Who are you?
My name is Aleksandra Jovanić and I “live and work“ in Belgrade, Serbia. I got degrees in two distinct fields, so I usually go by artist and programmer. I am an assistant professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts, and I teach Technology of New Media at the Department of New Media, Interactive Media at Interdisciplinary Ph.D. studies in Digital Art, 3D modeling at Game art and design MA program.
When did you start making art?
I’ve started exhibiting 20 years ago, but I’ve been making some kind of art or things as long as I’ve know. Although I had some noted achievements in art during school, I decided to study computer science. By the end of my studies, I started slowly introducing back art and design to my everyday practice. At first, through web design, then illustration and graphic design, until some interesting life situations led me to postgrad studies in Digital Arts. And now I teach at this program.
How did you hear about FxHash?
I simply spend too much time on Twitter. But, I have to admit @sableRaph made a crucial nudge when he invited me to the creative coding meet-up he is hosting, to explore FxHash more and to try to make something together. So one thing led to another, plus there was a huge hype around FxHash, I just had to try it. I love the possibility of multiple 1/1 outputs.
You have a very distinct style and color choice. What inspired this?
I’ve always liked using all colors, muted and pastel mostly, but I’m also not afraid of dark and saturated for contrast. It all depends on the shapes and composition of the piece. I’m mostly influenced by simplified flat design, 60s graphic design but also generative art, op-art, minimalism art (from the same period), and also geometry, math visualizations, cartography and maps, vintage books with intricate schematics and graphs.
Your genesis piece was “Reflection of stripes 001”. How did this piece come to be?
The whole last year I’ve been trying to do daily coding. I managed to do some long streaks. Now I’m on the longest so far, 90 days. When I do those, I start with something really simple, and every day add something new through code. Before Reflections I was developing Portals, and through portals, you can see the sky changing colors depending on the time of the day in your time zone. For that, I coded a 2d gradient – on x-axes colors correspond to the time of the day, and on y I chose 3 colors for vertical gradient. It worked so well I continued exploring this part of the code more. So whenever I choose 4 random colors from this huge sky gradient I got nice new gradients. I colored the grid, moved dots on the grid with noise, then rounded corners of squares, aligned squircles in the grid… so eventually I got to overlap them, and reflections, refractions, and diffractions were born.
“Reflection of Stripes 001 #66” by Aleksandra (Click Image To Enable Motion)
Colorfalls was the first piece of yours I saw. What ideas or emotions did you hope to convey with this work?
I often, or almost always, do representational generative art, so plants are a recurring theme for me. I did Ferns series, Physalis and Phragmites on HEN. These slow, infinite and never repeating movements convey calmness, serene spaces, and dreamlike narratives. From time to time people write to me that these are exactly emotions my pieces invoke in them.
“Colorfalls #42” by Aleksandra
Mid century modern has been one of your most successful works on FxHash so far. Unlike most of your other works it is very bold, still, and they all follow a similar color palette. How did this work come to be?
Surprisingly or not, it is also my most successful image on Instagram (according to likes). I started this theme with just vertically repeated S curves, black on white. At one point I’ve connected lines into something that looked like rubber bands, red rubber bands… and that’s how I got to this color palette. Further explorations of possibilities led me to rotate colors more, and I got a lot of different outputs with just 3 colors. Eventually, it all, both colors and shapes, looked so mid-century modern.
How have you felt about the reception your art has received on FxHash so far?
I’m still overwhelmed with the reception of my NFTs on all platforms. FxHash features this gambling moment in the minting phase – what will collectors get, how will my collection eventually look like, is everything going to look and work as expected. Some pieces get more attention than others, and I usually can’t explain why. My favourite SKELETON LEAVES got the least attention.
“SKELETON LEAVES #18” by Aleksandra
Do you have any life lessons you’d like to share?
Don’t mint as soon as you finish the piece, maybe tomorrow you’ll get an idea for how you can make it even better. Happens to me all the time. Not just for minting, for everything. In Serbian, there is a proverb: Strpljen spašen. [Saved by patience.]
What do you have planned for 2022?
I’d like to get more time to make physical pieces, continue exploring mixing media – usually traditional techniques in combination with generative art. Hopefully, I’ll also start incorporating more of my previous explorations in the area of game art.
Is there anyone you’d want to shout out?
Vukašin Stančević, Lomz. We live in the same city, and I’ve known his work for years through exhibitions, and often showed them to my students. This year he was a guest artist at one of my lectures, and it was very exciting to find out more about his processes and motivation. His recent piece Kolorfon on FxHash actually exists as a physical installation: https://lomz.net/kolorfon.html
Anything else?
Thank you for inviting me for this interview. I liked going back through the timeline to reverse engineer how I came to the final pieces.