After discovering blockchain and digital art, I realized that my background in corporate statistical programming could be a natural bridge to generative art. I’ve always craved creative outlets — from playing guitar to sketching and even tying fly-fishing flies — so coding as an artistic medium appeared as an exciting new frontier. When I encountered Ordinals in early 2023, I was already immersed in personal p5.js projects, and Bitcoin suddenly offered the perfect digital medium to create generative art for.

My debut project, Ars Machina, is a collection of generative drawings created by simulated pendulums spilling sand-like trails on screen. This collection served as my formal introduction to the Ordinals space. Despite launching in the slow market of August 2023, it exceeded my expectations, with all 100 pieces minting. 

My experience with Ordinals significantly deepened my understanding of Bitcoin. Before Ordinals, I had a surface-level grasp of the bare basics, but suddenly, I was learning about UTXOs, PBSTs, and setting up my own node. Once I had become completely immersed in this ecosystem, I wanted to create art that celebrated Bitcoin and Ordinals Protocol.  Like many collectors, I found myself staring at mempool.space throughout the day to watch the fees and block times for my transactions. From that, The Blocks became an artistic exploration of the Bitcoin mempool. Each piece is based around a 75x75 square grid reminiscent of the mempool.space visualizer. The first 44 historic pieces serve as digital plaques of important Bitcoin/Ordinals moments, and the rest of the collection is divided among five abstract styles that bring unique twists and visual themes. At its ethos, the collection represents the merging of art and blockchain under Ordinals protocol.

Now, at the end of 2024, I've announced my upcoming project Hashed which expands on the idea behind The Blocks of merging blockchain and art. Hashed utilizes recursive endpoints available on Ordinals protocol, allowing the art to respond to real-time blockchain data. The design represents abstract Bitcoin mining machines based loosely on the look of retro plugboards of early computers and cipher machines. The current hash displays in the numbers scattered within the machine design, and more data including block number, time since last block, and average fee are displayed in the animated frame. The pieces all have interaction for collectors to discover as they play with the Ordinals on-chain.