NCCU

MIXMIXLAB

National Chengchi University

Generative Art and Blockchain Technology: A Semester-Long Course at National Chengchi University 2022

25 Feb 2023200 EDITIONS

1 TEZ

Backgrounds

As a part-time Adjunct lecturer, I usually teach workshops on using specific multi-media tools, such as Unity3D and Meta Spark. When Generative Art got more popular these days, I was also asked if I could teach a Generative Art workshop.

But teaching Generative Art is challenging due to its broad scope. Since Generative Art is becoming popular because of blockchain technology, it is necessary to cover blockchain-related knowledge, like what cryptos are, how to use on-chain tools, marketing strategies, etc. These topics are often time-consuming and require an extensive understanding. It seems to me that it is impossible to cover all these topics within a 3-hour-long workshop.

Therefore, being asked to teach a semester-long course at a university is an incredible opportunity. I crafted an 18-week curriculum to cover all the important aspects of Generative Art. I am grateful to Professor Tao for extending this invitation to me.

It appears that educational institutions are showing a growing interest in offering courses on Generative Art. Therefore, I believe it would be valuable to document my semester-long experience in this article, so that those interested in teaching this topic can use it as a reference.

About The School

National Chengchi University (NCCU) is a research-oriented university with a humanities focus. Its business, communication, and literature-related programs are highly sought after. However, it's worth noting that the computer science program is also home to many talented individuals, including , the master of WebGL, who is also an alumnus of NCCU.

The place I taught from, "Digital Content Technology Program," was a dual-major program that drew students from various departments across the university. Although students shared a common interest in digital creation, most of them lacked programming skills. Generative art is a technique that requires writing a lot of code. Hence, the most significant challenge of this course was teaching practical skills to students unfamiliar with programming.

Course Structure

This semester's course can be divided into three categories: market, art appreciation, and creation.

In the market section, some basic knowledge about blockchain and NFTs was introduced, as well as some consensus rules in the NFT market. For example, tools for on-chain operations like Tzkt.io and Better-call; identity authentication tools like Tezos Profile and Tzkt Profile; and concepts of NFT editions & pricing, how to observe the artist's market performance, and so on. The reason why generative art is booming now is inseparable from the development of the entire blockchain, so it is also essential to understand the concept of cryptocurrency and the market.

In the art appreciation section, students learned about the aesthetic evolution of current generative art NFTs. Since ArtBlocks launched the on-chain minting function, generative art has seen unprecedented prosperity. But I think the aesthetic explosion began after fxhash appeared in 2021. While ArtBlocks is a curated-based platform with a relatively slow work release, fxhash is an open platform where anyone can upload their work. In just one year since the launch of fxhash, nearly 20,000 pieces of work have been released on the platform. Quantity change leads to quality change, and new and popular styles quickly become tiresome, pushing new styles to evolve in the market. Aesthetic iteration advances quickly.

In the creation part, I taught students using p5js as the creation framework with 8 practical classes. Each class introduced a technique widely used in Generative Art, from simple algorithms such as random, image composition, and noise to more advanced topics like recursion, fluid field, etc. Every practical class started from scratch and made into a complete Generative Art piece, so that students could understand how to develop a work from scratch. I also produced several personal works from course exercises and open-sourced the code for students to learn. In that way, students could understand how to develop a piece from a class exercise and turn it into their own art.

In addition to the 18-week course arrangement for one semester, I also arranged about four extracurricular online teaching activities. Some were additional supplementary content, for example, how to draw gradient colors. And also some online sales activities on the chain, such as the online interview and sales observation of artist 's new work, The Fire Within (live streaming from Tzflow to show the hot sales scene).

Some students had complained about dedicating too much time outside the class. However, the "blockchain timezone," the time that most people are active in the blockchain space, is usually between 22:00 and 2:00 in Taiwan local time. To take students on a real-world blockchain field trip, arranging it inside class hours is impossible. We once had a crazy lesson starting from 22:00 to 3:00 to observe two hot drops. (I remember it was 's Take Wing and 's Inland Emotions) Well, the online classes was optional, and some students thought it was worth the time, though!

Visiting the NFT Exhibition curated by @ssshihtung

About the exhibition we visit: Sculpting in Codes: An Interview with ssshihtung about Volume DAO's “Support of Dreams, Surface of Things”

Class Token MixMix Coin

To encourage student course discussion, I created a Discord server and a course token MXC (MixMix Coin) for students to use in transactions. In the blockchain world, anything can have direct value, such as sharing information or helping each other debug their code. These good behaviors were usually free. But in the crypto space, profits are so straightforward. With shared information, one can profit from trading; and with the help of debugging, one can sell their work on fxhash. Since these good behaviors have so much direct value, they should be rewarded. I hope that students can use MXC to reward those who help them and experience the decentralized empowerment of cryptocurrency.

Students can get MXC by attending each class. Although I verbally stated that attendance is not required (and does not affect grades), this Learn to Earn mechanism has become a disguised form of attendance. To give MXC value, I planned an auction at the end of the semester where students can use MXC to purchase my NFT works. Because NFTs have high liquidity and can be exchanged directly for fiat currency, MXC will also have value. I even created a liquidity pool on Quipuswap for students to purchase MXC. On the day of the auction, the price of MXC did indeed experience a slight increase. (LOL)

The works auctioned off to everyone had a signed frame to increase their abstract spiritual value.

However, in actual execution, due to the lack of design to promote discussion in the course, the Discord server was still more teacher-oriented, with announcements and explanations for students. The situation where students share information or teach each other was rare, so MXC did not play its original role in promoting discussion and became a simple reward token.

Interestingly, MXC later unexpectedly played a role in identity verification. Because fxhash is an open platform, there are some people stealing others' work and selling on the platform. We call these people copy-minters and consider their NFTs "fake". To avoid buyers being scammed, the moderation team often temporarily hides works published by new accounts. When students put up their work at the end of the semester, their accounts were all new, with only a few transaction records; their accounts were very suspicious. However, because the mods recognized my account (newyellow.tez) and saw my transactions of distributing MXC tokens, they knew that these accounts were my students and allowed their works to be successfully published. (Thank you, team!)

The Progress & Student Feedbacks

The course was taught under the Digital Content Technology Program. Students in the program were from various departments across the university, and most had no coding experience. But Generative art demands diverse programming skills, including conforming to fxhash's publishing standards and handling responsive web design (RWD) for aesthetic appeal. So at the start of the semester, I was apprehensive about the final results due to the technical difficulty. However, after a few weeks, most students said that the course was challenging indeed, but was also very fun, and they enjoyed it very much. When students are able to achieve results from the course, it gives them a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

But still, creating generative art requires programming expertise. So many students opted to use image composition as an alternative method for their final projects. While this may not meet the strict definition of "generative art," the students' innovative concepts and impressive digital or hand-drawn skills still produced remarkable works.

In the end, over 40 projects were published on fxhash. Each was successfully sold (as a teacher, I bought one at least), 16 sold out, and 6 also have nice secondary sales. For new artists who are new to the space and lack community engagement, this level of sales was a success for me! (Thank you, fxhash people, for the support and love!)

And last, let's take a closer look at each student's work. If you come across a piece that catches your eye, don't hesitate to collect it!

Final Project Showcase and Comment

For the final project, students can choose from three different topics: market, appreciation, or creation. Students of the creation topic need to publish their works to fxhash. Market topic students can write a report of their own trading outcomes or observation of the market. Appreciation students could either write an aesthetic analysis article or create an online art gallery using tools such as akaVerse or Deca. However, only one student chose to write a market analysis report, while all other students focused on creation.

Our final presentation was conducted online and recorded. Please feel free to check the video if anyone is interested in learning about their concepts or creative process. The time stamps of each work are included in the description.

Final Project Presentation Live-steam on Youtube (Chinese)

In the following section, I will introduce and comment on the work of each student one by one. Although aesthetics are subjective, I offer my most humble opinion as a reference for those interested in generative art creation.

This artwork is truly remarkable! Lulu uses noise to create the main mountain shape and makes an ethereal atmosphere through multiple layers. The texture and subtle color changes in the piece are handled with great care, resulting in an excellent piece of work!

While the technique used to create the mountain shape is simple, it is very challenging to create a unique style since there are so many mountains works on fxhash already. However, Lulu has done an exceptional job, and this piece stands out!

The structure of this piece is relatively simple, but the subtle texture processing is done quite well. Highlights, shadows, and background textures have been added to the geometric shape to avoid a flat look. However, the downside is that there are relatively few randomly generated shape variations. Adding more shape types or rotating angles would give this work more diversity.

Using a multi-layered stacking technique, the artist resembles a lush garden. The popular grain texture are also included in the work. Nice work in general.

An Image Composition work in a macabre-style art. Very impressive drawing skills. I think the artist has the potential if she cultivates her artist identity better.

By dividing the scene into multiple layers, the layout is nice and has rich details. Especially the middle layer, composed of smaller, intricate shapes, creates a sense of complexity in this piece. Very well executed.

Basically a Flow Fields work. While Flow Fields are very common on fxhash, achieving a visually pleasing result is not easy. This work caught the idea of "complexity" discussed in the course, resulting in visually delicate textures.

The only student confident enough to publish a 256 edition work and had a successful sale! Its mountain shape is generated from a basic noise algorithm. The true standout feature of this piece is its vibrant and diverse color palettes.

To add some variation to the basic mountain shape, multiple-layered rings and starry dots are used to create a complex and delicate texture. The background colors are carefully selected and blend in harmoniously, resulting in a beautiful overall presentation.

This piece was the best-selling work of the entire class! Despite being a technically simple image composition, the excellent hand-drawn skills combined with funny and quirky animal shapes have garnered popularity in the fxhash market. The frame around the edge is a great touch, giving the work a sense of completeness.

Additionally, the fusion of different animal parts has been executed with great care, resulting in seamless integration. The only thing that could be improved is the limited variety of animal species. If there were more diversity, it would undoubtedly be an exceptional work!

The project draws inspiration from the Taiwan tiles. While the concept and the variety of shapes are impressive, a notable majority of the color palettes are warm-toned. Adding more diversity to the palettes would enhance the overall appeal of the project.

This piece of art, inspired by hamburgers, is intriguing for its use of a wide variety of absurd ingredients. The most surprising aspect of this work is the concept of stacking. Unlike other image compositions with a rigid layout, such as a fixed number of faces, headgear, or handheld objects, the number of ingredient layers in this piece is completely random. This adds another level of diversity and fun to the work, whether it's the few ingredients that make you feel pathetic or the many ingredients that make you feel crazy and absurd.

The sushi platter, which was randomly generated, features special spy sushi hidden among them. Its rich types of sushi and surrounding decorations make it a fantastic example of image composition.

This student has published three works in total but has taken a conservative approach to releasing them by using the free mint strategy. He enjoys creating works through programming and has a keen eye for visual details. His pieces have also had some successful secondary sales. A nice series of small works.

Haoyun's project is an idea of "generated album covers." The work generates the image in real-time based on the song. The song is always the same, but random elements are added to create different visual outputs for each iteration, making a unique album cover.

Initially, I was worried that people might not appreciate the time-consuming and dynamic generating process. However, it sold out quickly before the Dutch auction price hit bottom. I guess the music was good enough to capture the hearts of other collectors!

Observations on the Impact of Participation in #fxhashturnsone on Artists' Sales

This project is the only one that takes the market topic. It's a report analyzing the sales volume change of each artist who participated in the #fxhashturnsone event. The student demonstrated his ability to gather and analyze on-chain data using the tools taught in class. The report was well-structured, and the data was presented clearly, making it a commendable work. However, it would have been better if the report had a clear argument or conclusion. Unfortunately, this was not present in the final submission.

A work inspired by pokers. The hand-drawn style is refreshing and delicate. The consistent style throughout creates the impression of a complete deck of cards. However, in my opinion, it would be better if the numbers and symbols on the sides were also hand-drawn, as they currently appear too sharp to me.

The work uses mathematical formulas to create an animated piece, which is challenging for programming beginners to handle the framerate performance. The dynamic and ever-changing output resulting from this process is fascinating. However, there is still room for improvement in the overall layout and aesthetics. The biggest challenge for works like this is to make them visually appealing and beautiful.

A project tries to create games on fxhash. The concept is interesting, but there's potential for more diversity, not just visually. As a small game, the focus isn't solely on the final visual outcome. If the gameplay could also be randomly generated, it would be a fun "Generative Game."

The student put effort into both the creative concept and the visual algorithm, but unfortunately, because the result is based on images, it may appear as if it's just a simple application of filters (although a closer inspection reveals various unique, random textures). In addition, three different generation methods were used, but unfortunately, the differences weren't visually noticeable. Lastly, since all the images used were of famous people, even though they were generated using AI, the subjects' notability tended to overshadow other aspects.

The work is based on a mountain shape and features a giant sun (or moon) nestled within the layers of the mountains. I believe this concept has great potential, but further work is required to perfect the visual presentation.

The student initially intended to create a mountain-shaped piece, but had an unfortunate mishap with the code just before the deadline. Unable to fix the bugs in time, she hastily created a new work for submission. Despite being rushed, I personally find the dynamic visuals quite appealing and believe that there is potential for further development. It's a shame that it wasn't fully realized due to time constraints.

In the description, the student provides a detailed account of the day she mess up her code. This caused one of my friends to view the work as conceptual or performance art. Considering the work from this perspective is quite interesting.

The student who took on the 3D modeling challenge did so independently, as we did not cover 3D techniques in class. Kudos to her for her adventurous spirit and dedication to learning. While the concept is promising, there is room for improvement. I feel that the arrangement of shapes looks too uniform. Incorporating more misalignment and perspective elements would make it visually more appealing.

This work is created using the Flow Fields technique and has a nice starting point, but it would greatly benefit from more variation. One way to achieve this would be to incorporate more diverse color schemes or experiment with different geometric shapes for the brush strokes. By not limiting oneself to just circles, but incorporating squares, triangles, and even strokes without a solid fill, the piece could be enhanced and more dynamic.

The artwork replaces some parts of a Chinese character with images, which is a fascinating concept! However, there are only a few variations, with only 3 to 4 types of images and characters. This is not typically enough for a generative art piece. If there were 20 to 30 types of image variations, it would be an excellent work.

This piece aims to capture the essence of a night street. While the blinking lights are pleasing, there is room for improvement in the finer details. For instance, the shadows in the foreground could be more nuanced, and the light dots could be smaller and more intricate, possibly even resembling the linear image of the street. Overall, I believe this work has the potential to be further developed.

Unfortunately, it has been disabled all the time. I reached out to the student who created it to ask for it to be enabled, but received no response. As such, I suppose it will remain as is.

This piece is an image composition work inspired by a haunted house. While the concept is interesting, the sofa seems to dominate the screen. It would be better if there were more diversity in this aspect.

This artwork is based on a mountain theme that generates a misty atmosphere with multiple layers of mountains, which is quite beautiful. However, the addition of little UFOs to the scene feels a bit out of place in the art style, haha.

In this work, the Image Composition technique was utilized to construct a room, with a particular emphasis on creating a bookshelf that appears diverse. To achieve this effect, the objects on the shelf are randomly generated, creating a more dynamic and unique image. This sets this work apart from more conventional Image Composition projects where the image is typically static.

The creator of this art project wants to develop his work with Flow fields at the beginning, and turned them into vessels of an eyeball in the end. Which might be hilarious, but why not?

This piece is a small, lightweight work inspired by mountains and painted with soft colors. It comes in two shapes: one representing the sea surface (smooth curve) and another featuring sharper edges like a mountain. Additionally, two color palettes are available, one for the day and one for the night. Personally, I love the night palette.

"Randomly generated breakfasts." The randomness of the object placement and the types of food is delightful, but it could be even better by adding more food types.

This cute snow globe artwork features pre-generated 3D images arranged in an appealing composition with various small elements that add to its overall charm.

The Rabbit PFP is a cheerful and festive piece of artwork reminiscent of the well-known PFP artist Gengoya in terms of color and brushwork. It features various elements related to the Luna New Year, reflecting the spirit of the Year of the Rabbit!

This piece, which combines cats and flowers in a quirky style, has a strange yet captivating quality to it. It's worth noting that two well-known generative artists, and , were among the first to purchase it (they never seem to buy my works, lol). This unique piece is perfect for those with refined tastes!

This artwork composes lighthouses with text in a beautiful layout. The background paper's color and texture perfectly complement the piece, resulting in an enjoyable work of art.

Using actual photographs of people to construct a collage of faces is an interesting idea. Regrettably, only a limited number of photos are available for each facial feature, and the layout is rigidly fixed. It would be better if the positioning of facial features could be more varied.

Taking inspiration from Zentangle, this artwork merges various textures of the style into a single piece. The color gradations and shapes are executed skillfully. However, the only drawback is that the differences between each individual Zentangle shape are not particularly noticeable once they are combined. It would be an improvement if the artist could create more pronounced differences to better emphasize the rarity and uniqueness of each component.

This is a piece of artwork depicting a penguin PFP with a dual face, generated using AI. The creator was so thrilled with the result that he even wrote an article about it on Matters, titled "Accidentally Learning! My First AI Drawing NFT". While the artwork is cute, it would be even better if there were more variations of penguin species.

The cityscape, which was randomly generated and features the famous grain texture and animated elements, is a nice piece of work. However, the resolution was not handled properly, resulting in some elements going off-screen when previewed on fxhash. Furthermore, adding more variation in color for the buildings and background would increase the visual appeal.

The artist utilized Image Composition, which merges pre-rendered 3D characters with real-life photographs. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, the final piece was not as comprehensive as originally intended. Initially, the artist had planned to include additional character types and room types in the final product, but due to the lack of time, this was not feasible. Although the work met the basic requirements for the course and received a passing score, it was disappointing not to see the project in its entirety. I like the concept and was excited about this during the midterm reviews. Sad face.

The Christmas snow scene card features a background of snow-capped mountains created using the noise algorithm, along with dynamic flying particle effects. The snow thickness increases over time, making it technically challenging. While the concept is good, the central image could be more diverse, including not only a snowman or Santa Claus, but also a Christmas tree or even an entire town. This would elevate the design even further!

The Image Composition artwork features a cute art style, but it could benefit from more variation in the shapes of the items and the shelf itself. The most interesting aspect of this artwork is the random composition method, which I thought was achieved by randomly generating the position of each object. However, it turned out that they were pre-drawn sets of objects, and then stacked together after instead. This idea is actually quite clever for creators with less experience in programming.

The artwork consists of dynamic, randomly arranged dots with a glowing effect that responds to mouse interactions. While the circular visuals are pleasing to the eye, incorporating larger blocks and visual lines would add points, lines, and surfaces, resulting in a more visually rich piece. During the artist's midterm presentation, there was a flickering visual effect which I found quite appealing, but it appears to have been omitted from the final version. Personally, I find this to be a bit of a pity.

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