J So, when I personally think about your art, my mind immediately goes to your generative art. What is the process like of creating one of these pieces? R Well, I usually create somewhat of a rough draft in Illustrator where I can just draw shapes freely. That also helps me figure out a color palette, for which I’ll usually go on Instagram and check out images that have been posted there. After that, I’ll typically drop all of my sketches and colors into an Illustrator file and put shapes together to see what I want to then do in Processing. Once I have that figured out, I’ll open up Processing and replicate the shapes that I’ve designed in Illustrator. Then, I can start applying random variables to them and that’s when we start to get things that are unexpected. I can also duplicate and manipulate things really quickly, which is where it becomes a lot more interesting than just some image in Illustrator. J You talked about inspirations, where do you find yours? Are there specific creatives that have inspired or pushed you to take your art in a certain direction? R I have to give a lot of credit to my professor John Carpenter, who I’ve learned under for two classes and now serve as his student assistant. He is the one person who really introduced me to creative code art. Without taking his classes and seeing the work that he’s doing, I don’t even know if I would have had a strong interest in it. He’s also very active on Instagram and always showing me what he’s working on as well as other people he’s inspired by. He showed me this one artist named Manolo Gamboa Naon, who also creates very colorful and geometric work with Processing. Also on Instagram, I found an artist named Dimitri Cherniak based out of New York. All of his art is made with JavaScript, so it’s also web-based. His portfolio is also very geometric and he does a lot of 3D work, which is something I also enjoy. He mostly sticks to primary colors, which is cool because when people think of primary colors, they probably don’t imagine they’re all that interesting, but his work proves that they definitely can be. He also followed me back and will reach out to comment on my work, which is pretty special to have that aspect of mutual respect for one another’s work.
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JASON CERIN + EDEN TOKATLY