Emily Xie, NFT Creator – Cointelegraph Magazine
New York’s Emily Xie explores the new frontier of digital art by combining her skills and passion for computer science and generative art.
In just under two years, since minting her first NFT in March 2021, she has caught the attention of prolific collectors, such as Punk6529, DC Investor and Bob Loukas, and recently left her job as a software engineer to pursue life as a full-time artist.
“I studied art history, took studio art classes, but also studied computational science and engineering. I made all kinds of art growing up, but it was more in a traditional media way. As a software engineer, I had always hoped to combine my love of programming as well as my love of art and creativity,” says Xie.
Discover generative art
“I found that desire in generative art around 2015-2016. It made a lot of sense to make art with code. You don’t get a more direct and elegant combination than the two fields.”
“It is so full of exploration. You engage with technology in a way that’s creative because it exercises both sides of the brain, and that’s a rare thing to encounter.”
Xie attributes her love for making generative art to the freedom it gives her to unleash her creativity, and she gets lost in the process.
“Generative art is meditative for me. Every time I made it, I was really drawn into it. The world around me would just disappear and I would spend hours just programming and seeing what the algorithm could do.”
“Before NFTs, there weren’t that many opportunities to actually make a living. When NFTs came along, that was the first time I actually saw a path for myself to make a living as an artist.”
Inspired by East Asian art, Xie’s collection “Memories of Qilin” was launched via Art Blocks a year ago and has now seen over 4,400 ETH ($7.4 million at the current ETH price) in secondary sales.
In July 2022, Xie teamed up with Bright Moments for her 100-piece collection “Off Script”, which is an algorithmic representation of a 20th century modern art collage.
More recently, the New York resident has engaged in a collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and she has also worked with SuperRare and Objkt (Tezos).
influences
Xie draws influence from many artists and styles, but specifically singles out the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai, best known for his famous large wave woodblock print, and the Spanish painter Picasso who revolutionized abstract art with cubism.
“For me, I love abstract expressionists and early modern collage artists, but a few names that come to mind are Hokusai and Picasso,” she says, also referencing “Fidenza” NFT artist Tyler Hobbs.
Read more: Tyler Hobbs wrote software that generates art worth millions
“There are many generative artists who have inspired me over the years. Tyler Hobbs is one of them. I would also like to say that Zach Lieberman has been a great inspiration, says Xie.
“In general, the genre influences for me are collage and textiles. I get a lot of inspiration from them in the real world.”
Personal style of generative art
Xie’s aesthetically pleasing style draws inspiration from traditional East Asian art, and she has a knack for creating pieces that can be studied with the naked eye at length.
“I would say that my personal style is very much influenced by textiles, patterns, collage and wallpaper. This idea of bringing together many different patterns and putting them in one piece and seeing how it can create something so cohesive – that’s very interesting to me, says Xie.
Her work brings human warmth to what can be a sterile nature of computer generated art.
“I would say that a lot of times my artwork tends to have a very organic feel. It explores this tension between what’s handmade and comes across as very human versus what’s computational and a little cold and robotic.”
“It’s really fascinating to me to bring a sense of the organic and human into a medium that’s inherently digital with the code I’m using.”
Notable generative art sales to date
NFT artists to watch
Xie points out a number of upcoming NFT artists she is excited about.
William Mapan — An artist who works with code and has been featured on Art Blocks, Bright Moments and at Sotheby’s.
“William is an incredible artist. He has all these beautiful, hand-drawn pieces. His ‘Anticyclone’ series is just amazing and I’ve collected one. I think he really loves to draw inspiration from traditional media as well.”
Iskra Velitchkova — A computationally generative artist who has also been featured at Sotheby’s.
– Her work has a very digital quality. Although digital, it is also deeply atmospheric. Her style is so consistent. If you see an Iskra Velitchkova piece, you know it’s hers.”
Sasha Stiles — A metapoet and AI researcher.
“Sasha is doing some amazing work around artificial intelligence and poetry. It’s very groundbreaking in my opinion.”
also read
Characteristics
Unforgettable: How Blockchain Will Fundamentally Change the Human Experience
Characteristics
Porn Payments Should Be Crypto’s Killer App: Why Have They Flopped?
Generative art pprocess
Using a combination of traditional sketches, photoshop and writing algorithms, Xie’s process can be quite time-consuming and detailed.
“Programming is a fairly intensive process, so you want to visualize what you’re trying to program as concretely as possible before you do it. I usually do it in Photoshop and outline what happens if I add a line to a given element. I’ll see if that makes sense. If it looks good, I’ll program it out and see where it takes me, says Xie.
“Often it starts with a pretty extensive moodboard process where I go and collect a bunch of images that I love and that I’m inspired by. It gives me an idea of what I’m interested in at that moment. Sometimes I can’t articulate or vocalize it yourself; it’s a very subconscious thing.”
Once Xie has an idea of what she wants to create, she starts coding to create the output.
“Once I get my inspiration, I start tinkering with algorithms. Sometimes that means going back to an algorithm that I’ve already written or learned about, such as flow fields. From there it’s a matter of trying to take inspiration from other elements and trying to recreate them using code.”
“Usually that means you put down a few lines of code and then you’ll see what it produces and it will render on your screen. From there it becomes an iterative process of playing with parameters. For example, if you limited one parameter , you can get wavy lines instead of something else. You keep going back to your code, editing it, and rendering it, and then you repeat that process over and over again until you get something you like.”
“During the whole programming process, I actually try to prototype as quickly as possible because you can also run into the problem where you have an idea and you spend all day programming it out, but it looks bad and you’ve wasted all that time. “
Physical-to-digital art paradigm shift
Xie says tokenized digital art turns the traditional relationship between original and reproduction on its head.
“It’s interesting because the physical object ‘Mona Lisa’ used to be the true piece. Then every other image of it you find floating around the internet is just a manifestation of that. In this paradigm, it’s the complete opposite, which is really funny.” I think that’s very important because for a long time the traditional model left digital artists with no real way to assign originality and collectability to the artwork, says Xie.
“Previously, there was no easy way to collect my generative art. How do you collect something that sits on your computer but can be transferred to any computer around the world with the click of a button? It required a way to assign sparsity to a JPEG. NFTs are. If people really think about it, it makes so much sense and it opens up digital art that can finally be appreciated and collected.”
Favorite NFT you own
“I’d have to say ‘Anticyclone’ by William Mapan and ‘Folio #22’ by Matt DesLauriers. I love both of the pieces I’ve collected.”
Links:
Linkfire: linktr.ee/emilyxxie
Twitter: twitter.com/emilyxxie
Memories of Qilin website: memoriesofqilin.com/
Subscribe
The most engaging read in blockchain. Delivered once a week.
