Layer is a brand new high-tech platform for displaying distinctive, generative artwork

Digital artwork has been bruised by two acronyms wealthy with uncertainty, NFTs and AI, every including a layer of obfuscation to the endeavours of anybody working in pixels quite than paint. True ‘generative artwork’ – that’s to say, procedural artwork created by hand-crafted code – has subsequently suffered, de-platformed and overwhelmed by AI slop and doubtful get-rich-quick schemes.

Making an attempt to proper these wrongs is the beginning for a brand new digital platform, Layer Canvas, a start-up initiated by Deviant Artwork founder Angelo Sotira. With industrial design by Will Howe at Demo, the Layer Canvas is billed as the primary true devoted platform for digital artwork, a museum-quality 1.1m2 show contained inside an aluminium body that’s distinct from a daily flat display.

The truth is, the Layer Canvas is a pc you cling in your wall, incorporating not only a high-definition museum grade display however all of the processing energy required to drive generative artworks – ‘painted in code’. The aluminium body conceals a devoted GPU that allows the canvas to run real-time code-based artwork from a rising library of distinctive items, all curated by the platform.

‘The readability is on one other stage in comparison with video,’ says Howe, ‘there’s no compression or artefacts.’ The truth is, this sort of all-in-one platform has by no means existed earlier than, past utilizing a robust laptop hooked as much as a separate display.

The crew approached artists working with code to seek out out what they wished from a devoted platform, and this was the end result, a really intentional floor for artwork – with no sound, no household photograph albums, climate, TV or different distractions. The 1:1 ratio was additionally a deliberate transfer away from the filmic 16:9 and different conventional media ratios.

Howe’s studio was additionally involving within the branding and marketing strategy, along with the economic design. Again when he was working at Map Undertaking Workplace, Howe was on the crew that developed the Sky Glass tv, a undertaking that introduced loads of shut involvement with the fast-moving show sector.

‘It’s a really high-performance back-lit LED panel,’ the designer says of the Layer system, ‘it’s all the time on and has anti-glare coating and a excessive distinction true black show to do the artwork justice.’ Different features of the design targeted on efficiency and precision, such because the comparatively thick panel, quite than a tech-centric sophistication. ‘The 1:1 ratio takes it away from the language of tv,’ Howe says, ‘it’s designed to hold on the wall, or on an image rail simply in entrance of a wall, and even as a room divider.’

To attain the latter, the rear panel needed to look nearly as good because the entrance, so a gridded design was chosen to make it really feel extra sculptural and stylish, with Donald Judd cited as an inspiration. ‘It feels extra like an decoration for the house, not a fixture that’s simply caught on,’ Howe says. ‘We didn’t need it to really feel like a chunk of tech – it’s completely passive.’ Layer’s CCO Ben Wolstenholme describes the panel as being like a fire – a ‘reassuring presence.’

The artwork itself is maybe one thing of an acquired style. One of many driving forces behind the undertaking is the American artist and coder Casey Reas, a professor within the Division of Design Media Arts on the College of California, Los Angeles, in addition to a practitioner and the co-creator (with Ben Fry) of Processing, an open supply ‘software program sketchbook’ that’s the computational coronary heart of a lot of the work on show. ‘Originally, we went to a number of the foundational individuals in generative artwork,’ says Wolstenholme, ‘Casey mentioned that ‘I’ve waited all my profession for this…. principally, it’s the very best their artwork has ever regarded.’

Lots of the accessible items, together with works by Reas, Andreas Nicolas Fischer, Anton Dubrovin, Arttu Koskela and extra, evolve slowly, as if an summary expressionist canvas was subtly shifting and altering all through the day. Some run by means of cycles, others by no means repeat, and a ‘playlist’ may be created on the accompanying app with temper suggestions.

Lots of the items are interactive, with parameters that may be modified through the app, starting from varieties and color by means of to the pace of iteration. What’s extra, Layer’s subscription mannequin permits for artists to obtain royalties based mostly on how lengthy every bit is ‘considered’ by the subscriber base. Canvas is a progressive platform in additional methods than one.

Layer.com, DemoStudio.co.uk