Artist Jimmy Griffith, aka Remnynt, was born to make intricate art. 

Diagnosed as a baby with nystagmus, a condition causing involuntary eye movements, he says he was drawn to hands-on art activities with complex mazes and maps, where he could get absorbed and focus closely on the visual task. 

By age four, he was drawing labyrinths and atlases for his own made-up games. And by high school, he was coding games for friends on a TI-83 calculator.

Today, Remnynt says that software is his artistic medium. His first experience with generative art came in 2008 when he studied how computer graphics could reproduce in real-time throughout gaming worlds thanks to mathematical algorithms and fractal geometry. He then worked for over a decade in the gaming industry, where he says he coded experiences that hundreds of millions of players got to enjoy. Now a generative artist, Remnynt applies his indie gamedev roots to algorithmic art, exploring what happens when randomness and creativity collide. 

His first collection, “Vibes,” was released in October 2021. It is an on-chain generative art series about the power of color theory. His latest exhibition, “Proscenium,” transformed visitors into “Agents” who could influence the artistic process by selecting variables like paint color and the height from which the paint was dropped onto the canvas. A generative algorithm handled the rest, dispensing paint with such liberty that fumes filled the studio, and beads of paint bounced across the canvas.

This interview was held at Marfa Art Blocks Weekend, in the lounge at the Thunderbird Marfa, where Remnynt revealed his behind-the-scenes practices for getting in the flow state, his inspirations, and the kinds of digital art tools he uses.

‍Note: This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

OpenSea: What initially drew you to generative, algorithmic art of this style?

Remnynt: What drew me to generative art initially was probably video games. I was fascinated by the idea of pseudo-random numbers being a multiplier on an idea space. For example, in a game, you could create a terrain or a system of terrains, and the randomness would multiply the possibilities. All of a sudden, emergent properties come from layered systems, and you have archipelagos, volcanoes that you never intentionally programmed. Discovering those was pure joy.

OpenSea: That’s awesome. I love that. It’s interesting how many people have entered this space from video games. What tools or platforms do you use when creating?

Remnynt: All my work is JavaScript. To me, it's the language of the internet. Essentially, it's a webpage. I tend to avoid any tools that TK [CAN YOU HELP ME IDENTIFY THE NAMES OF THE PEOPLE HE SAYS HERE?] were making. It's just personal preference. I really like to know the ins and outs of each API, each touchpoint of the code, and get as close to the computer as I can — as close to the metal. Because that’s where you can discover opportunities to explore glitches or mathematics that can create outputs you would have never expected. And I think there's a real beauty there. It’s sort of like a quest, or a hunt, to find beautiful things hidden in ideas.

OpenSea: How do your personal experiences, your culture, or your background influence your work?

Remnynt: I grew up in nature and the outdoors. Scouts, hiking, going to the beach with family, and living by the ocean. That had a profound effect on me as far as giving me a deep appreciation for the world and the universe in general. In a way, I feel like art can be a sort of asymptotic approach to the actual world. We're always trying to encapsulate how it makes us feel or how it looks. There's this level of grandeur that's almost unattainable, unreachable. We're constantly striving to create something that captures it, and I think those moments when you get close, or closer than you've ever been before, are very special.

OpenSea: What are some practices that help you get into a creative flow state?

Remnynt: Getting into a flow state can be a challenge. I have two little kids — they’re three and one — and they are a great joy in my life. They can be a little loud sometimes, working from home, but, um, what really gets me into my flow state is a ritual of making coffee. I do a pour-over, I sort of meditate over that, and I focus on what I want to do for the day while I’m making that coffee. And then I enjoy it, wake up a little bit, and, you know, that’s kind of it. Honestly, I don’t have anything else other than that. It used to be music for me, like when I was in games, but for whatever reason, I’ve been more focused on having some peace and quiet when I can get it.

OpenSea: What’s the starting point for you when creating generative art?

Remnynt: I always begin with an idea. For example, with “Proscenium,” the concept was: What if paint could bounce on a world canvas? So then, I started building a three-dimensional terrain. I suspended paint drops in the air and implemented the physics so that when they collided, they not only bounced off but left a mark. And what that did was create this initial possibility space, and you just get wrapped up in exploring it. What if I change this? What if I change that?

One of the big breakthroughs, actually, with that piece was when I took the terrain height map and made the mountains, the skyscrapers, and the buildings unimaginably tall. I added zeros to the variables, orders of magnitude. And the way it stretched out the shapes when it all projected back down to two dimensions on the canvas was, honestly, breathtaking for me. Experiencing and discovering that was incredible.

I was so happy to bring it to life and share it with others, finally, after nearly 600 days of working on it. But, so, I guess all this to say: You might start with an idea, but the medium is going to guide your hand as you go. It’s a process of back and forth, a process of discovery. It’s so hard to articulate all of that and take those 9,000-something lines of code and distill it down into the essence of all those subtle moments, looking at where I changed it here, changed it there, what I was thinking then.

And so, this piece I did here at Marfa, I was trying to capture that same starting point — take that idea of paint bouncing on a world canvas and recreate it in person, physically. So, we built these giant ramps out of plywood. My wife is an exhibit designer and an artist herself, and she helped build those. We laid canvas strips across them and got bouncy balls covered in paint. All the participants could help create a new artwork there, bouncing the paint on those ramps and spinning and painting the balls in different ways. The result was more beautiful than I could have imagined. I was so blown away by it.

All this just to create a contrast and say: the digital piece and the physical piece, even though they start from the same place, the media drive the artist’s hand and take you to different places. And I wanted to show that software is a medium. So even if I tell you it’s paint — it’s digital paint — it’s not. It’s something that we don’t even have a language to articulate yet.

OpenSea: We've been hearing all day about the desire of this generation of artists working in the digital space to not have their work defined by it being digital. That's been a recurring theme, and it’s so interesting. It used to feel like, because it was the beginning of computers being able to make art, you wanted to show that it was made by a computer—that alone was an interesting concept. But now, it’s more about making art in the way that you make it, whatever that process looks like for you, and focusing on the finished piece rather than how it was created. It’s fascinating to see how this has become such a central theme.

Remnynt: Yeah, absolutely.

OpenSea: Do you find yourself continuously revising your work, or are you able to step away?

Remnynt: Walking away from a piece is very, very hard. With “Proscenium,” I learned that I want to keep working on a piece until it stops working on me. Because when it’s no longer working on me, I’m just wasting my time. I need to be finding a new piece to explore. And, you know, I could tweak color palettes forever, and I probably would love to. But there’s only so much time on this earth, and I have so much more to explore. 

OpenSea: What does it mean to you to be here in Marfa?

Remnynt: It’s been a dream come true to be here at Marfa. Meeting the humans behind the PFPs I’ve followed for years, hugging people, sharing stories — it’s been incredible. Connecting with collectors, fellow artists, and legends like Erick Calderon (Snowfro), who created this escape hatch for digital artists, has been amazing. I wouldn’t be here without his vision for Art Blocks.

OpenSea: Finally, where can people find you online?

Remnynt: You can find me at vibes.art, my studio site. It catalogs my work and includes links to everything, like my smart contracts and my Art Blocks Curated piece, Proscenium. I’m also on Twitter (or X) at @Remnynt — that’s “Remnant” with a “y” instead of an “a.”

OpenSea: Awesome. Thank you so much!

Remnynt: Thank you! This was fun.