Selection, 2024
In 1983, Bill Atkinson was working on MacPaint, a graphics application for the Apple Lisa. While drinking a beer at a local bar, he noticed an animated waterfall in a beer sign on the wall. The effect was created by rotating an image under a mask. Back home he applied the animation using simple diagonal lines producing a moving dashed line. The ‘marching ants’, or animated selection marquee that became ubiquitous in interface culture, were born.
I have always been spellbound by the selection marquee. The elegance and sensitivity of this element of GUI is unlike anything else. Extending the idea of circling a word with a pencil it is a physical manifestation of our mental capacity to select, bringing in all the unique material beauty that only the computer can offer. Paraphrasing Bruce Nauman, on the one hand it’s just a daily used functional element, but on the other when seen for what it is, it is a profound experience. Like something between a beer and a waterfall.
Jan Robert Leegte - www.leegte.org
Selection, 2024 (portrait and landscape orientation examples)
What is Selection?
The idea behind the work was to have a selection are genererated by code. The so common used tool in especially PhotoShop then looses its image reference and becomes the protagonist.
Selection is a fully on-chain long form generative collection on the Ethereum blockchain. The work is a responsive webpage. The thumbnail image data is generated from the contract as the token number in ‘marching ants’ with the assigned background color.
When, where and how much?
Selection will be released in partnership with Folia on Thursday Sep 12, 8pm CET.
Selection will be released as a collecion of 150 NFTs for 0.11 ETH.
Instead of taking a 20% share of the sales, Folia will collect the first 30 mints.
Responsive resizing
Selection pays tribute to interface culture, and as such the work is responsive and not scaling. When the work is resized, the work is again rendered. When viewed smaller, details will disappear, yet the composition stays recognisable. It’s like stepping back to see a work from further away.
Colors
Selection comes with a background, that could be a solid color, color gradient or a gray gradient.
Change background layer
Selection offers the holder of the token the option to change the background layer. The options are the assigned color, white, black or tranparent. The change is made in contract and changes the NFT permanently and will be updated in the marketplaces. The holder can change the background as often as they wish.
Technologies used
Selection is fully on-chain. The work is a generated webpage, stored in the animation_url of the token. The image token used in the marketplaces is a generated SVG showing the token number in walking ants, with the assigned background. The choice to do a number as image, is that it can scale from 20 x 20 px thumb to a large market image. Due to the fixed 4 px dashed line of the marching ants, complexity is impossible.
Selection uses clipper.js to do the boolean calculations on the path. The library will also be stored on-chain for everybody to use.
Related work
My first usage of the selection marquee was in 2006, with the site specific projection also titled 'Selection'. Over the years the theme has come back in many works, both online as in the gallery space. Notable websites are Random Selection in Random Image, 2012 and The Act of Selecting Objectified, 2013.
Selection, 2006
About me
Since 1997 I have been making art on the Internet in the form of websites and digital-related work ever since, resulting in websites, apps, installations, videos, prints, sculptures, audio works and drawings. The networked computer is the central muse in my work, exploring all its wonders and peculiarities.
I don't use software to make art, I make art about software.
My work has been exhibited amongst others at The Whitechapel Gallery, Centre Pompidou, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, van Gogh Museum and the Ludwig Museum and acquired by various private and institutional collections. This is my ninth NFT collection after for example Ornament, JPEG and Web.
Check out my work at www.leegte.org.
My work is represented by Upstream Gallery Amsterdam and Office Impart Berlin.
Selection, 2024