HARM VAN DEN DORPEL: VENSTER
Part of a series of articles & interviews released digitally that were first published in the print edition of the Bright Moments Quarterly that was distributed at Bright Moments Paris in Paris, France in February, 2024.
Bright Moments: Thank you for joining us, Harm! Can you share your journey into digital art and creative coding, considering your background in both physical art and coding? What initially drew you to the medium of digital art?
Harm van den Dorpel: My journey began when I was around 12 years old. My father, who was engaged with the stock market, had brought a computer home, and that's where I first encountered programming. I remember exploring MS-DOS and stumbling upon a program called QBasic. It fascinated me how altering code could create or break a game like Snake. Without the internet, I turned to library books to learn more about QBasic.
Around the same time, I discovered MS Paint on Windows 3.11 which allowed me to create pixel paintings. Despite my growing interest in art, I was unsure if what I did was considered 'art' and didn’t think it to be a career path at the time.
In 1999, I pursued studies in Artificial Intelligence. I studied a lot of discrete mathematics and algebra, which I enjoyed, but I wanted to make images and found that they did not care for that there. This led me to art school, where I found that they didn’t care about algorithms. After graduating in 2006, I faced challenges when applying for funding and stipends. Back then there was no understanding of the work I was interested in doing, but I was stubborn and persisted anyway.
The turning point came when I encountered a scene loosely affiliated with an organization called Rhizome. This was before social media, so we had surfing clubs on WordPress blogs where we would post Photoshop collages, proto-memes or other digital images we created and others would respond to them. It was the first time I felt a sense of belonging to a community.
Through Rhizome, which is affiliated with the New Museum in New York, my work began to gain institutional recognition. When net artists like me were offered space in galleries or museums, our work evolved out of the browser to suit these new physical contexts, leading to what I guess was termed post-internet art. I felt somewhat at home yet not fully aligned with this context as there wasn’t much of a focus on programming and generative art, so I continued exploring.
In 2015, a friend introduced me to ascribe, which was a platform using the Bitcoin blockchain to store provenance. At the time I was working on a generative screensaver, and found the idea of selling it on-chain really fascinating. This proto-NFT was acquired by the Museum for Applied Arts in Vienna and this became the first museum purchase of art on-chain.
When this news was announced it created some buzz in the art world, so that was relatively successful. I then thought maybe this mechanism could also work for other digital artists. I then went on to co-found left gallery as an online marketplace for downloadable digital art. Selling digital art was challenging, as people felt more resistance buying them at the time.
My career continued with gallery shows and making digital creations using algorithms until 2021, when NFTs suddenly gained global interest. This period felt like a roller coaster; it was both validating and overwhelming, with all the hustling and scamming happening at the time.
It took me some time to find my voice again, and I think that happened with Mutant Garden Seeder, which was successful beyond my expectations. It brought together my interests in genetics and blockchain, as well as painting. It also brought forward an interesting aspect of digital art. In sculpture or painting it's very undesirable for the artwork to change. Digital media, on the other hand, has this unique characteristic of changing over time, which you encounter less in other more monumental media.
As a pioneer in the realm of using blockchain technology with art, how have you seen it evolve in the context of the art world?
There are two main aspects that fascinate me about using crypto and blockchain technology for art. The first is very basic, in that it provides a clear financial benefit for artists. Blockchain technology clarifies ownership issues for digital art, addressing a long-standing ambiguity in what collectors acquire when they purchase digital works. This is a remarkable advancement, applicable to various digital formats, be it a jpeg, video, or photo.
Secondly, my own practice revolves around exploring the unique possibilities inherent in the medium itself, to question and critique the internal logic of a certain technology. I'm intrigued by how blockchain can both capture the fluidity of digital art and simultaneously define its boundaries. The immutable nature of blockchain is a medium in its own right. It offers a way to create art that exists as long as the blockchain does. This concept is central to the project I'm proposing for this collaboration with Bright Moments in Paris, a fully on-chain artwork, where the art is generated by the smart contract itself.
Since we’re on the topic, I’m curious to learn more about your biggest influences and what shapes your artistic style.
I am mostly inspired by dead painters like Dieter Roth, Sigma Polke, and Hilma af Klint.
I’m also very inspired by music, in its structure and texture. The abstract nature of music and the strong, immediate responses it evokes in our brains fascinates me. For instance, a melody can move someone to tears, which is an immediate emotional experience. Visual art often involves a process of interpretation of an image and applying intellectual strategies, but I think you can find parallels in music.
My interest particularly lies in the realm of electronic and contemporary electroacoustic music, as well as the use of software synthesizers in music production. There’s a strong parallel between creating visual software to createmy art and the way musicians interact with synthesizers. When I work on coded projects, I often program custom environments with knobs and sliders to fine-tune their behavior, which is quite similar to how musicians use synthesizers, I think.
I have friends here in Berlin who organize music listening sessions, which I really enjoy. I’m drawn to intense, dark techno music and there’s also a lot of interesting ambient music played in queer spaces in the city. These environments resonate deeply with me, and I feel very much at home in them.
Could you share more about your upcoming project for Bright Moments Paris?
During the time I studied computer science, AI, and attended art school, I created abstract, simple generative animations. Initially, I was uncertain about their significance or validity, so I just kept them aside. After graduating and navigating through the post-internet era, I rediscovered them. One of them was exhibited at Upstream Gallery in Amsterdam. It was a square animation, displayed on a screen rotated by 45 degrees, creating a Mondrian-like shape.
In 2018, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam bought one of these pieces, titled Markov’s Window. As I’d never been sure about the validity of this work, this institutional recognition, which happened before the NFT boom, signaled to me that such work could have a context. I revisited the code, originally in Flash, and reprogrammed it using contemporary languages. This led to the new series Markov’s Dream, consisting of 32 hand-crafted, generative animations in TypeScript and WebGL. After this project, I looked at one of the simpler pieces and wondered if I could rewrite and program it entirely in Solidity. I found that it was possible to do, though this can be quite a challenging task, as Solidity is designed for bulletproof financial transactions, not aesthetic explorations.
So, for this drop with Bright Moments, I am presenting a rewrite of one of these early works of mine in Solidity. The aesthetics of this project are shaped by the limitations inherent in smart contract programming, which I find intriguing. Before I lived off the arts, I worked as a software developer. I was always fascinated by the deeper philosophy of software development – the concept of evolving a product or platform through iterative versions, each building upon the last.
I view my artistic practice in a similar light. It's a meandering, repetitive process where each attempt brings me closer to a vision. It's not just the artworks themselves that mutate and change over time; my entire artistic approach evolves through these iterations. In this way, I continuously strive to 'fail better' with each new project.
It appears that as an artist, you are deeply fascinated by systems – be it neural networks, computer systems, or blockchain technology. This interest seems to be a driving force in your work, where you deconstruct and experiment with these systems to create artistic expressions. Could you elaborate on this aspect of your work?
Yes, the concept of systems, particularly in technology, captivates me. One striking aspect of digital technology's evolution is its shift from permanence to transience. For example, consider the transition from typewriters to computers. With typewriters, mistakes were either covered with correction fluid or crossed out with 'X's. The advent of computers introduced the 'backspace' key, where errors could be instantly erased. This feature, while revolutionary, also introduced a dilemma – the impermanence of digital content.
This impermanence became glaringly apparent during the Trump administration. They easily removed all mentions of the climate crisis from the White House website. In the digital realm, things can be erased, effectively disappearing. This also made it difficult to establish a market value of digital content.
That's where my interest in blockchain comes in. Blockchain technology introduces a sense of immutability, countering the ephemeral nature of digital data. While it’s uncertain how long blockchain will last – similar to any economic or banking system – its ability to create a permanent, unchangeable record is fascinating to me. It's a new layer in the evolution of digital systems, offering a different approach to managing and valuing digital information.
From your perspective, what is the future of art in relation to blockchain technology?
I think it will gradually get more mass adoption, a bit like what has happened in the music world. In the past, music production required access to specific equipment and often an agent or record deal. Now, anyone can create and upload music to platforms like SoundCloud. However, this democratization also means a lot of music lacks quality due to the absence of a filtering system.
As blockchain technology becomes more accessible and understandable, I anticipate a similar trend: a surge in NFT creations, but not necessarily in quality. Here, the role of curators will become more crucial. While I don’t advocate for a closed system that limits access to artistic expression, navigating this space will become more challenging. Despite the initial promise of independence for artists, platforms might end up playing a role akin to traditional galleries, in order to direct the attention of a greater audience to an artist’s work.
What initially drew me to engage with the blockchain space was the concept of artist royalties – a significant advancement in the history of art. It allowed for a more equitable system where artworks could be sold at lower initial prices, benefiting buyers with limited funds and ensuring artists receive income through royalties. However, the crypto space's shift away from this model has been disheartening, and seems to have extracted some of the soul from the space.
Moreover, as an artist, I value the iterative approach to art – constantly maintaining and evolving a piece over time. The original model of blockchain and NFTs supported this through secondary sales, providing artists with a sustainable income and incentivizing them to keep their work alive. Unfortunately, this aspect has diminished, shifting the focus more towards producing new work rather than maintaining existing creations. The battle for retaining artist royalties in the crypto space seems to be lost, and this shift profoundly affects both the motivation and the sustainability for artists in this domain.
Earlier in our conversation, you mentioned feeling a bit lost during the NFT boom but eventually found your footing. How does this tie into your views on the current state of blockchain and art?
I consider it a tremendous privilege to now be able to live off my art. This hasn’t always been the case for me, and now I'm fortunate to earn a living from it.
I will always create art, regardless of the external circumstances. When I wasn’t making money, I was making art. Now that I can make a living off of it, I make art. And now that royalties have disappeared, I will continue making art. It doesn’t really matter. My drive to make art stems from a somewhat romantic notion of vocation and purpose. While having an audience is gratifying, it's not the primary factor in my creative process. There’s simply a deep, internal urge to produce these works, irrespective of the changing dynamics in the art and blockchain world.
For me, the act of creating art is primarily a means to understand the world better. That's my fundamental reason for making art. While I primarily create for myself, I do hope that my work positively influences others.
