Series #5 – Advection – Token #219
Custom audiovisual software, NFT, and Ethereum blockchain, 2021
Private collection
Tyler de Witt (a.k.a. 0xDEAFBEEF) describes Advection as “a commentary on the relationship between nature, mathematics, and generative art.” Advection is an aesthetic study of fluid motion, or how liquid or gas particles move. The title refers to the way heat or matter is transferred through the flow of a fluid, like sediment being transported downstream by a river.
De Witt’s starting point for building his generative model is a simple and elegant mathematical equation for describing fluid motion:
His key insight is that the same mathematical equation can describe both vibrational patterns in sound and fluid motion, effectively corresponding to the same physical rule in nature. But his audiovisual work is not merely a strict simulation of physics. The fluid, which resembles pigment dissolving in water, is in a perpetual state of motion. The swirling pools slowly dissipate but never fully dissolve in a never-ending flux that defies the laws of thermodynamics.
Art created using autonomous systems like computer algorithms, AI models, or rule-based processes where the artist sets up initial parameters but then allows the system to independently produce or contribute to the
final artwork. The artist designs the process rather than directly creating every element, embracing randomness, complexity, and emergence to produce results that often could not be fully predicted beforehand.