FERMENTED FRUIT

A Generative Art Project by cyberia

The time is right to mix sentences
sentences with dirt and the sun
with punctuation and the rain with
verbs, and for worms to pass
through question marks, and the
stars to shine down on budding
nouns, and the dew to form on
paragraphs.

Richard Brautigan

Fermented Fruit on Art Blocks ↗  View on Archipelago ↗

Fermented Fruit is a generative art series designed to live on the Ethereum blockchain and to be rendered in real-time by the browser [1]. Just as food is transformed by microorganisms during the process of fermentation, the substrate of the HTML canvas is broken up into parts and transformed by cellular patterns. The project features the simulated lifeforms of cellular automata that evolve and shapeshift down an asymmetrical grid. The final artwork juxtaposes a number of textured cellular automata patterns against one another within a singular composition.

The title Fermented Fruit emerges from the cellular patterns that are the primary subject of the series. The patterns produced by growing cellular automata of simulated microbes or mold evoke the process of fermentation. The Noma Guide to Fermentation says:

There are thousands of products of fermentation … unified by the same basic process. Microbes - bacteria, molds, yeasts, or a combination thereof - break down or convert the molecules in food, producing new flavors as a result. [2]

This generative art series was made with code using the p5.js JavaScript library created by Lauren Lee McCarthy. As the generator changes each independent token seed from a hexadecimal string to a unique artwork, the artist proposes that we think of each output as its own fermented fruit.

MARGINS

The artist has chosen a more traditional image format instead of the square format favored by social media. Canvas outer margins can be normal, thick or non-existent depending on the mint. Normal outer margins with space between rows and columns is most common. Remaining mints will have no inner margins between grid modules.

CELLULAR AUTOMATA ORIGINS

The artist’s decision to use cellular automata is inspired by the constraints of the Ethereum blockchain. Because of the cost and permanency of uploading code to the blockchain, there is a need for brevity within the source code. The artist chose cellular automata for its ability to render distinct and regulated patterns from basic rulesets. CA is the core algorithm behind this generative series, and we should acknowledge its long history in computer graphics before returning to describe its implementation.

The origins of cellular automata are credited to contemporaries John von Neumann and Stanisław Ulam, two researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in the 1940s. A major source of interest in CA, however, came in the late 1960s with John Conway’s Game of Life. This popular example of cellular automata involves a two-dimensional grid with states that evolve based on an initial configuration. Since its discovery, the Game of Life has been re-implemented in countless programming languages and studied for its ability to recreate life-like patterns from a simple ruleset. [4]

Fermented Fruit uses a different elementary cellular automata developed by computer scientist Stephen Wolfram in 1983 for his systematic study A New Kind of Science. As part of his research Wolfram standardized every kind of elementary cellular automata into a set of 256 possible arrangements [5]. A subset of these elementary CAs, inform the building blocks of this series.

CELLULAR AUTOMATA IMPLEMENTATION

Now for a step-by-step breakdown of how the CA algorithm works. Imagine a single row of square cells on graph paper. Each cell in the row can be on/off or black/white, and as the program runs it compares each cell to its adjacent neighbors and returns a single on/off result based on a given ruleset. Once it has completed a row of cells it moves one grid unit down and repeats the process. Whereas most outputs in the series will begin with a fixed row of cells with only the middle cell turned on, others will begin with a random initial state of cells.

ANIMATION

By comparing the rows of cells to a given ruleset a history of generations emerges vertically as a visible pattern. In other words, each pattern shows the history of its own generation. Forms dance on a grid of colored planes, this creates the animation of the artwork when it renders. Each CA pattern is drawn row by row until it runs out of space. In the final artwork the multiple cellular automata patterns run sequentially.

TEXTURE

Each grid panel is speckled with thousands of points to soften any hard edges. Then the cells are similarly textured with hundreds of tiny points and oriented horizontally or vertically in relation to their neighbors. These fine textures give the artwork tonality. A final subtle layer of multicolor grain across the canvas gives the artwork additional texture.

COLORS

The artist has chosen a fruit themed naming convention for the color schemes. There are nine color schemes across the series, each ranging in probability of occurrence. The most common color scheme is apple and the least common is lemon. Colors can generally be grouped between faded and bright schemes. Faded schemes include pear, currants and gooseberry. Bright schemes include apricot, blackberry, lemon, apple, mango and plum. Faded schemes are more aged with warmer colors whereas brighter RGB schemes use cooler but more vivid colors.

VARIATIONS

Cellular automata were chosen for their ability to create complex structures from a simple set of rules. Taken together Fermented Fruit combines grid subdivisions, one dimensional cellular automata, and quasirandom distribution of textures.

BIO

cyberia is a generative artist exploring form through code. For the past two years he has committed to an iterative practice of daily code sketching in Processing and p5.js. His digital artwork, Sticker Pack, was featured on 85 billboards in Tokyo, Japan through Neo Shibuya TV. In 2022 he was selected to be Featured Artist for the Emerging Digital Artists Award in Canada. In the past, he has collaborated on art projects at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit, and at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. He is based in San Francisco, California.

THANKS

Thanks to Sarah Rossien, Jeff Davis, Erick Calderon, Sofia Garcia, Carolina de Bartolo and the entire Art Blocks team for considering my application. Thanks to Juan Rodríguez García @juanrg92, Jeff @ippsketch, R., M., M., A. and A. for their feedback during the creation of the series. Thanks to Lauren Lee McCarthy and the extended Processing community for creating p5.js and for cultivating a spirit of inclusivity and access with code. Thanks to #genartclub for the community and support.