10 Digital Artists: The Reign of Generative Art
In the world of digital art, a fascinating field has been blurring the boundaries between human creativity and computational algorithms. Generative art brings together human intention and the emergent patterns created by computational systems.
Whether you are an artist looking for inspiration, a curator working on an exhibition, or a digital arts fan looking to discover digital artists, this list is for you.
Here’s a list of 10 talented digital artists, or creative coders, that create beautiful artwork that evolve and self-generate based on given set of rules.
Scroll to learn more about them! Here’s the featured artists:Ivona TauSarah RidgleyKaoru TanakaMarcelo Soria RodríguezEmily XieArtemisAnna LuciaStudio MoodsoupMelissa WiederrechtShunsuke Takawo
Ivona Tau is a generative AI artist from Vilnius, Lithuania. She holds degrees in photography and mathematics and a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence. As an active researcher, she published multiple scientific papers in the field of Computer Vision and Artificial Neural Networks.
Her work has been featured in solo and group shows worldwide including at Art Basel Miami, Times Square, Bright Moments Berlin, Sotheby’s London, and Frieze LA. She was elected as one of the TOP 10 Women in AI by the Women in Tech Foundation in 2o22.
Ivona works with generative neural networks (GAN) and digital as well as analog film to explore the notion of universal memories. She aims to create universally relatable memories and evoke emotions through custom AI models.
We love her collaboration with Germany-based photographer Michael Schauer, UNDER THE WAVES, which depicts our world getting swept away by the powerful force of nature. The generative cities project suggests to the impending doom of the environmental crisis while reflecting upon the limitations of humans with regards to artificial intelligence and nature.
Sarah Ridgley is a creative coder based in the USA. Her art has been widely exhibited and she has been invited to speak at panels such as FemGen at Art Basel Miami in 2022. The event had a focus on highlighting women artists amongst the generative art and creative coding community.
Sarah Ridgley “paints with code,” and explores hand-drawn aesthetics in the computer-drawn pieces. While aiming to blur the boundaries between the two, she designs her own algorithmic brushes to present a highly-ordered chaos. She works with Processing (p5js) and JavaScript to build her programs and also creates augmented reality animations of her generative art.
We love her recent generative art project, Ateliers, for its simple elegance in blurring the boundaries between the computer-generated and hand-drawn. The artwork experiments with planes and edges and reflects upon Sol LeWitt’s observation that “the most interesting characteristic of the cube is that it is relatively uninteresting.” Sarah Ridgley transforms the mundane cube into a symbolic expression of creative evolution.
#59 of 161 unique artworks, Ateliers, 2023 by Sarah Ridgley
“When I first started learning to code, I read a ton of different books and tried to expose myself to as many techniques as I could. I felt (and still feel) limited by the things I didn’t know, so I wanted to know everything. This is a continuous journey, but it keeps me excited and engaged with my work.”
Kaoru Tanaka is a designer and digital artist based in Japan. She creates generative art, installations, videos, wall art, and real-time interactive works, mainly using TouchDesigner. Her work has been featured in various exhibitions and events such as Japanese Contemporary Collection in Bright Moments Gallery in Tokyo and Prada Extends Tokyo.
Kaoru Tanaka visualizes the behavior of feeling the life force through her art. We love her recent work Inhabitants, which is a collection of creatures that once lived in her great-grandparents' house — it’s super inspiring to see the digital art versions of these floating mysterious creatures which she used to play with as a young child.
“Inspiration comes from nature, everyday events, dreams, and interaction with people.”
Marcelo Soria Rodríguez is an artist, business strategist, and a writer. He has built softwares, designed interfaces, founded companies, devised strategies, imagined products and has been participating in conferences and working towards increasing data literacy in society. He also is a talented digital artist who creates interactive and generative artwork.
His work has been exhibited all around the world, such as at Proof of People NYC x Refraction DAO of VerticalCryptoArt in New York, Kate Vass Galerie, Bright Moments Mexico City, and CADAF. Marcelo also maintains a website where he writes about his views and work as well as keeping a series called “Slowing down with…” where he does short interviews with artists.
As a critical thinker, he is interested in expanding the total space that any activity can reach — he uses technology and art to build new relationships and behavior patterns. Marcelo Soria Rodríguez’s brilliant mind is reflected in his art that provokes infinite interactions of a never ending journey.
“Trying to make a machine collaborate with me to create a work of art that will trigger an emotional response in humans is an interesting topic. Also the contrary: making something that will trigger an “emotional” response in a machine. If we can understand what machines at some point “feel”, we will fare better as species.”
Emily Xie is a visual artist, creative coder, and engineer based in NYC. Her work has been collected and shown internationally including at Kunsthalle Zürich, Unit London, the Armory Show, Bright Moments, Art Blocks, Vellum LA x Artsy.net, Times Square, and the StandardVision Artist Showcase in Los Angeles.
Emily Xie creates generative art that resemble lifelike textures and forms. She is inspired by textiles, collage, and wallpaper and puts these physical media in conversation with digital tools through her art. Her materials and patterns find new meanings and stories in the digital context.
Interwoven, for instance, is a generative art project in which she explores the tradition of quilting while drawing inspirations from the “Bullseye” quilt from 1896 by Martha Lou Jones from the LACMA collection. Her search for a balance between chance versus control, the organic versus the systematic, and the abstract versus the representational brings about beautiful generative artwork of which we’re huge fans.
Artemis is a creative coder who creates digital artworks using algorithmic automation. Artemis trains machine learning models to output animated and static visuals and has been releasing work as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
Their work is recognizable for its bold use of colors and collusion of contradictory grids. Artemis often combines classical generative algorithms with custom neural networks to derive visual output from spoken input.
We love that Artemis shares insightful descriptions and information about their art as well as articles on the coding processes of classical generative algorithms and generative machine learning models.
Anna Lucia is an engineer and self-taught digital artist from The Netherlands who is currently based in Cairo. Her work has been exhibited internationally including at Art Basel Miami, Vellum LA, and the Venice Biennale.
Anna Lucia “draws with code,” and writes algorithms to generate artworks. Having a knack for mathematics since she was a kid, she combines computer science with traditional textile work in her art. Along with generative art projects, she creates animations and VR experiences to further interact with her audience.
Make sure to read Marcelo Soria Rodríguez’s interview with Anna Lucia to learn more about her background and journey of becoming a sought-after generative artist.
“In 2019, I stumbled upon Processing, and it immediately clicked for me. Here it was, a medium that created a synergy between the two sides of my brain that had previously only worked in isolation. I started making Processing sketches in my spare time, not even knowing that what I was doing had a name, generative art.”
Stefan Reyniers is a graphic designer and web developer who creates art under the alias Moodsoup. He creates various forms of work including digital still images, animations, long-form collections, physical pen plots, fine-art prints, and generative art.
Fascinated by the conversation between art and science, he cultivates “a childlike wonder about how the world works.” Using JavaScript and p5js as his tools, Moodsoup aims to bring his audience on a journey of exploration.
We love his recent work, Linea Recta, which is a series of artwork created by a generative algorithm that explores a geometric theme where line segments aren’t allowed to intersect. The project is a brilliant reflection on human connection in modern day life — “the paradoxical nature of our increasingly interconnected yet isolated existence.”
“Which laws and conventions, or deviations, shape our world? How does complexity emerge from a basic set of rules? And how can these laws, whether hidden or apparent, be represented visually? Through generative art, these inquiries take shape as innovative concepts, ideas, shapes, colors, patterns and a new aesthetic. The creation of generative art is always the result of a process of exploration, refinement, filtering and optimisation. Sometimes serendipity takes over in the course of this process. That’s when magical moments, unexpected discoveries and happy accidents arise.”
Melissa Wiederrecht is a generative artist and a mother of five from the US who is currently based in Saudi Arabia. She decided to become a full-time generative artist after getting her MS degree in computer science and working on generative Surface Pattern Design. Since getting in the NFT space she has exhibited her art worldwide and has been featured in major publications like Fortune and Forbes.
“Sometime in high school, I had a sort of “life-defining-moment” when I found a book called “Flash Math Creativity” that showed how to use math to make art in Flash. It was then I realized that both of my passions could be combined, coding and art, and was able to make some real generative art for the first time. Having nothing better to do with my art back then, I made myself animated screensavers.”
Her design background and immersion in the Islamic culture lets her create beautiful and unique art. Her generative art project, Sudfah, for instance, was inspired by “the messiness and uncontrollable nature of life and the beauty that can emerge from perceived mistakes and failures.” Sudfah is Arabic for “happy accident” and the project was curated on the Art Blocks platform in June 2022.
Shunsuke Takawo is a creative coder from Kumamoto, Japan. He is also an Associate Professor at the Department of Media Expression at Konan Women's University, and a Representative Director at the Generative Art Promotion Foundation.
His work as an artist is recognizable for its attention to color and texture. Shunsuke Takawo has studied photography during the analogue-digital transitional period, which, he believes, is the underlying reason for his sensitivity to detailed colors and textures.
Shunsuke Takawo advocates for daily coding as an activity to connect programming with daily life — he believes in discovering the small new things in life instead of programming in a purpose- or result-oriented manner. His generative NFT art project, Generativemasks, is a result of this practice.
Generativemasks is a collection of 10,000 unique pieces that’s created by an algorithm which had a focus on “the cognitive nature of human beings trying to find something of characters or life in symmetrical patterns.” The project was a huge success in terms of building a community around Takawo’s work and was sold out in less than two hours upon minting.
You’re already familiar with all these talented artists? That’s impressive! Read 10 Digital Artists: Human meets AI to expand creativity next to extend your horizons.
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