This article is part of the #30NFTArtists30days challenge, where I write a daily newsletter edition about a different NFT creator during March 2022. Consider getting a premium subscription to support my writing journey ✌️
I remember minting a few projects during the first month of the FxHash platform in 2021. Among them were the first generative collections from Camille Roux. Thanks to his trademark red, yellow, white, and green palette, his work caught the attention of many collectors and helped him stand out to become one of the most popular NFT artists on FxHash over the past few months.
More recently, Camille had a very innovative idea that allowed multiple artists to collaborate on the same generative art project by working on the same code repository. This project is called BRIDGE, and over 25 generative artists created and submitted their own BRIDGE style.
BRIDGE by Camille Roux & 25 more artists
Interestingly, Camille has been engaging with other artists and collectors in different ways before the Bridge project. You can find him brainstorming on his Twitter account, sharing sketches and polls to drive his designs.
Camille Roux - Generative art @camillerouxart
When asked about his creative process, the French generative artist mentioned, “I love to improvise; I don’t like it when I know from the start what the end should look like. I love pragmatism (maybe that is why I'm always using the same palette). Currently, I love to play with particles (e.g., you can see that on my Murmurations collection and my BRIDGE style), using techniques involving math methods like domain warping...”
Here are some comments from BRIDGES contributors along with their styles:
Creating art is something I’ve usually done by myself, so I really enjoyed being part of something bigger. I think one of the greatest parts of fxhash is its community, so I was honored to take part in a community collaboration like this. I hope more projects like this take place in the future!
Lunarean, Solace and City in the Wind creator.
BRIDGE #132, style /nt/r/t///a/ by Lunarean
After a quick brainstorming with myself and a few paper sketches, I decided to re-explore the Nara style which I first made in Japan.
Nara style is inspired by a projection mapping we did in Shiragawa-go: during the night we projected on a little house lost in the middle of a rice field surrounded by dark mountains and lightened only by the moon. It was breathtaking, it touched me.
For the bridge I made an abandoned Japanese path going through the mountains and brightened by a broken moon where new adventures await.
David Ronai AKA Makio64 - Check out his website.
BRIDGE #337, style name Nara by Makio64
Most importantly, I'm very happy to be part of this collaboration. I think the final collection is very nice. It's a great example of the total being bigger than the sum of its parts. It has also drawn my attention to some generative artists I wasn't aware of previously.
On a technical level, I now have a much better understanding of how p5 works, and I also found a great way to accelerate the rendering of my stippling technique. I'll certainly use this trick again in the future.
Claus O. Wilke, a data scientist at The University of Texas. Check out his FxHash here.
BRIDGE #115, style Into Another World by Claus O. Wilke
Usually, the generative artworks that I create are fairly complex and tend to keep growing in complexity until I reach a point at which I feel they've been taken as far as they can go. But while working on BRIDGE I learned how to effectively focus more on a single idea instead of spreading my attention across many different ones
Robin AKA @solarise_webdev. Check out his FxHash creations here.
BRIDGE #26, style Rise by Robin Metcalfe
Getting to grips with Github was my first challenge, and I was determined to do it on the command line, rather than using the web interface. I got there, or at least far enough to be able to interact with the project. A second moment, early on Monday morning with half an hour to go before work, was finally figuring out my random number bug. It’s always the same process with a tricky bug: the feeling of being mystified, almost reaching a point of surrender, then that wonderful moment where you narrow it down and figure it out.
Mandy Brigwell, check out her generative NFTs on FxHash here.
BRIDGE #170, style BiFrost by Mandy Brigwell
Finding a good angle that fit the project, while staying true to my own goals as an artist was challenging. I had to think about it for a couple of days before I could get to work on the practical side of things. However, once I realized I wanted to work with text and languages, the rest kinda fell into place by itself.
Ada ada ada, Co-founder of art studio Circuit Circus.
BRIDGE #294, style Text-to-Bridge (TTB) by Ada Ada Ada
In my opinion, this sort of teamwork is an excellent way for generative NFT artists to learn, get exposed to new audiences, and challenge their creativity and technical skills. I’m looking forward to more cooperation among NFT artists at the code level.
Access the Bridge GitHub repository (containing the complete list of collaborators and each style code).
Follow Camille Roux on Twitter, so you don’t miss his upcoming drops.
Until next time,
- Kaloh
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