Neondrians are a limited series of algorithmically generated art pieces, inspired by Piet Mondrian’s “Compositions” and some of his similar works. I’m releasing them as a limited series of ten 1/1 NFTs on OpenSea. Initially, nine of the pieces will be available for sale, and one will be reserved for a giveaway.
Each Neondrian is a completely unique 1080x1080 animated gif. Each one was generated by my own custom code, which uses a variety of algorithms to create a set of shapes, color them, and animate them. I don’t do any post-processing or touchups; each Neondrian is exactly as it was output by my code.
Neondrians are the first in what I hope will be a series of distinct and different generative art pieces, which will look less and less like Mondrian’s original work, but will be inspired by his use of color, shapes, and rhythm.
Why Mondrian?
I’ve been a fan of abstract art since I was a teenager. Artists like Miro, Kandinsky, Pollock, and, yes, Mondrian have always captured my imagination. What are the artists trying to express? Why have they constrained (or not constrained) themselves in a particular way while painting? Is there more going on than what you see on the surface, or did they want nothing more than to create something beautiful?
In the case of Mondrian, I was always drawn to the way he combined art and design. But beyond that, there’s a musicality to his compositions that I’ve always found irresistible (and that, given his love of jazz, was certainly intentional). I found that his use of bright, primary colors and sharp angles made a bold statement as well.
What’s the Story Behind Neondrians?
A while ago, I found myself interested in using my coding skills to create some generative art. I love algorithms, and, at least to start, I wanted to explore some classic computer science problems in whatever I created. When I thought about art that brought certain algorithms to mind, Mondrian’s work came to mind immediately.
I set out to see if I could write some code that would produce “pseudo-Mondrians”. After a while of working away at this in my spare time, I had a program that would produce highly tweakable static images that looked a lot like a Mondrian Composition (though perhaps not a 100% accurate representation of his style).
The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized I wanted to do something original, inspired by Mondrian’s work, not just an imitation. I started thinking about how I could play with Mondrian’s style, and came up with some ideas of my own.
Neondrians are the first of those ideas that I coded. I wanted to do something similar to Mondrian’s Compositions, but playful, and with a little bit of a Cyberpunk nod to the NFT world. I also wanted to include some motion, since what my code was producing looked pretty static. A Mondrian-styled neon sign sounded like a lot of fun.
How Does Each Neondrian Differ?
I knew early on that I wanted each piece my code produced to be different. To that end, I built in a lot of parameters. Some are hand-tweaked, and some are random, but together, they make each Neondrian unique.
For this series, you’ll notice that there are three different color schemes. There are also different levels of flicker, and different shapes and arrangements. The color schemes are the broadest differences, but each Neondrian is different from all the others. If you acquire one, you can rest assured that, as a unique 1/1 NFT, there won’t be another Neondrian out there that looks like yours.
Where Can I Find Neondrians?
All ten Neondrians are available as NFTs on OpenSea. Check out my Algorithmic Art gallery at https://opensea.io/collection/zyzzyvas-algorithmic-art.
What’s Next?
As I mentioned above, I have a lot of ideas for generative art that takes inspiration from Mondrian’s colors, shapes, and rhythm. For the most part, though, I don’t plan on it looking very much like Mondrian’s actual works.
Beyond that, I’m thinking of more generative art that I can work on, beyond my original points of inspiration. Expect it to be abstract, playful, and fun.
