Swiss artist Leander Herzog has spent nearly two decades building a practice at the intersection of code and abstract animation on the web. His work has been acquired by institutions including ZKM Karlsruhe, HEK Basel, and Francisco Carolinum Linz, and exhibited at venues including Kunsthalle Zürich and Transmediale Berlin.

We sat down with Herzog to discuss Infinite Garden, his ongoing on-chain work presented at Zero 10 at Art Basel 2026, the metaphor of the garden, what it means to hand authorship to collectors, and how he thinks about making a work designed to outlast him.

OpenSea: You've been making images with code since 2006, well before NFTs had a market or even a name. What kept you at it through the years when almost no one was looking?

Leander Herzog: The medium has always been very exciting. Just the possibility to try things with software, without permission or consequence, is super addictive. Making images from nothing and then giving them life, is still timeless fun and indistinguishable from magic. The occasional comment or like from other artists, was totally enough to keep us going. 

OpenSea: When you start a piece, are you designing a system and discovering what it produces, or do you have an image in mind and work backward to the rules that make it?

Leander Herzog: Sometimes I do have an image in mind, but then I still end up somewhere else. Predicting what a system does at scale is almost impossible. You can rotate an apple in your mind, if you’re lucky. But beyond that it gets difficult and that image is never what actually happens. My brain still comes up with these images. Sometimes I go after them, just to get rid of it.

OpenSea: There's a recurring idea in how your work gets described: the contrast between the simplicity of algorithmic systems and the complexity of their emergent properties. Is there an example where the output genuinely surprised you, where the system did something you didn't put there?

Leander Herzog: Yes, the colors. I’m using a system of palettes, random, and change over time. It’s not complicated, but applied to all the flowers over all the gardens, it unfolds into a diversity and variation I really enjoy. This is typically the last thing I tweak before releasing a work, and it’s a special moment: You can ruin everything. Or get lucky and find a little spell, usually just one or two lines of code, that really makes it work. 

OpenSea: Infinite Garden treats the blockchain as an expressive medium rather than a ledger. Why a garden specifically? Did that metaphor come from somewhere personal?

Leander Herzog: Some of my earliest childhood memories are of my aunt's garden in the Swiss mountains. It’s a beautiful social space that embodies a lot of what I want from art. The garden is also something many artists return to again and again. It’s infinite complexity and a timeless technical challenge. An impossible fight that will always defeat you. Yesterday I looked at some hyperrealist paintings of grass by Franz Gertsch. Today I saw a great tiny patch of grass by Albrecht Dürer from 1503 and felt a little urge to pick another fight. 

OpenSea: The collector becomes a gardener, so you're handing over part of the authorship. Was there anything difficult about giving up that control?

Leander Herzog: It’s not easy to find the right amount of control to share. I have to consider what will happen when 10, 100 or 10000 collectors start to interact with it. Some of this can be designed and tested. But there are always a lot of unknowns in that transition. 

OpenSea: Flowers can be merged, gifted, and assembled into gardens that keep changing. Once people started doing it, did the social behavior surprise you?

Leander Herzog: It was not far from what we expected. But enabling any social behavior, and actually seeing it happen is still a surprise. Because the nature of these things is to just not work at all. So when it does, it’s magic. The number of friends showing up for this was totally unexpected. 

OpenSea: "Infinite" is a big claim. The contract outlives the show, the gallery, maybe you. How do you think about a work meant to keep running without you?

Leander Herzog: Every time I mint, it’s a mini death, I need to permanently let go. A good memento mori. It’s scary too, because it makes me come back to the work and ask “is this still good?”. A risky question to ask around an immutable artwork. The answer could change, but the contract will not. I don’t know if the durability will manifest as advertised, but I marvel at the beauty of the concept. 

OpenSea: “Infinite Garden” went to Zero 10 in 2026, in your home country. Does showing this work in Switzerland change what it means to you?

Leander Herzog: We had a great time, it was a special moment for me. Wonderful to meet so many gardeners, friends and strangers from all corners. To me it represents the time of everybody helping to make it happen. And the statement of Nguyen Wahed, showing up to run the world computer at Zero 10. 

OpenSea: OpenSea acquired an edition of “Infinite Garden” from the show floor. How do you think about the role of cultural stewards, including museums, in your legacy? 

Leander Herzog: It’s a good signal and we love the support! The work has been shown at Nguyen Wahed in New York, enabled by OpenSea and Shape. Museums like HEK helped my work to become more visible, online and in shows. Which includes the effort to install and present it properly – plus they are getting a lot better at conservation and preservation. We just need a lot more of this. Ideally while we’re alive. 

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