gm.scribe is proud to present to you the debut collection on Bitcoin by the renowned generative artist, Camille Roux.
Résilience marks a seminal moment in the Frenchman's lifelong engagement with the art of mathematics; the product of a year’s experimentation spent drawing inspiration from the isolines of Signed Distance Functions. These isolines will be familiar to you: in the road atlas’s contours of curving hills and valleys; in the weather’s flexing barometric swells of storms.
In Résilience, each edition represents a distinct slice of life; an imprint of our mental steel through turbulence. Each of us face times of challenge in our lives; experiences which unsettle us, cause distress, and test our limits. Be it rebounding from a losing bet, a difficult break-up…even the flatness after scaling our own Mont Blancs and ‘making it’. From out of these adversities, Résilience emerges like a set of battle scars: each a trophy of the remarkable human ability to push through chaos and pain.
On Form
Each edition of Résilience captures an organic, vertical pathway of ‘life’ as it passes through the turbulence of a geometric ‘event’. Although this transit temporarily distorts the line, in each case it emerges and returns to its original stability in a testament to human fortitude. Events in a host of magnitudes of shapes and sizes distort and colour the lines as Roux illustrates life’s experiences: a kaleidoscopic multitude of patterns, animations and margins. Some outputs are very dense, whilst some are minimalist with small shapes. Some feature large events that feel insurmountable, almost too big for the frame to contain. You may read long journeys in the patterns, or see a tiny segment of a whole life’s chart. Sometimes there are multiple lines in which we might read the intersection of families, friends, and lovers. Of course, ultimately, this abstract collection is open to you, the collector, to interpret.
The Larsen Effect
For our artist, each output of Résilience charts the endurance through an intimate trauma, which paradoxically sprang from one of his great pleasures- improvising live jazz and blues: “Around eight years ago I was preparing to play guitar next to an amplifier, when a huge note of feedback pierced my hearing in the soundcheck. I developed a strong case of hyperacusis and tinnitus: even tiny sounds, such as glasses set down upon a table, became unbearable. I struggled to sleep, and retreated away from friends and social gatherings. I thought to myself, ‘OK, so this is going to be my life now.’ But I slowly started to recover after four years or so. Step by step I could do more of the things that I used to enjoy: going to the restaurant, the cinema, and seeing friends and family. The Covid pandemic was a perverse blessing; allowing me the space for peace and quiet during which I experienced dramatic improvements. Sometimes I have remissions- living as we say in France, ‘sous l'épée de Damoclès’- but being able to give a talk in front of 500 people at Devfest in Toulouse, November 2023, was a huge moment of resolution for me- even if I asked the audience not to applaud at the end!
Hatching Patterns
This redemption coincided with an intense period of study in which Camille sought a way to express his emergence from that long, dark spell. Résilience is the project he has worked the most on to date; his research focusing on design, during which numerous experiments were conducted to perfect the use of hatching patterns. A satisfying materiality of texture was borne by this research, the product of Roux’s predilection for printed outputs in tandem with his digital work. As a musician, he compares his process of composition to playing on a modular synth: creating parts and combining algorithms until he finds the rhythms and colours that syncopate. It’s the project that has sprang the most astonishing surprises. Discovering isolines that could collide against, smash through, and interact with geometric barriers, he found the mathematical structures which would enrich the hatching patterns, phrasing the collection’s signature aesthetic and narrative- a toast to your own moments of personal triumph through adversity.
Traits
| Trait | Options |
|---|---|
| Lives | 1, 2, 3 |
| Event Shape | Circle, Triangle, Square, Spike, Line, Circle (Annular), Square (Annular) |
| Event Type | None, Sliced, Sliced & Warped, Pixelated, Pixelated & Warped, Enlarged, Shrunk, Layer Shifted, Event-Specific Slicing |
| Events | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
| Palette Tint | #7e0000#7e1043#7e4310#716b28#000000 |
| Palette Tint Intensity | 0 - 0.35 |
| Original Palette | Classic, Blaze, Harvest, Resolve, Courage, Promise, Dusk, Mystic, Vigor, Perseverance, Rebirth, Bloom, Strength, Horizon, Calm |
| Shuffled Palette | Yes, No |
| Pattern | Circles, Lines, Sines, Hills, Herringbone, Polygons |
| Margin Rule | Standard, Strict, Alternating, Strict (inverted), Standard (inverted) |
| Dark Paper | Yes, No |
| Margin | Small, Medium, Large |
| Lines | 0, 1, 2, 1 all around, 2 all around, 1 inside, 2 inside |
Colour
A unique palette is selected for each edition, as the code assigns a tint colour and mixes it with random degrees of other tint colours: black, darker shades, and sometimes slight adjustments to the original palette. The resulting ways in which the colours combine, transition, and evolve can be highly varied. The main palette was sourced from Camille’s early work on fx(hash) to give a sense of continuity across his body of work. It was then modified using transparency in order to make its textures more tangible and print compatible. Interestingly, there is actually no green in the palette, though the gradients give that sense.
Detail
Résilience is designed to be appreciated both up close and from a distance. Each edition is teeming with details at every level. For instance, the artist’s monogram (CR) and the individual token ID are both hidden within the pattern. You can also press the spacebar and witness the slow evolution of this piece over time.
Animation
Pressing the space bar provides a very slow animation. This was a deliberate choice, allowing for your Résilience to be kept on the screen all night as the colours slowly shift. Come back to your screen in half an hour, and the piece could look very different. Colours are fixed on the parameter between 0-1, and your Résilience will cycle through all the gradients until it returns to the beginning of the cycle. The insides of the geometric shapes are also animated to distort in the shapes.
(GPU disclaimer - this is computationally demanding, featuring 64x subpixel antialiasing).
Collection Size 150
We invite collectors to find the edition that echoes in their own life’s line: with the hardships they've conquered, and their resilience’s inevitable momentum.
All things must pass.
Acknowledgements
Almost a year ago, I showed my work to Haiver during a studio visit. When I explained the meaning of Résilience, he told me that I should perhaps distort the paths of ‘lives’ as they pass through the geometric ‘events’ to illustrate how they are affected. Immediately, I got an idea about how to do that. As soon as we hung up, I coded my idea and loved the result! Later I coded different distortions and animated them. I also have to thank Piter Pasma. The problem using parallel lines for the hatching pattern is that it creates Moirée. To avoid it, I had to code a strong anti-aliasing. Piter gave me a lot of help to find the best AA for my case and on how to implement it.
Finally, I’d like to thank my family, girlfriend, and friends… but also collectors and followers. They’ve always been kind and encouraging. The creation of a project like Résilience is far from smooth sailing. It requires a lot of research, hesitation, trials... It's amazing to have people around me who support and encourage me through every step of my projects!
- Camille Roux, Montpellier, October, 2024