svg4.svg

2021

NFT/Digital

Description

When artwork is generated from code we expect both a visible and an invisible component. There’s the output of the code, the image we see, and then there’s the code itself, the digital machinery operating out of sight. In his series svg.svg, Andreas Gysin (who releases NFTs under the name of his studio ertdfgcvb), creates works where the code is both the instructions for a transformation and the object that is transformed.

svg4.svg (2021), the fourth in the series, is subtitled “Code is dust.” It begins with the code of the work displayed in small black text on a gray background. As the animation begins, the individual characters of the code break free from their syntax and flutter downward like motes of dust. As they reach the bottom of the screen they form a pile. The mound of characters is still rendered on the screen as text, not as an image, but the order of the characters is completely random.

Each work in svg.svg is an example of a quine, a self-contained computer program that uses only its own code as input.