Who are you?
Camille Roux. I’m a generative artist and creative coder living in the south of France.
What does it mean to be a “creative coder”?
As a developer, whether at school or in my various jobs, I had mainly written code to build websites, design databases, ect…
For me, being a “creative coder” means using code to create beautiful/interesting/artistic things. Code is a powerful tool to do that!
When did you first get into generative art?
First of all, I think I discovered generative music. I loved playing with synthesizers, modular synths then live coding music tools like Tidal Cycles or SonicPi.
I discovered generative art at the end of the 2021 summer. I started learning p5.js, following a lot of artists on Instagram and Twitter and experimenting a lot.
How did you hear about FxHash?
Creating NFTs was not my goal at the beginning. I was primarily focused on generative art. But after seeing a lot of Hic et Nunc and Foundation links on the profiles of the generative artists I followed on Instagram I decided to have a look at it.
First, I dropped some perfect loops on Hic et Nunc (now Teia) : https://teia.art/camilleroux
and then, some collectors started to regularly suggest that I try fxhash. So I dropped my first project on fxhash, “SEA”.
SEA was your genesis work. How did this work come to exist?
I love to play with Maths. At that time, I was playing a lot with waves, periodic functions, noise… The combination of all of that created SEA.
SEA is the project #85 of fxhash! And the first on my fxhash profile.
I’m a very pragmatic artist. You can see that this work is quite simple. That’s because I wanted to learn, test fxhash… You’ll see that complexity/organic aspect gradually increases from project to project.
RIVER feels like a blend between “City” and “SEA”. Do you consider these pieces connected?
Yes they are. For example, I used a simplified version of the code of SEA to create the water effect of RIVER.
What inspired your signature colorway choice?
As I said, I’m pragmatic… a lot. When I created my first animation for HEN (https://teia.art/objkt/457191), I looked at trending palettes on multiple websites and selected that one.
At my second drop, I tried to find another one, but I always found my previous one better, so I kept it. Same thing on the next drops… That’s how I started to use the same palette.
Not a nice story behind it… it’s just a trending palette colors on Coolors 🙂
FLOWER was the start of your more abstract and geometric mints on FxHash. What was your goal for this work?
FLOWER was an opportunity to play again with techniques I used on SEA but in a more complex and geometric way.
Tell us more about your ROTATING SYSTEM series.
It was a new way to play with animations. A lot of collectors liked the Swiss watch aspect.
MURMURATIONS is a lovely piece that saw great love on the primary and secondary market. What were some challenges you encountered while making this piece.
Thank you! MURMURATIONS is one of my first steps in my goal to create pieces with a lot of details and complexity, as beautiful from near as from far, nice to print…
MURMURATIONS is mainly based on a technique called domain warping. It was mathematically more complex than the previous projects and it was very fun to do. I used a lot of mathematical functions to modify the coordinates of a grid of hundreds of thousands of points. It created a lot of entropy/variations.
I loved working on it so much that I later dropped CIRCULAR MURMURATIONS, same concept but different shape, formulas, features…
BRIDGE was an amazing collaboration that included dozens of FxHash artists. How did you first come up with this idea?
I planned to do a lot of collab this year with fxhash artists I like, but it takes too much time (or maybe I like too much artists 🤣). So one day, I woke up with this idea in mind: “Hey! What if I make a collaboration with all the artists I like at once!”. This is how the BRIDGE project was born.
Moreover, I love the mutual aid and solidarity between fxhash generative artists. The BRIDGE can be seen as a symbol of the link between us ♥️
How do you feel the BRIDGE project turned out?
It was an amazing experience and it’s for now the biggest collaboration of fxhash with 25 artists included! I met a lot of artists thanks to this project and I’m really happy with what we did. I’m really impressed by the contributions of the artists. So much creativity!
Were any of the artists submissions particularly surprising to you?
I didn’t expect so many contributors and so much overall quality. I’m very proud of the diversity. On one hand, some artists learnt how to use git or p5 to participate and did amazing things, on the other hand experienced artists created masterpieces with complex code and an undeniable sense of aesthetics.
ARTERIA is your latest generative work and features beautiful autonomous agents. How much control do you have over what they generate? Do you enjoy being surprised or a finely tuned set of rules?
Indeed, ARTERIA is my last drop on fxhash. The concept is using autonomous agents following quite simple rules. Each output is the result of a cascade of unpredictable events. A small change of an initial parameter can result in totally different outputs.
So the control is light, that’s why you can see so different results. I invite you to browse the project and see for yourself. My goal was to start with chaos then control it enough to create meaning and emotion.
Did you learn anything about yourself while making Arteria?
I’ve learnt a lot on ARTERIA. I know more and more what I like: variety and entropy, particles, local rules…
I also loved once again, sharing all the process on Twitter.
What do you have planned for the future?
My plan is to continue to explore complexity, how to produce more organic feeling, balance with pragmatism…
I’ll continue to share a lot on Twitter (@camillerouxart). I live-tweet all my project creations. I love to get feedback from my community.
Where do you see generative art in the next 5 years?
It’s so hard to answer that. Everything went very fast, but a little more than 6 months ago, I didn’t even know what generative art, NFT… was. I’m almost full time on generative art now.
I want to continue to explore what I like to do, learn, meet amazing people, share…
I love improvisation, so maybe the best plan I can have for the next 5 years is not to have one.
Is there anyone you want to shoutout?
I’d like to shoutout to @ciphrd. He contributed a lot, with fxhash, to make generative art more accessible and open. Fxhash is a huge playground for artists like me!
Anything else?
Thank you very much for reading this interview. Feel free to follow me or send a DM on Twitter if you have some questions: @camillerouxart
I just published a blog post about the making of ARTERIA if you want to know more about that project: https://immutablecollective.art/writing/arteria-making-of/