Hi there, we're Brandon and Grady, two software engineers and occasional algorithmic artists and we made (and deeply believe in) this site.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) were the first time that most folks were exposed to the idea that digital art could be valuable. The NFT pitch was that this value came from the scarcity of the art. That narrow definition of value was applied regardless of the emotional or aesthetic resonance of the work - prioritizing marketable gimics over beautiful images.
But art's deeper value (its aesthetic value) is unrelated to scarcity. Just think: most people hang prints or posters on their walls, even though they aren't originals. Why? While the speculative value of a piece of art may rely on scarcity and exclusion, the enjoyment and enrichment that art brings to our lives has everything to do with the impact that it has on the viewer, and very little to do with its scarcity.
NFTs told us that digital art's possibility is that it can be monetized and speculated upon. We believe the opposite. The immense possibility of algorithmic art is that though it has the same capacity to generate emotional resonance as physical art, it doesn't need to be scarce. We believe in a future in which meaningful art routinely enriches every life.
We've built some algorithms in the past that generate images. After building the code for the algorithm, our typical next step is to iterate through a few thousand combinations of inputs to try to find results that look good enough to make it into a blog post. We like to think of an algorithm that generates art as a thift store - there are probably going to be some gems, but you have to sort through some junk to find them.
This sorting problem isn't one that computers can solve. Even the best algorithms can't consistently generate art that holds meaning or beauty. Machines are getting better at creating images, but evaluating and appreciating beauty is still a deeply subjective and human task.
ABOUND strives to solve this by introducing the idea of the "Tinkerer". By assigning credit to the person who wrote the code, as well as the person who found the inputs, we're able to compensate the work of aesthetic discernment. We hope that the end result is that Tinkerers will be able to more fully explore the parameter space of every algorithm, and that in the end, more aesthetically resonant art will rise above the noise.
We hope you'll come along for the ride - whether you're a UX designer looking for some inspiration, a teacher looking for a new background for your slides, an algorithmic artist looking to make some money from your work, or just someone looking to decorate the walls of your home, we hope ABOUND is the place for you.
Best,
Grady and Brandon