Alastair Walker FCL

Proud to add to my collection @_deafbeef "SYNTH POEM: OSCILLOSCOPE", part of a series of on-chain generative audiovisual works, each paired with one physical sculpture (Oscilloscope) in forged iron by the artist himself. 0xDEAFBEEF is an artist and engineer based in Toronto, Canada. Over the past twenty years, he has been tinkering in diverse areas overlapping art and technology, including music, sound recording, computer animation, blacksmithing, and generative art. As a classically trained musician with a strong background in sound technology, he brings his interests together in a bespoke art practice using low-level computer code and a minimal tool set to craft raw information into audiovisual artworks. For several years he has carried on a professional metal working practice producing sculpture and jewelry. In his view, blacksmithing, in which the artisan crafts their own tools and production systems using materials immediately at their disposal, bears similarities to the crafting of computational systems. Each digital Synth Poem piece is created at the moment of minting from a unique hash, producing distinct combinations of tempo, timbre, pitch, and structure. While primarily sonic, each work is accompanied by a visualisation derived directly from its audio signal, referencing early vector displays and oscilloscope imagery. The physical sculptures are inspired by analogue oscilloscopes, a type of electronic test instrument introduced in the late 19th-century that graphically displays varying voltages of signals as a function of time. Oscilloscopes are used in many different disciplines, including medicine, engineering and telecommunications.

Just received Ben Laposky "Oscillon 16", 1953 photograph on vintage silver gelatin print 🤗 thanks to @aspreystudio & @_deafbeef In the 1950s, mathematician and artist Ben Laposky (1914–2000) and filmmaker used analogue oscilloscopes, sine wave generators, and electronic circuitry to manipulate electrical signals into visual forms he called “Oscillons” — among the earliest examples of electronically generated art. By photographing these constantly shifting waveforms, he transformed transient electronic events into fixed visual compositions, anticipating many of the ideas that would later underpin digital and generative art.