Hey all,
We’re amped for local summer here at the Jersey Shore and stoked that the Jersey Shore Tech & Design’s Talk Series events are back!
Today we’re featuring a 5 question interview with Craig Phares, one of the speakers at the Jersey Shore Tech & Design – Creative Talk Series (#200) event. The title of Craig’s presentation is Making Generative Art For Fun And Profit. Enjoy!
Craig Phares is the founder of Six Overground, a digital agency located in Monmouth County, maker of LinkMy.Photos, and all-around technophile. Craig has spent his life building and launching digital products, while constantly learning and streamlining the maker process. He also runs Serial Maker, a community of makers and doers. Follow Craig on Twitter.
Here’s a description for what to expect from his upcoming Making Generative Art For Fun And Profit talk at the Jersey Shore Tech & Design event:
In 2021, long-form generative art entered the mainstream with the help of NFTs and the blockchain. Inspired by the potential for true real-time code art, Craig immediately dove head first into the world of creative coding. In this talk, Craig discusses the research, tools, and thought processes behind his five projects on fxHash, a major generative art platform and marketplace. Checkout Craig’s recent project ANSITUNES.
Interested in learning more about research, technology, and thought process behind the development of his ANSITUNES project? Go enjoy Craig’s post ANSI Art + Chiptunes = ANSITUNES.
🙏 Thank you Craig for taking the time to answer our questions. It’s actually six questions, but who’s counting?
Lately I’ve noticed a move towards incorporating more and more audio into generative artwork. This isn’t necessarily something new, as the demoscene has been doing this since the 1980s, but it’s relatively new to the contemporary generative art scene. This may also be recency bias, as my latest project ANSITUNES is heavily geared towards sound, and now I’m paying more attention. Projects like AlgoRhythms by Han & Nicolas Daniel, Polychrome Music by Rafaël Rozendaal & Danny Wolfers, and DOM2 by Milian Mori & Leander Herzog all feature audio as the main theme of the work. I feel like I’ve only started to explore music-driving-visualization (and vice-versa) as a generative art form, and I’ve recently been diving even deeper into this subject.
As an artist, if you look back at your work and don’t hate it, you’re not improving. There may be some things I’d change, but I’m incredibly proud of my very first project on fxHash, CMYK (Death of a Medium). For me, it was a long-overdue foray into pursuing my own art. The concept of taking a traditional medium (print) and ripping it apart represents my own attempt at moving away from commercial work and starting something for myself. The work’s success is likely due to its simplicity. It’s a pretty easy concept to grasp, and it clearly references pop art while staying true to the core principles of generative art. I don’t think I could have chosen a more appropriate subject to begin my generative art journey.
Make the thing you want to make.
The thing that impresses me most about our local creative and tech community is the amount of top-tier talent we have in our own backyard. When I first moved away from the NYC area to the Jersey Shore, I couldn’t believe we not only had enough people locally to hold a meetup (let alone a tech conference), but that these people were doing some really impressive work. Having the ability to bounce ideas off others in person, get feedback on things I’m working on, and collaborate with talented designers and programmers in our community has been a major boon to both my commercial and personal projects.
My all-time favorite place to grab lunch in the area is Bond Street Bar in Asbury Park. It’s a quick and cheap lunch spot with friends, but I also like sitting at the bar alone and brainstorming ideas while sipping a beer. Make sure you try the tater tots.
Location: Working remotely from a home office most days, since losing my private office during Covid. Will infrequently work out of CoLab in BellWorks to be around other people.
Workstation: Herman Miller Aeron Chair I picked up from a floor sale in 2007. Will move between a seated antique desk and a standing hightop desk depending on how I feel that day. I keep a candle and a rubber duck (rubber duck debugging) at my desk alongside coffee brewed in a Moka pot. I talk out loud to my rubber duck a lot.
Hardware: 16-inch Apple M1 Max MacBook Pro alongside an arsenal of various Apple and Google mobile devices and other project-specific hardware devices.
Coding Software: Visual Studio Code, Xcode, and Android Studio.
Design Software: Figma, Blender, and Adobe Creative Cloud.
Other Software: Slack for clients and internal team communication, Discord for communities, Google Workspace for email and calendars, GitHub for code.
Servers: AWS, Vercel, Heroku, Netlify.
Brainstorming & Todos: Daykeeper (custom beta software) and Moleskine sketchbooks.
Music: Spotify, mostly chiptune playlists lately.
Thank you for reading. We’re stoked for Craig’s featured presentation at the Jersey Shore Tech & Design – Creative Talk Series (#200) event. Thanks again Craig!
Jersey Shore Tech & Design events are hosted in collaboration with The Center for Entrepreneurship at Monmouth University. Founded in 2010, JST&D community events cover various innovative technology and design topics, engage local professionals and students, and help foster the creative energy and community in our own backyard. Let’s build together 🚀