12 pieces in this gallery
deafbeef“Curated has contextualized a thoughtful and comprehensive collection of my generative audiovisual work that includes a rare complete set of Series 0 - 5, as well as several pieces that are unique in their qualities or early edition number, like Caves #1. I'm proud to have an extensive selection of my work featured alongside many other generative artists I admire and respect.”
curated“As a digital artist, DEAFBEEF stands alone. There is no category around him. His audiovisual generative art using just a C compiler is pioneering, as is his incorporation of the blockchain in his work. He's one of the very few artists that writes his own smart contract, codes his own website, and even welds his own metal work. DEAFBEEF started as the "collector's" collection, but has entered the realm of being admired by traditional art curators as well. We're proud to be one of just four full set collectors in the world.”
Description
DEAFBEEF began an as art project in 2020 at the start of the COVID 19 pandemic. I emerged after 7 years living under a rock while my kids were young, to discover that modular synthesizers had come back into style. Having a background in electrical engineering, sound recording and music, I was excited the culture of synths had re-emerged. However, there was a certain amount of consumerism in the new culture, and I decided to take an alternative ascetic approach of using 'nothing' to make music, rather than sink time and money into expensive hardware that many seemed to view as magical "black boxes". Nor did I want to upgrade my 10 year old laptop to be able to run the latest DAWs. I opted instead to rebuild from scratch, using only a cheap laptop running Linux, emacs text editor and a C compiler. The intent is to work at a fundamental level, scrawling numbers directly into digital storage media later to be interpreted as sound and images.As a developer, my favorite way to work is in the terminal, mouse free, using Emacs and command line tools. The muscle memory to me is akin to playing an instrument. I also love the aesthetic of ANSI terminals. I grew up in the 90s playing Nethack, which introduced me to programming and procedural generation. It was a formative experience. I write C programs that generate audio and visual outputs. As it turns out, this approach lends itself well to NFT blockchain technology, at least in the case of generative art.
