Catalog view is the alternative 2D representation of our 3D virtual art space. This page is friendly to assistive technologies and does not include decorative elements used in the 3D gallery.
Free the Pixels (FTP) is a Facebook group created in 2014 by Lloyd Newell and Joelle Duval with over 16,000 members dedicated to sharing pixels with each other. Here’s a quote from the welcome statement: “This is a liberated zone for open source digital art. No copyrights or any restrictions on use are allowed. Anything posted here may be used by anyone to create new open source digital art. “
The Pure Abstract FTP exhibition is a continuation of the efforts of artist and independent curator DC Spensley to foreground the FTP artist community and celebrate this unique and important effort. Art that can be contributed by anyone and remixed by anyone makes this group significant, and represents the highest ideals of art making in my opinion and is one of the reasons this community flourishes and has gone through many phases. Artists come and go all the time and the work posted is always fresh and a source of wonder unencumbered by commerce or academic concerns.
The choice to create a show centered around non-representational abstraction is a starting point, an experiment, a discussion about what abstraction is, and the myriad understandings of what digital abstraction can be. My work, and the work of the admins has been deliberately left out of this show as a demonstration of propriety.
If this show goes well, there will be subsequent shows with different themes, other discussions, and more wonderful, thoughtful, generous FTP artists. Thank you for viewing Pure Abstract FTP, and to the following Artists who are featured in the exhibition: Paul Anslow, Δαυιδ Άτλας, Burnie Elfhonderd, Marco Martinez Farias, Bob Georgeson, Dave Hogg, NlixilN, Mark Klink, Jesús Lastra Martínez, Carmen Racovitza, Miguelangelo Rosario, Jakob Stolte, and audio contributor August Tea Rager. Thanks to Don Hanson and his team for sharing New Art City with our community, Lloyd Newell and Joelle Duval, Admins of FTP for their hard work, and ALL 26 artists who offered their amazing work for consideration!
DC Spensley – May 2021
> Turn your sound on! (about half volume) > To view an artist's work, find their name in the center and walk down the path to their display. > You can always get navigation tips, take screenshots, adjust your sound, sign the guestbook etc. by pressing the ESCAPE key. > Questions? Comments? Send them to dc@ficsci.com > Special thanks to August Traeger for the sound sculpture! August Traeger blends abstract digital composition, databent sound sculpture, and dense electro-acoustic landscapes into a swirling soup of weirdness. Since 2013 he has released a string of diverse albums and audio-visual artworks on various labels including his own Bicephalic Records. www.augusttraeger.net DC Spensley – May 2021
Based in England, 57 year old Paul came to art late in life as self-prescribed therapy when he lost his brother - painting him being his first attempt at art since leaving school. Being self-taught, he deliberately avoided other art for a period as he tried to develop his own style. "I try to get out of the way when creating - to let the unconscious, the dream-maker, have an influence as i set logic and rationality aside for a while. It has always fascinated me how abstract art gives the imagination freedom to find what meaning it will in the abstracted forms. And i love digital painting - there is such scope for creativity So abstract and digital were made for each other."
My name is Burnie Houtvast ♀, my stage name is Burnie1100 and I live in Almere, Netherlands. The starting point of a work is always a mathematical form or a free form. The techniques I use to edit them come from the tools of open source software such as Inkscape, GIMP and Paintnet. I also use various drawing, photo and glitch apps. The finishing touch is the power to combine the results that come from these possibilities to achieve my own specific, exceptional, indefinable result that makes up my artworks. I am curiously looking forward to the show. And Yess: Long Live FTP!
My work is the result of a disembodied neural network trained on a storytelling dataset: each image contained within this dataset contains simply actor/s doing something at a location--very general, but with a profound effect which I can mix with other existing neural network models to harness the creative potential of this medium and use it to create the good old mentally and spiritually therapeutic abstract art we all know and love with a quite impressive nonrepetitive output volume (tens of thousands of pieces created so far!)
Marco Martínez is a digital artist based in Chile. His work focuses on unconventional video mapping projections and the creation of real-time generative visuals. He has performed at MUTEK, LE FESTIVAL OFF D'AVIGNON, FUGA JURÁSICA, WOMAD, among others. Visual artist of the immersive works "Sonpendular" and "Navas, un accidente geográfico", Master in Design and Multimedia Communication, Tracor The Arts Institute, Madrid, Spain. "I am very interested in the interdisciplinary intersection where scientists and artists propose a collaborative space for questions, research and the creation of a conceptual imaginary. On the other hand, I am interested in proposing unconventional and immersive video mapping narratives, where movement, light and sound design manage to generate temporary spaces of trance”.
Bob Georgeson is a digital artist, experimental film maker and sound artist, writer, curator and facilitator. He is host and curator of the anonymous waves White Page Gallery, artist and curator at The Wrong Biennale, founding member of dadaland collective:, artist at SPAMM, noemata.net, Homeostasis Lab, Fu:bar Glitch Art Festival, Peripheral Forms, One Minute Artist Films and member of the Glitch Artists Collective, Free the Pixels and The Perfect Users. His work deals with the themes of alienation, isolation and loneliness and the impact of new technologies on communications and society. He exhibits and collaborates around the globe from his home in a remote location in south eastern Australia. His website is www.anonymouswaves.org
Where did it start? Surprisingly, in a small village outside Jaipur, India. I was working with textile printers using wooden blocks to apply vegetable dyes onto cotton. This was very much a cottage industry with each family producing a set of traditional designs. New, more innovative designs were needed but commercial designers repeatedly failed to understand the mechanics of working with block printing and natural dyes. Out of necessity, my daughter and I started producing our own designs, initially with water colour paints and a sketch pad then using CorelDraw on our PC. Having been persuaded to join facebook, I was intrigued by the interesting,original abstract work being produced by a new breed of on-line artists. Drawing on my experience with textile design, I began pushing my software into, at least for me, uncharted territory. I wanted to produce random artifacts and glitches and then work them into something more coherent. On discovering Free the Pixels, I felt I’d joined a community of supportive like-minded people. All power to the Pixels!
Mark Klink has been and done many things: Swept floors, worked in a factory, been an athlete, a minor government official, a life guard, a computer programmer, and a traditional print maker. For twenty years he taught children and other educators how to use computers. But the thing he likes best (beside family) is making curious pictures.
Romanian writer and artist. Interested in designing a world made up of pre-real/unreal/nonreal/surreal titbits.
Born 1963 in K-Town, Germany, lived in Paris, Ibiza, now in Berlin. Independent VR artist and VR design coach. For more then 30 Years he creates design for individual and public spaces: Theatres, Stages, Clubs, Events. Starting 1986 with an airbrush, the tools have changed a lot over the decades. Since 2013 he uses 3DS Max to create visual art. His VR Cyberdelics and the CybARdelics To Go ! have fans all over the world. Immersive psychedelic trips in color and motion. Besides his many websites, Sketchfab is the platform to enable users to see his art in VR...
"What lies at the boundary between the artificial and the natural world? What connects nature, the digital space and the realm of the human mind? These are the questions I investigate with my work. I'm searching for the "other". Using generative workflows, controlled and randomized at the same time, I approximate natural processes like growth, condensation, synthesis and decay."