Image: Kubikino #73

Türkçe okumak için: https://www.buzdokuz.com/2025/02/carolina-melis-ile-kubikino-hakkinda-cagdas-algoritmik-sanat-baglaminda-insan-yuzu-koreografi-ve-postmodernizm/

Interview: Ömer Faruk Karaşahan

This interview is published for the first time on this website (buzdokuz.com). For citations, this link should be used to give reference.

As a traditionally trained artist, you collaborated with the creative coder Enrico Penzo to design and build Kubikino. Did you experience any challenges translating your inspiration/intuition into more technical concepts that can be executed as generative art?

Working with Enrico Penzo was both a challenge and an opportunity. In any creative collaboration, effective communication is crucial, and this is where the challenge lay. Constantly engaging with Enrico provided an opportunity to validate ideas before they were even translated into code.

I liken generative art to planting a seed. While traditional artists tend to focus on the final product, in generative art, the creative process involves crafting the instructions, setting the groundwork, and planting the seed. Once the code is set and the art begins to emerge, I can no longer interfere with the code. I find this approach extremely fascinating, and it points to the direction contemporary art is heading.

Beyond the Kubikino project itself, one of the challenges was gaining recognition from more traditional contemporary art critics. There has been considerable skepticism towards generative art, stemming partly from its context and market. I refer to NFTs as a medium for artistic expression and interaction with blockchain technology, within the ecosystems where they are traded. However, I believe the discourse around generative art in recent years, especially the work showcased by platforms like Art Blocks, signifies a phenomenon that will leave a mark on art history. This will be a turning point for future generations, as we observe artists responding to the rise of new technologies, the adoption of AI, and the increasing use of prompts, instructions and rules as a common practice. Long-form generative NFT art has expanded the discourse on what constitutes art, how art is created, and who can be an artist, and I’m thrilled to be part of this conversation.

Pareidolia is the natural phenomenon of recognizing meaningful patterns (most frequently, faces) out of basic and virtually meaningless geometric shapes. Your work connected this idea to the concepts of identity and sameness, by spotlighting the human face. As part of a long-form NFT collection, each piece is unique and immutable, further supporting the defined context. Is this the key idea behind Kubikino?

Thank you for introducing the concept of ‘pareidolia’—it definitely resonates with the idea behind my work. Before delving into the core concept, I spent considerable time reflecting on the context and meaning of long-form generative art. This form of art somewhat stands in opposition to contemporary art practices, where the value is often placed on the uniqueness of one-off pieces. Here, I had to consider a collection of similar, yet subtly distinct, multiples.

Quotes like “as unique as everybody else” or “different in the same way” came to mind, echoing postmodern definitions where traditional notions of originality are questioned, the line between original and derivative blurs, and the mass production of cultural products often leads to similar expressions of individuality.

However, I aimed to offer a positive perspective on the sense of community and uniqueness within a group. I wanted to emphasise belonging, family, and a collective body of work as a unifying force, rather than the annulment of individuality. This is why I introduced the concept of ‘faces’. The idea is that even small details can create a vast array of personalities, which only become noticeable when compared with each other. In pareidolia terms, each Kubikino might resemble something unique, like a lion, a king, or even rock stars, such as Gene Simmons of Kiss in KUBIKINO #278.

Kubikino #278

To give some personal context to the project, this collection was created to pay homage to and support the United World Colleges (UWC) movement, of which I am a part. UWC is a global movement that uses education as a force to unite people, nations, and cultures for peace and a sustainable future. A portion of the Kubikino sales proceeds went to support the UWC Adriatic Endowment, and I am proud that art can be a contribution.

As explained eloquently on the dedicated website, Kubikino is based on a grid of 25 squares. Depending on certain organization and rotation rules, many different faces emerge, with different perceived moods and personalities. Was your plan to construct a language-like code where each formation corresponds to a human emotion?

Yes, the plan was to strike the right balance between achieving good design and expressing unique personalities. To this end, I developed a comprehensive library of elements that, when combined according to a meticulously defined set of rules, would invariably produce a distinct identity. My fascination with extreme minimalism in design has only grown over time, pushing me further towards what I call extreme essentialism – the art of achieving the most with the least.

In this project, all shapes are derived from the simplest of forms – a circle inscribed within a square – utilising a color palette restricted to primary colours along with black and white. This minimalistic approach surprisingly allows for the depiction of complex human emotions such as happiness, boredom, or hunger. These emotions are conveyed through seemingly simple variables: the size, color, and position of circles on the grid. 

What I find endlessly intriguing about the human mind is its capacity to extract rich narratives from such basic stimuli. This cognitive ability to weave stories or infer emotions from minimal visual cues is at the heart of my work. As an artist, my ongoing challenge is to master the art of storytelling through the most pared-down elements. How can one evoke a full spectrum of human experience with only a few, well-chosen shapes and colours? This question not only tests the limits of my artistic practice but also celebrates the human capacity for imagination and interpretation.

Apparently, one point of inspiration for this project was choreography, in which you were trained. Through the combinations of your generative system, each edition is an attempt at capturing and documenting not only emotion, but also movement. Can we say that Kubikino functions like a dancing notation?

I started investigating the notion of dance during my time at Dartington College of Arts in the UK, an institution known for challenging the boundaries of traditional art forms and encouraging thinking outside the box. Back then, I was intrigued by the definition of ‘choreography,’ which encompasses both the act of writing and the art of conceiving dance. I found this definition to reflect exactly what generative artists do. The work is both a score and an artifact. The score (code) is the art.

We are accustomed to thinking of choreography as bodies dancing on stage, moving to music in front of an audience. However, in my definition, choreography is about organising movement within the concepts of space, time, dynamics, and the relationship between bodies on stage. In this context – which refers to Laban’s theories of movement – Kubikino is a choreographically conceived piece staged on a 5×5 grid, consisting of a set of individual routines and their variations in relation to each other.

If you were working on another generative/algorithmic collaboration, in what aspects would the new project be different than Kubikino?

I’ve been thinking about a new project and I don’t exclude releasing it in the near future. My next project will probably be very different: not about faces but rather about patterns. However, I want to research more about the context of digital art and the relationship between the digital and the physical world – the so called phygital – before I dive into this new project. I think the next step for generative art and digital art in general, will be to find its context beyond the online, on-chain environment, exploring how to present art in different contexts. There’s a completely new world taking shape at the moment.