An exhibition where code is used to create art

The array of mandalas on the screen refuses to stay still, fusing together and breaking away from each other, into new ones of different colours.

The array of mandalas on the screen refuses to stay still, fusing together and breaking away from each other, into new ones of different colours. A visitor standing in front of this digital artwork, watching a dizzying range of permutations and combinations of these colours emerge, may assume that the possibilities are endless.

And it turns out, that they may not be wrong. “Nothing gets repeated,” says its creator, Mathura Govindarajan of her infinite range of mandalas, admitting that she is obsessed with this geometric symbol representing the universe in its highest form. “I find mandalas meditative,” says Govindarajan, whose artwork, titled Kalie-code-scope, has been coded using p5js, a JavaScript library for creative coding,

Govindarajan, the founder of the Bengaluru-based Paper Crane Lab, a non-profit focused on making STEM education more accessible, is one of the 12 artists who are participating in Art of Code, a month-long exhibition, at SOCIAL New BEL Road, Bengaluru, in collaboration with Tezos India, showcasing a collection of digital art created using creative coding. The exhibition, which will be on display here till June 27, is an amalgamation of art and technology that may seem puzzlingly obtuse for a layperson (this reporter, included) but offers an interesting viewing experience, nevertheless.

Take Karthik Dondeti’s Rock-face, an inter-locking web of filaments, that “were loosely inspired by the terrain you see along a rock face,” says the artist whose background in architecture came into play while creating this digital artwork, which has also been coded using p5js and written for fxhash, an open platform for creating and collecting unique generative art NFTs on the Tezos blockchain. Or 15-year-old Laya Mathikshara’s See the Sea, a blue logarithmic spiral that evokes both the idea of a churning ocean and a shell lying on a beach.

“We are focusing on artists of Indian origin who use code to express themselves,” says Varun Desai, head of Tezos India Art and Culture (TIAC), adding that the exhibition is a hybrid curation with some digital artists on the blockchain and a few not on it. “It was curated amongst coders who were using the blockchain but also a few that weren’t. We did not want to leave them out of the narrative just because they were not yet on the blockchain,” he says, adding that the artists who are on the blockchain have their projects linked to NFTs via the QR code at SOCIAL.

“All sales of those works and revenue goes directly from the collector to the artist,” he says, pointing out that neither SOCIAL nor Tezos India receives any commission for these sales. “This is different from how traditional shows are done where 30-50% of the sales go to the galleries.”

Offering a brief background into generative art, he says that the practice started in the 1950s when people began using mechanical computers to do drawings. “Over time it got more conceptual,” he says, adding that just like how a traditional artist using paint or a digital artist uses specific drawing software, a generative artist uses lines of code to create art. “There are few people doing it, and they all have a very unique take,” he says, adding that they chose to have this exhibition at SOCIAL, instead of a traditional art space, because, “We wanted to make this art form accessible to everyone.”