Reading a book #869

Kim Asendorf’s Reading a Book approaches the book not as narrative content but as a formal system—an underlying structure within which visual events unfold. Built as a real-time WebGL animation, the work begins with a grid determined by a generative seed, which is then recursively subdivided into smaller cells. These cells are filled with pixels—predominantly black and white, with a smaller proportion of color drawn from either expansive or limited palettes—establishing a modular, page-like field.

Across this structure, multiple algorithms operate simultaneously. Four noise functions selectively disrupt portions of the grid, shifting, scattering, or distorting pixels, while four complementary “reset” routines continuously restore the underlying order. The image thus oscillates between fragmentation and coherence, as if testing the resilience of its own formal logic. In Reading a book #869 the composition consists of thick columns filling the browser window, as fuchsia and aquamarine accents slosh around with alternating black and white bits. They stack in left-justified columns before wrapping to the next line, like text on a page. 

The collection was minted on fxhash, a generative art marketplace built on the Tezos blockchain.