alive

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Tibout Shaik

It's (a)live is an art series created to celebrate the launch of 256ART and the unlimited possibilities generative art can give to artists. Art is on chain.

Meet [Tib](https://twitter.com/ShaikTibout), a talented creative coder and artist who is pushing the boundaries of digital art with his innovative approach to generative art. Tib is the founder of [256Art](https://256art.com/), a generative art platform that showcases on-chain art and the stories behind the artists. He has a drop on ArtBlocks out called [(Dis)connected](https://www.artblocks.io/collections/presents/projects/0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069/431). Today, we have a chat with him. 

### Can you give a brief introduction of yourself?

Sure thing, my name is Tibout, but most people in the space know me as simply Tib. I'm a generative artist with works released on multiple platforms (ArtBlocks, FxHash and of course [256ART](https://256art.com/) of which I am the founder). I'm also always looking to expand my personal generative art collections, often times focusing on lesser known but in my opinion very talented artists.

### Could you tell us a bit about your background and how you got into art and coding?

Absolutely! I really love this question as for a long time both art and coding have been passions of mine, but for a long time I somehow never thought of combining the two until I found out about generative art that is. Artwise, I was mostly focused on music and prose. I used to play the drums and the piano and for pretty much as long as I can remember I have always been writing prose. Throughout my life I have often times performed with my prose as well in Belgium and have some of my poetry published. My mum is a fine arts restorer and she used to work at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. I think my exposure to the visual arts has come pretty much entirely through her and my grandmother, but at the time I never actively pursued visual arts myself. As for how I got into coding, thats an entirely different story. In highschool I had a small internet store for an online card game, but I wasn't the developer behind it. After highschool I went traveling and ended up living in Costa Rica for a while. It was in my tiny, somewhat shoddy, but lovely apartment I decided I wanted to learn how to code. My routine in Costa Rica would look something like: travel around the country for a week, learn how to code for a week. I still look back at that time incredibly fondly. Eventually I went on to do two years of university before dropping out to start another company. Over time both art and coding became two important pilars in my life, but I had somehow never thought to combine them. That all changed when I stumbled upon a small project in the NFT space called [Open Palette](https://www.openpalette.io/), this was also my first time directly engaging with generative art. The project had a simple core idea: you have on-chain color palettes and you can mint generative art using your palette. I instantly fell in love with the idea and decided to explore further. I've always been a person when I absolutely love an idea I go waaaaay down the rabbit hole and it will pretty much take over my life. Which is exactly what happened and I've loved and worked on generative art ever since pretty much, both from the artist as the platform side.

![ode-to-black-and-white](//images.ctfassets.net/0ty17mikmgai/774PUUFR9GhTJXLoTtXecW/8efe197a9fde6c616cde7a2c2d8a2ced/ode-to-black-and-white.png)

### How did you find your way into Web3 and creating art?

Hah, I guess I already answered this somewhat in the previous question. But to go to the start of my web3 journey we have to look at the Hive blockchain (Steem back then). In short, it's a chain where part of the inflation of the currency goes to authors of, mainly, written content. It must've been around 2016 and I was very heavily focusing on my writing at the time, so a place where I could get rewarded for that seemed incredible. What I didn't expect is how the community at Hive took me in and over the years became a bit of a slightly dysfunctional family, haha! Over the years I created a few dapps for that community and while I'm less active there now, I still often check in. If we're talking more specifically about the NFT scene, from around end 2020 it was on my radar, but I hadn't taken the time to really dive into it. From mid 2021 that changed as I found myself with more spare time after I had to stop work on my previous venture, a social media app for travelers, due to Covid. It was an especially low point for me as I had been working on the project for three years. My first generative art project was in essence in big part, me finding my groove again.

### Do you remember the first time you heard about NFT Art?

Hmmm, I'm not sure what the first time was I heard about NFT Art, but the one that got me very intrigued is the Open Palette project I mentioned above.

### Who or what are your biggest influences or sources of inspiration?

Oh god, there's way too many to name that's for sure. In my own works for a long time I was struggling with color palettes and I think that's where you can see most of the external influences of my work. I did a lot of research into the palettes from works I thoroughly enjoy and more specifically into why those colors work so well and what emotions they invoke etc. You'll very clearly see color palettes inspired by both digital and non-digital artists like Edward Hopper, Van Gogh, Rothko, Grant Yun and XCopy. 

### Why did you choose to make your art projects fully on-chain?

For me the preservation of my art in a decentralized way is incredibly important. Both when I create and when I collect art. Simply put, the best way to preserve generative art is by having it entirely on-chain. At times it feels like a fight as it seems a lot of people currently don't value or understand the preservation aspect as much. I think it requires a pretty long time horizon, at least a few years, in order to fully appreciate how important preservation will be for digital art.

![circles-in-a-square-world](//images.ctfassets.net/0ty17mikmgai/19Tmjsghb4jjyrBEhchzLR/63acb512e4a6684977e0cab86e9a00e7/circles-in-a-square-world.png)

### What inspired you to create 256Art?

In short, when I was just experimenting and playing around with what generative art is and what is possible with it, I found, fairly unexpectedly at the time as it was just me playing around / experimenting, some success with my work. At the time it was prohibitevely difficult and expensive for artists to release their generative art on Ethereum and only the top artists had the opportunity of being selected by the very few platforms that were around at the time. I felt there was a need to provide a place for upcoming, clearly very talented generative artists, where they could release their work AND tell their story without having to worry about the difficulties and cost that come with releasing on-chain generative art on Ethereum. With 256ART we cover all the costs for the artist and put a lot of focus on the story behind the artist and their work, which I at times find a bit lacking in the generative art world. We also put a lot of focus on technical improvements, on the smartcontract side we were the first platform to store the art in the contracts bytecode, the first to lower the minting gas by 4x and the first to offer a getArtFromChain function (which allows a collector to directly get their art from chain). Right now we're working on taking all of this a few notches up in our transition towards a fully open platform where any artist can release their work fully in-chain at a cost another 2 - 4 times cheaper than is currently done.

![256art](//images.ctfassets.net/0ty17mikmgai/3fFC6OXKE4bId1ZlZMv9YD/0639a99b27622bc963c7adee136622a9/256art.jpg)

### Which tools do you use to create your art?

I personally prefer to work in vanilla JavaScript without any external dependencies. As for tools, I guess my laptop with my preferred code-editor VSCode. And coffee, does that count as a tool, haha?

### Where do you see on-chain art going in the future?

I love this question. I think on-chain, and especially in-chain, art will become more and more important. As time passes I think two things will start to happen: some art will be lost forever as it was stored off-chain AND storing on-chain on the Ethereum mainnet will become more expensive as gas and the price of ETH increase. I do believe eventually we'll see a transition to a layer 2 solution for on-chain art, where art on the mainnet will be kind of wow-ed over. With that said, there are of course a lot of factors that could mean it plays out another way and this is a prediction that will like take a decade or more to play out.

### Which piece of artwork do you not own that you want to collect?

Hah, there's A LOT of those. Two artists that I don't own any work of at the moment, but would really love to collect some work from at some point are [Harvey Rayner](https://pattern.co/) and [Emily Xie](https://xie-emily.com/).

### What can we find Tib doing when he’s not busy creating Art?

Usually working on 256ART to be honest, haha! But I do really enjoy traveling and going on multi-day treks. 

### Thanks for taking the time for this conversation. What is the best way for people to follow you and your work?

I think the best place is likely my Twitter: 
[@shaiktibout](https://twitter.com/ShaikTibout)
. The 256ART Twitter and Discord are also good places: 
[Mint256Art Twitter](https://twitter.com/Mint256Art)
 and [256Art Discord](https://discord.com/invite/avPZxhPzYr).

tib-interview

We get to know Tib and learn about his experiences as a generative artist.

An Interview with Tib

tibimage

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hellofahmid

AIORBIT is an exclusive on-chain NFT collection crafted by AI with the goal of contributing to humanity through innovative technology.

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The Usagi House

BONBON is the 1st Pixel Rabbit NFT released 100% on-chain!

1160

1208

1449

1152

1137

1469

1589

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int art Profile Picture

int art

An interactive, evolving, generative collection.

vid-thumb

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Ponderware Profile Picture

Ponderware

There are 8192 lawless who have forgotten who they are. Who will they become?

1511

1006

1084

1054

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Frank Force Profile Picture

Frank Force

espress0

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xtremetom

Crypto Coaster is a collection of 2000 randomly generated 3D roller coasters. An experimental, on-chain VR compatible 3D NFT.

coasterthumb

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Monas - Profile

Monas

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CryptoAsimov

Hexamillennia is generated entirely on the EVM. Released under CC0.

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Chainleft

Chaos Roads is a fully onchain, EVM-generated, runtime crypto-art collection.

Chainleft is an integral contributor to the on-chain community who provides so much knowledge and value to the space. He just released a project, [Chaos Roads](https://opensea.io/collection/chaos-roads), that is pushing the boundaries in many ways (including a fully on-chain minting website, what?!). It is our very honor to interview him and learn more about his background.

### Hey Chainleft! Can you give a brief introduction of yourself?

Hi, I’m [Chainleft](https://twitter.com/ChainLeftist). I’m a West Asian immigrant. I finally settled in Central Europe after living in six different countries and started a family here. In the crypto space, I’m mostly focused on art and historical NFTs. I’m also openly leftist, I aim to contribute to bridging the gaps between leftist ideals and the trustless automation of the smart contract systems.

### Could you tell us a bit about your background and how you got into art and coding?

My background is in data science; I’ve previously focused on machine learning in the fintech space, but recently I’m more on the e-commerce side. Having coded numerous data visualizations in the past, creative programming was a smooth transition. I previously did street art and photography as a hobby but never professionally. Today I’d probably call myself a blockchain native artist focusing on glitch art, on-chain art and conceptual art.

I like going beyond using blockchain only as a medium for transacting art and use it as the canvas itself. In this moment of art history, blockchain allows a vast number of new concepts to be realized. Tokenization, programmability, and crypto-social relationships open up unique possibilities where we can create art that is uniquely possible only with blockchain. These possibilities endlessly fascinate me.

### How did you find your way into Web3?

I’ve heard about Bitcoin long before, but I only got actually interested in blockchains when I heard about smart contracts. The trustless use cases smart contracts unlock fit my personality and my political alignment much better. At first it was simply thinking about what DAOs can do. Then it was researching altcoins and trying to understand their use cases. Most of these turned out to be scams, but I truly believe those use cases will be achieved some day by genuine builders.

### Do you remember the first time you heard about NFTs?

I’ve heard about NFTs back in 2017 during CryptoKitties mint, but I truly “got” NFTs only in 2021. I believe it was either int.art or Art Blocks that really made me feel like “OK this is the same feeling I have when I hang an artwork on my wall in real life. It’s the same feeling, projected in the digital realm."

### What sparked your interest in historical NFTs?

It was probably immediately after getting into NFTs. In the peak mania of 2021, there were so many mints happening per day that it was very clear it couldn’t have been sustainable. I have tweets from September 2021 calling 99.9% of pfp projects scams. There was a need to find scarcity within NFTs, and historical NFTs with immutable timestamps were the inevitable answer.

### Could you briefly explain the concept behind your project Chaos Roads?

![chaosroads](//images.ctfassets.net/0ty17mikmgai/5FVsSiFQ47gMT1Gj8Wd1m4/560783d1351521c4947d759b710db187/chaosroads.png)

Chaos Roads is a very rich collection in its concept explorations. My ultimate goal before I even thought about the collection has been to showcase that the blockchain medium we have here is a canvas and we can use it to conceptualize new art forms. This is why I built three art pieces into each token: A visual painting, a musical piece and a poem. All of these artforms would be generated, and then distorted (both literally and conceptually) by the Ethereum Virtual Machine itself, fully within the chain. This is called “runtime art” where the “always-on” Ethereum computer is used to create an always-living art that keeps changing dynamically.

So what concepts could be explored using this runtime medium? EVM gives us an always-on computer, but it also gives us control. So the idea behind Chaos Roads is to explore this relationship between disorder and order. The smart contract is set up to ensure that the pieces distort visually, musically and literally; but it also gives collectors a chance to “control” that chaos.

### Chaos Roads was also the first time an NFT mint site was fully onchain. How did this come to be?

![on-chain-site](//images.ctfassets.net/0ty17mikmgai/4zcwUbbKYJovv1MgTDZ0qo/3bdc408904fd2800e28267223b3eca3a/on-chain-site.png)
*Fully onchain mint site*

There are a few discord servers where the next evolution of onchain methods is being discussed. One of them is of course our Pushers server, but at a larger scale, I would consider Mathcastles (a pioneering art studio that released Terraforms) and Linagee Name Registrar (the oldest NFT smart contract on Ethereum) servers to be places to be for anyone interested in the technicals of this topic. My journey in this rabbit hole started in these two servers.

Mason Keresty, the developer who rediscovered the LNR contract, is a friend. We have chatted a lot before and he mentioned the etherweb protocol they were building in LNR. The protocol at that point was designed to use calldata to store the sites onchain at that point. We talked about the more recent onchain standards and how fully onchain storage at the state level would be a more permanent solution.

In the meantime, other developers built interesting experiments on Arbitrum or on Goerli, and a read-only onchain site was published on the mainnet.

So we decided to do Chaos Roads mint fully onchain. The most challenging part was the allowlist access. This requires access to merkle tree proofs which are normally stored on the website frontend. They’re actually useless after the mint.

0xDerpNation coded a mini version of ethers.js package (an incredibly difficult task) and Mason stored the merkle tree proofs within calldata (this was OK since allowlists are temporary requirements anyway). I added the merkle tree proof transaction link within my mint contract so that allowlist verification can happen fully onchain. Mason then built the minimized website and stored it in ethFS that Frolic had built (another Mathcastles discord alumni). We accessed it through .og protocol and here we are!

We have done dozens of tests and were testing until the very last minute :)

![discord](//images.ctfassets.net/0ty17mikmgai/1LMKPDF5Iinul8HpDFhjbl/722b8af997b9bdabcf20ecab37c981a6/discord.png)
*The eureka moment*

### When creating art what are your biggest influences or sources of inspiration?

For me, art is more than a beautiful aesthetic. I’m deeply interested in medium-native art, where the new medium can cause new concepts to arise. And that’s not just limited to NFTs.

When I was living in London, I was fascinated by street art. Not just the aesthetics of it, but also the culture of it. Using a medium outside its original purpose, playing with the concept of permanent buildings and transitory state of public paintings, and of course the rebellion against the constantly surveilling CCTV cameras. To me, this new art style allowed new thoughts and emotions to be expressed. I remember searching for every new Otto Schade, Cranio, Banksy piece in the streets.

When I look at NFT space, artists that use the medium to communicate new thoughts and emotions inspire me the most. I’ll definitely forget some but some are: Rhea Myers, Mitchell Chan, Sterling Crispin, Simon de la Rouviere, Nili Werner, thedude, Crash Blossom, 0x113, remnynt... Aesthetically I’m a big fan of glitch art. Obviously XCOPY, but also JAK, Manic, Hafftka. Too many to count to be honest!

### Why did you choose to make your art fully on-chain?

I recently wrote [an article about this](https://mirror.xyz/chainleft.eth/CzPqeZliHEZ2WFcyDiMJtWuwQTJDKZUNEw5YCJ-AweE)! For me, beyond the obvious practical persistence advantages of onchain storage, fully onchain art is also conceptually very interesting. I listed four reasons in my article:

A) In the transitory world of NFTs, knowing something will be permanent is very interesting. It’s almost a critique towards ever-changing narratives.

![Genesisleft](//images.ctfassets.net/0ty17mikmgai/6ouFomGWkJs3GreXmEdeZY/3a8318772981be2932272a4f12df22b6/Genesisleft.gif)
*Genesisleft*

B) Painting the medium that’s meant for financial transactions is a big F* YOU to the finance maximalists. We’ve seen this recently with the lash out against ordinals from Bitcoin maxis. This is enough reason for me to mint stuff onchain :)

C) When a medium comes with new concepts but also introduces restrictions, people start innovating. The amount of cost optimization I’ve learned over the last 1.5 years is an artistic journey in itself, and I love this process.

D) Specifically for smart contracts, onchain art also creates very interesting mechanics like permanent dynamism, programmability or social coordination.

### What advice would you give to someone who is interested in creating fully on-chain art?

Onchain doesn’t have to be expensive as people say! I started with 1/1s and learned how to optimize SVGs. Artists and developers are finding new ways to optimize even further and things are getting cheaper per gwei!

![early-chaos-roads](//images.ctfassets.net/0ty17mikmgai/5jLeMmJpAaPSrSl0XtQumV/90b7ff485740710ea69e7609140d80cf/early-chaos-roads.png)
*An early sketch of Chaos Roads*

I’m now building gen-art where thousands of pieces can be created by storing only 25-30 kb of smart contracts, with minimal mint price. This is by far the most innovative niche within the NFT space. Onchain art is the frontier of not just NFT art, but art in general in 2023.

### Where do you see on-chain NFTs going in the future?

Storing art onchain is fun, but I think we can go beyond that. I think a lot more “onchain mechanics” exploration will happen. I’m hoping to see more interoperable experiments, and more social coordination art onchain.

### Which piece of artwork do you not own that you want to collect?

I think an onchain collection is never full without an [Autoglyph](https://www.fullyonchain.art/collections/autoglyphs) :) Almost impossible to come by, but one can hope!

### What can we find Chainleft doing when he’s not busy with NFTs?

Either working at my day job, or playing with my kids.

### Thanks for taking the time for this conversation, what is the best way for people to follow you and your work?

You can find me in our discord server [Pushers](https://discord.com/invite/m2rMTHpw3j), in Bluesky as chainleft.bsky.social and on Twitter as [@chainleftist](https://twitter.com/chainleftist).


It's (a)live

It's (a)live is an art series created to celebrate the launch of 256ART and the unlimited possibilities generative art can give to artists. Art is on chain.

An Interview with Tib

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