1/ Matt DesLauriers (@mattdesl) is one of the most respected figures within generative art and creative coding, and Meridian is his most celebrated work.

Next in our “Collecting The Algorithm” series is a deep dive into Meridian and its creator. (🔗 below)

2/ In this editorial, we’ll share more about DesLauriers as an artist and creator, why we appreciate Meridian, and how we’ve curated the algorithm at Curated.

Cofounder @curated | Builder and Fine JPEG Collector | Mint a meme by casting frameme.xyz

2/ In this editorial, we’ll share more about DesLauriers as an artist and creator, why we appreciate Meridian, and how we’ve curated the algorithm at Curated.
https://www.curated.xyz/editorial/collecting-meridian

3/ DesLauriers is a Canadian-born artist based in the UK. He’s been a prolific contributor to the open source community and often teaches workshops and talks on creative coding.

4/ The artist first premiered on Art Blocks in April 2021 with his Curated release Subscapes.

While he was already well known amongst the creative coding community, Subscapes put DesLauriers on the map with generative art collectors.

5/ In September 2021, DesLauriers released Meridian.

Despite being on “Art Blocks Playground”, the collection was very well received, selling out near instantly and becoming perhaps DesLauriers’ most popular generative art collection.

6/ Meridian is a collection of 1,000 landforms constructed from tiny strokes of color.

In a 15kb Javascript program, DesLauriers manages to produce an incredibly wide range of beautiful outputs, each with richness and depth that can only be appreciated by looking closer.

7/ The artist, DesLauriers, drew inspiration from Canadian landscapes during summer vacation, blending his history with natural systems and pen plotter constraints to shape Meridian’s layered rock structures and textured strokes.

8/ Meridian contains perhaps one of the best examples of emergence in generative art: Meridian #801 aka “Starry night”.

It was a complete surprise to the artist and a reminder of the magic found in the serendipity of generative art.

9/ In 2022, DesLauriers published the Meridian book.

It stands as one of the best books on a long form generative art collection and includes essays about its development, along with showing every single piece in the collection.

10/ Our curation of Meridian was inspired by seeing incredible physical prints in various galleries and homes around the world.

Our bar for curation is quite simple: how good will it look in large print, while covering a range of traits and palettes.

11/ Since Subscapes and Meridian, DesLauriers has established himself as an innovator and leader in the ecosystem.

He’s released celebrated collections, including his Folio collection on Bright Moments and is releasing a work-in-progress documentary on generative art.

Introducing a new way to render on-chain digital art for both digital and print:

💥 Create high-res images & GIFs 
🖼️ Generate print-ready files
🎨 Customize the art 

Learn more 👇

12/ He is also the creator of the widely used Art Blocks Renderer, a public good for generating media assets for Art Blocks projects — and a direct inspiration for our Curated Renderer.

12/ He is also the creator of the widely used Art Blocks Renderer, a public good for generating media assets for Art Blocks projects — and a direct inspiration for our Curated Renderer.
https://warpcast.com/curated/0x563f2e05

13/ Meridian is an encapsulation of Matt Deslauriers’ artistic practice.

To truly appreciate the collection, one must look closer, both in its visual outputs as well as the foundational code that it’s built on.

Read the editorial:

13/ Meridian is an encapsulation of Matt Deslauriers’ artistic practice.

To truly appreciate the collection, one must look closer, both in its visual outputs as well as the foundational code that it’s built on.

Read the editorial: https://www.curated.xyz/editorial/collecting-meridian

14/ Thank you to @emodi, @plutonium, and @mattdesl for reading drafts and shaping our thinking on this piece.

4/ The artist first premiered on Art Blocks in April 2021 with his Curated release Subscapes.

While he was already well known amongst the creative coding community, Subscapes put DesLauriers on the map with generative art collectors.
https://www.artblocks.io/curated/collections/subscapes-by-matt-deslauriers