Chimera: The Not-So-Still Life of Mpkoz (Gen Art)
CHIMERA #309
LIVE RENDER, FULL COLLECTION
Ian Rogers February 22, 2024
In October 2022 the Louvre museum in Paris hosted an exhibition entitled “Les Choses: Une Histoire de la Nature Mort” (“The Things: A History of Still Life”). The exhibition explored the history of the genre known as Still Life, a genre as old as humanity itself, featuring artists capturing their lifeless surroundings, from prehistoric peoples to Van Gogh, Arcimboldo and Mueck. But there was a piece missing from this retrospective, Chimera by Mpkoz, released in January of the same year.
Chimera aimed to bring the age-old practice of painting common scenes with common objects into a new medium, the collaboration between man and machine known as generative art. Chimera was written in JavaScript using the 3D library Three.js by Montana-born and Seattle-based Mpkoz. It was released as part of the “Curated” gallery series on the premier generative art platform, ArtBlocks, January 10th, 2022.
Generative art is art created by code. The code-writer is the artist and the final art piece is a collaboration between artist and machine. In the words of Mpkoz, "That's what keeps me coming back. When I write a set of instructions and see the computer perform them there's something magic. I feel I'm collaborating in a way that it's not comparable to anything else I've experienced in my life."
"That's what keeps me coming back. When I write a set of instructions and see the computer perform them there's something magic. I feel I'm collaborating in a way that it's not comparable to anything else I've experienced in my life."
Chimera is not a flat jpeg, it lives and breathes. “It’s never done. The whole time it's painting and repainting itself. Which is sort of a metaphor for the dynamic and changing frontier of technology.” The Chimera algorithm includes instructions for the computer to draw flowers, books, bowls of fruit, bottles of wine and skulls. Each Chimera “output” is unique, powered by exactly the same code but with a wide range of variability in appearance based on the traits randomly assigned to each piece at birth – from the time of day to the stroke of the brush, each appears and behaves differently based on its unique DNA.
This method, a single algorithm generating many different and unique pieces based on random traits as inputs, is typical of generative art pieces. But there is an unadvertised surprise in Chimera. As the brush, directed by Mpkoz, is painting the flower pot, the flowers, the skull, the book, etc, it's actually creating the still life scene in three dimensions. “I hid the 3D functionality in it. I wanted it to look like just another still life painting, but if you accidentally scroll your mouse over the window it zooms in and then you can flip it around and rotate it.“ When you drag your finger across Chimera on your screen, it rotates and you find you can view it from any angle. Zoom in, zoom out. Any angle or resolution is available to the viewer.
“There’s an element of making art professionally that involves sacrifice. The months leading up to Chimera are not necessarily good memories.”
Mpkoz showed up a bit late to many phases of life. Not particularly college-bound, he bounced around and worked manual labor after high school. He went to night school for a few years before finally getting accepted into USC for film school. He was hoping to enroll in a popular drone photography class but it was full so he signed up for “Creative Coding” instead, only vaguely knowing what that might entail. “I had no idea what it was. But for the first time in my life, and I don’t say this lightly, I knew what I wanted to do, this thing scratched all the itches I had in my head. I didn’t know it existed yet it was the only thing I’d ever done that put me into flow right away and even though I didn’t know how to do it I could do it all night. I asked the teacher, ‘How can I make a living doing this?’ ‘You can’t,’ she said.” After another USC professor and one of the forefathers of virtual reality, Mark Bolas, went to Microsoft to work on HoloLens, Mpkoz harassed Mark via email for two years until Mark finally found a place for him. While working his day job at Microsoft he honed his art skills and built an Instagram following around his creations. Even though Microsoft was admittedly his dream job, it took only a couple of sales of his digital art in 2021 for Mpkoz to quit and commit himself to the job of Creative Coder/Media Artist full-time.
In the world of generative art, ArtBlocks is the most respected name and artists go through a vetting process for a coveted release slot on the platform. Think of ArtBlocks as an art gallery releasing work by two artists per week to an international community of buyers who are watching closely, discussing on Discord and Twitter, and buying and trading in an always-on online marketplace. For Mpkoz, having Chimera selected as an ArtBlocks Curated release was an honor and a moment of recognition, the culmination of years of practice, and he didn’t want to stop short of the complete creative vision.
“There’s an element of making art professionally that involves sacrifice,” he says.“The months leading up to Chimera are not necessarily good memories. I was isolated, trying to finish, and didn’t do a great job of communicating with my partner, friends or family.” Finishing the code that comprises Chimera, “was euphoric. I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud.” But the flame of accomplishment and upcoming release on ArtBlocks was extinguished when Mpkoz visited his parents for the Christmas holiday, “I was in my childhood home, two weeks before submitting the final Chimera code, and we learned my mom had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma (a rare and deadly blood cancer). I went home for Christmas knowing I was done with Chimera and had created something beautiful but the news of my mom’s cancer canceled everything.”
Mpkoz had already decided on the name for the collection, Chimera. The word originated as a hybrid creature in Greek mythology and has come to mean anything composed of many disparate parts. By choosing the name Chimera for the collection, Mpkoz “wanted to signify the fact that something very old, still life, is once again changing into another form.” But it took on a new meaning once he learned that the treatment for his mother’s cancer involves a “chimeric bone marrow transplant.”
Generative art is a relatively new form using digital machines, techniques and distribution. The context for this movement is not solid nor broadly appreciated. Mpkoz, like many artists in new genres before him, found himself here by accident. He has embraced the lack of rules and precedents, but also recognized that exploring familiar themes can provide a reference point for understanding and appreciating the capabilities of this new medium. As the cardinal oeuvre de nature morte, Chimera is an excellent entry point for those curious about generative art, and will certainly find its place in the history of both still life and generative art.
Disclosures: I bought my first Chimera immediately after walking through “Les Choses” at The Louvre and noticing its absence. I bought two more while researching this piece. Hedvig and I minted a Parnassus together with Mpkoz in Kraftwerk at Bright Moments Berlin. I own a Metropolis diptych. On one occasion Mpkoz and I heard a Marfa man tell stories about aliens under a darkened sky.
Further reading:
MPKOZ.COM, CHIMERA ON ARTBLOCKS.IO, CHIMERA STATISTICS AND SECONDARY SALES, THE MULTIPLE MYELOMA RESEARCH FOUNDATION
Ian Rogers
