Who are you?
Hello, I am greweb, I’m a software engineer at Ledger and enthusiast of math, programming and creative coding. I enjoy designing generative art systems from all the technical constraints to the artistic decisions.
When did you start making art?
I’ve always been creating different forms of art as a hobby. As a teenager, I enjoyed playing with soft pastels in some local art clubs. Computers were something that always fascinated me. I messed up a lot with some audio software and Blender back in ~2000. I had a master degree in computer science but always kept my foot in the creative side of things. I enjoyed participating in game jams and some demoscene events. Now I’m mainly focusing my work on shaders and plotting, but it’s a continuation of everything I did in a way.
What do you love about art?
I love experimenting with all the possibilities of art and technology. We’re a few artists diving into the possibilities of hybrid art bridging between digital and physical worlds. This is a fascinating topic.
I love the aha moments and emotions you can have when you discover something new emerging out of nowhere, notably with generative code. But making something physical increases that emotion.
On your Twitter you say you casually tweet about gardening and french food. I’d love to learn more! Maybe even you could recommend some dishes?
Aha! Well, I love simple food. The one you grow from scratch, from the seed of your tomatoes you recovered the previous year up it comes in your plate. When you think about it gardening is a form of generative art! It’s very challenging, a lot of failures and retries, you learn every year.
This summer, we eat tomatoes every day – love them with basil and mozzarella, or stuffed with meat and rice.
I became a bit lazy lately but I used to make my own bread from home sourdough, it’s such a fascinating topic and I love to also see that each bread is a variation of a simple recipe. The chaos in nature is inspiring for a generative artist!
When did you start making generative art?
In a way, I’ve always been. But learning coding unlocked many ideas.
I pushed my limits quite far on some games I developed – I always considered my games from a generative mindset and it’s where I learned the most. You can notably see https://greweb.me/2014/09/ibex and https://greweb.itch.io/memocart are two games I am the most proud in term of how they work technically speaking – fully generative, no images or assets used.
Why did you start making NFTs?
I learned about NFT with crypto kitties and crypto zombies around 2018. But I really started making my own NFT back in March 2021. Initially without the goal to go anywhere, I was also playing with different blockchains. I was among the first artists to push work on Hic et Nunc.
Out of all your works are there any that stand out?
If we are talking about popular work that I did, I believe some of my shaders has been appreciated (like “Mandelglitch” or Crypto Aliens (https://greweb.me/2021/04/cryptoaliens)).
But as of now, I’m much more focused on that “Plottable NFT” paradigm and all the collections I pushed on fxhash ( https://www.fxhash.xyz/u/greweb ). I’m proud of them all as each generator tried to explore something unique. I have a lot of ambition for my future series of “Plottable Era”.
What advice would you give to somebody having a bad day?
It’s ok. Give yourself time to learn and develop yourself. Don’t rush things. We are all learners.
What can we look forward to in the future from you?
Definitely more plottable work. I am considering making more of these fractionated plots in future ( https://greweb.me/plots/594 ) because I love the way fragmented art create a connection between collectors.
I may come back to do some 3D raymarching shaders. …and I just started experimenting with a 3D printer recently 😉
Any artists we should keep an eye out for?
I’m going to forget a lot of people, so I will recommend to look at artists producing work under the #plottertwitter hashtag. Incredible community.
Anything else?
Thanks a lot for interviewing me 🙂 You can find my work at https://greweb.me , I also publish source code.