Custom generative software, digital video (edition of 100), sound (Tonepoet, “Infinity Machine”), NFT, and Ethereum blockchain, 2022
Private collection
In this generative software animation, dozens of artificial creatures resembling microorganisms live and die in an imagined virtual environment. To create Entity, Jared Tarbell used concepts from the field of artificial life (or ALife), a research area that studies the fundamental processes of living systems by using computer models and simulations to recreate biological phenomena.
Tarbell’s generative system is programmed to re-create lifelike properties and naturalistic individual and group behaviors. The virtual life forms are born, interact with one another, merge to become more complex organisms, and eventually experience entropy, decay, and even death. Then, the cycle begins again. Simple rules within the system give rise to complex, emergent behaviors (new behaviors that arise from interactions among the parts of a complex entity). This creates an unpredictable choreography that produces new results each time.
Layers of engraved and UV-printed acrylic, steel, and LED-lit system, 2025
Courtesy of the artists
In Human Unreadable the duo Operator (Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti) merge dance, code, photography, and performance to explore the expressive possibilities of the human body within digital systems. At the heart of the work is a choreographic score developed by Catherine with dancers across four cities. It uses simple movements to convey emotional states such as joy or sadness. These human gestures are then encoded as data stored on the blockchain and assembled into generative artworks, along with other generative components that mimic glass and X-rays. The resulting black-and-white images resemble collage and photography techniques like photograms but are composed entirely of code.
Human Unreadable challenges the traditionally rigid values of strict reason embedded in functional design and digital technology. The artists perceive these values as masculine and have said that their aim is to infuse generative art with “emotional vulnerability and human messiness,” taking inspiration from the human body and from pioneering female digital artists.
Custom generative software, 2019
Courtesy of the artist
In Infinite Petals Sarah Meyohas harnesses the data set of rose petals created by the 16 workers in her film Cloud of Petals (shown nearby) to train a generative adversarial network (GAN). A GAN is a type of artificial intelligence where two neural networks compete, one generating images while the other evaluates their authenticity. The result is a system capable of creating endless unique digital petals that never existed in nature.
These generated petals appear in gridded arrangements following various algorithmic patterns. Each artificial petal exists within a 512-dimensional latent space—the mathematical realm where AI represents and manipulates its creations.
Together, Cloud of Petals and Infinite Petals trace the journey from organic life to human classification to machine generation. They question where beauty resides when the natural and artificial blur together, and they highlight the human labor and biases that underpin our seemingly autonomous digital systems.
16 mm film transferred to digital 4K video, sound, 31:22 minutes, 2014
Private collection
In Cloud of Petals Sarah Meyohas makes visible the human labor typically hidden within our digital systems. At the historic Bell Labs—birthplace of the transistor and numerous computing innovations—16 workers methodically photographed 100,000 rose petals one by one. Following a precise protocol, they opened flowers, selected petals, captured images, and uploaded them to cloud storage. The petals in this data set would go on to train a machine learning system that generates artificial petals, seen in the work Infinite Petals nearby.
Documented on 16-millimeter film, this performance reveals that even our most sophisticated artificial intelligence systems begin with human hands and human choices. Workers preserved one petal per rose they deemed the most beautiful, creating a physical archive of 3,291 petals that embodies human aesthetic preferences. As rose petals transform into digital data, nature converts into the binary digital language of ones and zeros and human value judgments become codified into seemingly objective digital systems.
Computer drawing in black ink on Benson plotter paper, 1968
Private collection
Interruptions is one of the first series of generative drawings Vera Molnár created with the aid of a computer and plotting machine (a type of early computer printer). At the time, computers were the size of an entire room; most were relegated to research labs. In 1968 Molnár began working with a computer lab, teaching herself to use the early computer programming language FORTRAN. She translated the algorithmic process she had developed by hand—her “imaginary machine”—to a real machine, allowing her to work with greater complexity and speed.
Beginning with a 25-by-25 grid, Molnár randomly rotated each line to generate a complex pattern. She also introduced random interruptions that result in sections where the lines are erased to create voids. Gradually changing a single parameter at a time in the algorithm allowed for unexpected results. She described this process as a kind of conversation with the machine, “an exciting visual dialogue that creates surprise.”
©2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Computer drawing in multicolored ink on Benson plotter paper, 1974
Private collection
In the Des(Ordres) series Vera Molnár generated numerous variations on grids of concentric squares, a motif she returned to throughout her life. To create this series, she used a custom program called Molnart. She developed Molnart with her husband, François Molnár, an artist turned scientist who studied perceptual psychology and experimental aesthetics. By the early 1970s, some computers featured a new innovation: the graphical display. This enabled Molnár to see the results of her programs instantly, rather than waiting for a plotter machine to reveal the image hours or days later.
Molnár gradually removed squares from a five-by-five grid, introducing negative space and breaking up the grid’s regularity. She then injected more disorder into the image, simulating a hand-drawn line or offsetting the concentric squares from their axis. The title suggests a play on words in French between two meanings: désordres (disorder) and des ordres (some orders).
©2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris