Erick Calderon’s Chromie Squiggle 9,999 was minted at 11:30 am on August 21, 2024. To mark the museum’s acquisition of the work, LACMA curator Dhyandra Lawson spoke to Calderon, artist and founder of Art Blocks, about the inspiration behind Chromie Squiggles and how the digital work could be preserved in the museum’s collection for generations to come. Read the conversation below.
Chromie Squiggle 9,999 will be exhibited in Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film, opening at LACMA on November 24, 2024, as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide. Find out more about PST ART.
Erick Calderon: When I created the Chromie Squiggle, it was a functional thing. I asked myself, how do I show how many ways a point can be drawn on a screen? How can I show as much variation from a single generative algorithm? I did it as this proof of concept, then time passed, and I found myself becoming very attached to this squiggly colorful line. Like, way more attached than I should. It’s just a rainbow.
I was in the design industry for a long time. I have sold ceramic tile since I was 22. I come from the tile, design, and architecture world, and I hadn't seen another thing that could be confused for a Chromie Squiggle. I modified it a ton. I did not make the Chromie Squiggle to be art, but it grew on me as something that I was willing to put out there as art. And that was a big decision.
Art Blocks was there originally to help me create my own work. Then I had kids, and I ran out of time to create work, so I started actively developing Art Blocks to let other artists deploy their work. And Chromie Squiggle wasn't part of that equation. It was just a demo. It's been an interesting transition from seeing something as a demo, to becoming attached to it, and feeling a sense of pride around it, and then saying, “You know what? This isn't just a demo. This is art.”
Gradients and bright colors make people smile. That's what I'm trying to achieve with this work. There's this extra thing where, if you click on it, it moves. And to me, that is the little Easter egg that people discover on their own.
Dhyandra Lawson: You are finding ways into our daily lives. We live on computers, and we are looking at screens. You’re expanding the kind of interactions we have online. The aesthetics of the simple colors and outline bring people back to the joy of using the paint app on early Macintosh computers.
Would you please elaborate more on the initial question you asked yourself about how many points you could trace on a screen?
EC: Sure. The way that squiggle is constructed is with Catmull-Rom splines that connect points using soft lines. So, you can either connect points using rigid peaks and troughs, or you can use these curves that will follow the points, but instead of following them with a straight line, they follow them with a curve. That is a very simple way of drawing a curve in generative, creative coding techniques.
Each point that the curve goes through can exist on the Y axis—anywhere from negative 100 to 100. If I can have 200 possible places for that point, and that doesn't even count decimals, then I can then have 200 places for the next 20 points. That's 200 times 200 times 200 times 200, 20 times, the possible combinations of where those points are going to lie. On top of that, you add color. There are 255 possible starting colors. And then there's the density which is how fast the color spreads throughout the Chromie Squiggle.
Some Squiggles start on green and end on yellow. More complex ones start on red and end on red but go through the color spectrum three times. Those variables are all ways to differentiate and distinguish one Squiggle from the next.
DL: Blockchain artworks have raised new challenges for LACMA’s acquisitions procedures, particularly around preservation. How are we as a museum going to preserve this work for the next 100 years? We also consider display. How do you as the artist want the work to be shown in a gallery context? Should the work only be experienced online?
EC: One of my favorite things about NFTs is the democratization of access. So, let's say I mint Chromie Squiggle number 9,999 for LACMA. That NFT will always have been the one that was minted for LACMA, but it will still be available for people to see on Art Blocks or OpenSea on the direct generator link. I think there's something valuable there, which makes me less aggressive about requiring it to be shown in physical form.
However, of course, I would like for it to be shown as a physical piece. I mean, of course, I want people to be curious about what they see on the wall. I don't always like the idea of it being shown as a static piece because it's a little delightful thing that you click on, and it changes. So, to me, the most ideal display would be in a way that is interactive, where there’s a button on the wall and people can press it and it starts moving.
One of the things that I think is beautiful about p5.js library is if you understand how the curved lines work mathematically, you can plot a Squiggle with your hands and a ruler and protractor on a piece of paper. There are examples of people doing so already, and the ability to recreate a Squiggle mathematically by following the code makes it feel even more permanent
I spent a lot of time nerding out with [LACMA director] Michael Govan when he pointed out to me that paper has outlived everything else, which blew my mind because it’s true. At first, I was like, whatever, the blockchain's going to last, and then I thought, wait, the Ethereum blockchain has only been around seven years, and paper has been around for 2,000 years. So, I will also present you with the algorithm in a way that you can print it. In the worst-case scenario, the algorithm could be typed back into a browser.
DL: If Ethereum fails, would you be comfortable with allowing LACMA to remint the piece?
EC: That's a cool question. That’s something that I would want to enter a debate with other artists. I think that I support those that have collected my work as best that I can. And so, the issue with what you mean by Ethereum failing is not that the art wouldn't exist anymore, because you will always be able to go back and read the Ethereum blockchain data. It's that Ethereum might no longer allow you to transact as you can today. In which case it feels like I would be acting in good faith to the collectors to simply remint the entire set on a functional blockchain, assuming it would enable everyone to recover the thing that they had on the blockchain that fell apart. So, my thought is that, yes, I’d be comfortable with it, but I'd be super curious what other artists say.
Has anybody else said no? Like, a hard no? I am curious what the consensus is and what your conversations have been.
DL: Some people feel that minting is the creative act—to give that power away to another entity feels like giving away authorship. However, as a photography curator, we see photographs fade over time. In some cases, we’ve overseen the printing of a work with the artist or their estate’s guidelines and approval.
EC: Ultimately, one of the things that I’m most drawn to with blockchain technology is the permanence. In the end if you have the exact algorithm that you would need to recreate the exact outputs algorithmically and facilitate collectors to continue to be able to prove ownership and transact the art freely, that matters more to me than the specific blockchain it lives on. If there is no chance that there could be a misunderstanding about who the owner of the NFT is, then I would not have any problem with the museum reminting the piece, if it was reminted on the blockchain that people felt was the most durable available at that time.