start a creative project.
When power tools were invented in the early 1900s, it opened up a whole new style that led to mid-century aesthetics. In the same way, I think that text-to-image generators are the new power tools for artists and other creative people. You can see how ideas that didn't exist before look. I spent hours with these tools not too long ago. And when I went outside after that, the world seemed very dull. We can make our surroundings much more visually exciting and AI image tools reveal that. These tools will not put designers and creators out of work. On the contrary, they are the ones who will benefit most from them.
