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Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Kim Asendorf

2010

NFT/Digital

Minted as NFT in 2022

Description

There’s a certain strain of digital glitch—popularized on Tumblr in the 2010s—that traces its origins to an algorithm written by Kim Asendorf that he called “pixel sorting.” The software can be used to selectively reorder the pixels in the columns or rows of an image, arranging them in order of their relative brightness or color. When the algorithm is partially applied it leaves streaking gradients that make it look as if the picture somehow melted.

The first works Asendorf created with the pixel sorting algorithm were a series of altered images of mountain landscapes titled Mountain Tour (2010). The collection contains eight of these works, which were later minted as NFTs in 2022.

Asendorf made the pixel sorting algorithm open source in 2012 and it was adopted by other digital artists soon thereafter. Fellow artist Sarah Zucker wrote about the impact of pixel sorting, saying that “an entire style emerged, which, instantly recognizable, became synonymous with glitch art as a whole.”