THOMAS NOYA: DESDE LEJOS
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 Buenos Aires in Buenos Aires, Argentina in November, 2023.
Bright Moments: Thank you for taking the time to do this interview, Thomas! To begin, how did you get started in generative art?
Thomas Noya: Ever since I was a kid, I was into making digital art with computers. I went from using software made for kids, like Kid Pix which was a bitmap drawing program, to learning Photoshop later in my teens and Final Cut Pro to edit videos. I went on to study Digital Arts Computing at Goldsmiths University in London. That degree was my introduction to coding, and the academic side of digital arts.
One of the courses in my second semester was called “Generative Drawing.” Even though some of the terms in that course were familiar to me, I didn't know a field called “generative art” existed. That course was a window to the beginnings of generative art; we learned about artists like Vera Molnar and Ken Perlin, and explored many of the basic algorithms we still build off of today. In fact, for my Buenos Aires Collection project, I am using a flocking algorithm which I was first introduced to in that course. That was one of my favorite classes in the entire duration of my bachelor's degree. Ever since then, I’ve been completely in love with generative art.
So your interest in creative expression through digital art began quite early on! What do you find compelling about this medium?
I must have been around six years old when I started using computers to make art. I took painting lessons early on in my childhood as well, but, I don't know… There was something about having the option to go back in time with computer art that made it more attractive to me than traditional art. When you draw with a pencil, you can erase the drawing, but having the “undo” function in the computer—having the pixels always be like wet paint that you can keep manipulating—was very appealing to me. Until you print it, the canvas can be in constant flux; you can always modify it. There is the possibility for constant evolution. There is something magical about having the option to modify a piece and also return to a previous version. It’s very unique to the process of digital art.
In your body of work, abstract expressionism appears to be a style you’re inclined towards. Can you tell us more about your use of the abstract and what draws you to it?
Yes, absolutely. All my work is very abstract to a degree. I don't think I've ever done anything very figurative or realistic in that sense. I think it's just the way I choose to make art, in that I'm trying to translate how I perceive or feel about something into images. For instance, if I see a cube, I don’t draw a cube. I want to try to add the filter of my being or my mind to it. You want to change the way we perceive a thing, but retain certain elements such that you can still trace back to the original subject. Abstraction has become part of me and how I see things in an artistic way.
There is an element that I often include in my work, which is the way the images are dithered or distorted. It's something I have been working on for the past two years. I’ve been developing versions of it and learning more about those processes. It’s a very nostalgic element as it revisits how I remember computer graphics on the computers I had access to in the 90s – like the classic Macintosh II, and then the 8500. It kind of just stuck with me as something familiar that I've always tried to incorporate into my style.
What are you working on for Bright Moments in Buenos Aires?
The title I have in mind for this project is Desde Lejos, which translates to “From Afar.” It's about how we perceive places at a distance—not just physical distance, but emotional and temporal as well. For example, I've never set foot in Argentina or Patagonia. However, when I saw the Perito Moreno glacier in a presentation for Bright Moments Argentina, I was captivated and developed all these impressions of it. It made me think about how our perception of far away places can be shaped through other people’s recollections via images or stories. This also applies to the way we perceive places from our past, places in moments that are long gone. We might choose to remember them in very specific ways, even if they don't represent how they actually were. So I see this work as a sort of meditation for moments that I cherish.
For this project, I wanted to create something with boids, which is a flocking algorithm first developed by Craig Reynolds in the ‘80s that mimics the behavior of birds. It's a particle system that has a certain set of rules which make the points on the canvas move and react to each other in a certain way. I've been working with this algorithm on and off for the past two or three years, and have only used versions of it for two other generative series. The algorithm is very flexible, and I'm so in love with it. In generative art, there's always this collaboration between the artist and the algorithm. The artist might have an initial idea, and the algorithm may present different avenues to explore that initial idea. The extra agency within these very basic artificial intelligence makes for what I believe are very organic-looking final pieces of art. At least, that's how I see it..
What are the main inspirations behind your work for this collection?
I’ve drawn a lot of my inspiration from painters Armando Reverón and Clyfford Still. Reverón was one of Venezuela's first modernist painters. He has a very famous series of landscape paintings and is renowned for working with a limited range of colors. I'm not trying to mimic his technique, but when I was revisiting his works, I was inspired to make something to do with landscapes and scenery.
I spent half my life in Venezuela, but now I'm so far away, both in geographical and temporal terms. I want to pay homage to that. Reverón is my main artistic reference that sparked the idea. Even though the final pieces might not have a direct link at first sight, that was the initial idea.
The subject I'm trying to represent is the natural landscape of the area where I spent half my life—a rural town called Montalbán in Venezuela, three hours away from Caracas. There we had the mountains, we had the valleys, and we were on a farm, so there was no noise contamination, no visual contamination. It was very peaceful, very quiet and we were completely surrounded by nature. The array of colors and light you get on a daily basis is something that I really miss, and it's something that I'm trying to represent with my computer art.
Some of your work evokes or seems to be influenced by a sense of nostalgia. Can you tell us more about how this theme influences your work?
A lot of my work has this connecting line in terms of theme, which is nostalgia as a driving force for creativity. I'm not sure if the fact that I use nostalgia in this way arises because I was just born like that, or if it's more prevalent, not just creatively, but just as an overall feeling in immigrants. I'm sure there are some studies on it. In the work of Svetlana Boym, she describes two types of nostalgia: restorative and reflective. I like to think that reflective nostalgia is the one I'm using because you contemplate the past, you take from it, and you move on. Restorative nostalgia is what drives a lot of the nasty things in the world that we're living in right now. With it, you're trying to build back something that doesn't exist anymore, and it's a completely distorted view of the past. When I'm working with nostalgia, I'm using it as a force of positive creativity. I'm not trying to go back in time because I feel like I don't belong here anymore. It's more that I really like something about the past; it may not be social or political, it could just be the aesthetic of it. It's just what drives most of my creativity. Sometimes when I'm working on things I write little sentences or words. For this project, some of the ones I have written down are “chasing the past,” “irreversibility of time,” “looking for a time when things were simpler and less complex.”
In terms of this particular work, Desde Lejos, I like to see it as a reflection of remnants of moments that are now part of my distant past. It's a series of digital paintings that show representations of my cherished memories in the form of fragmented generative sceneries. Like I was saying before, it's about the perception of places viewed from a distance, not just geographical distance but also temporal.
What makes a Bright Moments event unique is the live minting aspect. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on it, and what you hope to experience.
Releasing work online has been cool, and it's made for so many new possibilities commercially and artistically, but it always felt a bit impersonal. Maybe music artists feel the same way if they only release music to be streamed or bought, but never tour.
I saw Bright Moments as this beautiful thing—you have these events full of incredible people, but you also have this magical experience where you can be there when artwork generates live. Buenos Aires will be my first experience with live minting for a Bright Moments City collection. We have a beautiful location which is the Palacio Guerrico, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how my digital pieces look on the screens against those beautiful, super ornamented walls from more than 100 years ago.
I'm also really looking forward to minting the work of the other artists and meeting everyone. I'm really happy to meet more generative artists who are from South America or from Hispanic-related backgrounds. I’m excited to be live minting their pieces, and witnessing their emotional reactions with their faces hopefully lit up with joy. Hearing what their work means to them firsthand is something I’m really looking forward to.
In terms of me, I'm definitely going to be very nervous until the entire collection is revealed because even though you've seen it a million times, up until it's generated, it's not final. But I'm looking forward to being there, sharing that experience with everyone, and having a great three days.
Finally, what does it mean for you to be showcasing your work in Argentina?
It's the first time I'm going to be in South America since I left in 2015. So it's been 8 years. I also have family in Argentina. My mom is going from Caracas to Buenos Aires, and I haven't seen her in person since 2019. So, for personal reasons it’s going to be very nice to go for this particular event. Also, having my work being part of a group show, in such a major city, such a major hub for the arts within Latin America, is so emotional and exciting. One more thing is that I've been part of five group shows so far, including the ones that were not crypto-related, but I've never been able to attend any of them because they've always been in countries I wasn’t residing in. So this is the first one where I'm actually going to be present and that's very special.
