Hyperrhiz 29

Interview with Harvey Rayner: Exploring the Futuristic Side of Generative Art

Harvey Rayner

Interview by
Merve Güven Özkerim

Citation: Rayner, Harvey and Merve Güven Özkerim. “Interview with Harvey Rayner: Exploring the Futuristic Side of Generative Art.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 29, 2025. doi:10.20415/hyp/029.int04

Abstract: This interview focuses on the fundamental dynamics and potential of web3 art through the creative practices of Harvey Rayner.

Keywords: long-form generative art, algorithmic creativity, randomness, Web3, blockchain, post-digital aesthetics.

Interview

Merve Güven Özkerim: When did you become interested in algorithmic and creative code practices? How do you think your diverse background in geometry, mathematics, philosophy and art shaped your algorithmic and creative code practices?

Harvey Rayner: I first started making algorithmic art about 12 years ago, before people even called it “generative art.” Back then, I didn’t think of it in those terms I was simply building tools to explore certain geometric ideas. At the time, I was really interested in quasi-crystals, so I created tools to visualize and explore them. I wasn’t thinking of it as “art” yet. But after about a year of building these different visualizers, I realized that while I wasn’t uncovering anything significant from a mathematical perspective I’m not a mathematician, more of a hobbyist the outputs themselves were really beautiful. That’s when I began to approach it more as pure art, rather than just an attempt to explore math or geometry.

At that point, I wasn’t a professional artist. I wasn’t making money from what I was doing this was before NFTs but I was still very dedicated, putting in hours every week even though it wasn’t full-time. When I connected with Art Blocks in 2021, everything shifted. I essentially dropped everything else I was doing and became a full-time generative artist. I had this strong confidence that if I submitted something, it would be accepted. And I wasn’t wrong they did accept me. At that time, getting onto Art Blocks felt like a life-changing opportunity, almost as if you were financially set for the rest of your life. Things were wild then. I came in a bit toward the tail end of that moment, so I missed some of the frenzy, but it still gave me the chance to make a good living doing something I loved.

In some ways, it felt like I had been working as an artist for 25 years before that without ever really making money. Like I said, I was never professional, but I was still putting in the work. Looking back at those early years, 12 years ago when I was making quasi-crystal visualizations, I was definitely writing code, but I didn’t see it as making “art” with code yet. I was building interfaces and tools for patterns, and that overlapped with my work at various startups, where I created user interfaces for manipulating patterns in different products.

Before that, my art was mostly pure geometry, and although it wasn’t code-based, it was still very structured and rule-driven algorithmic in a sense, though I was the one carrying out the algorithm by hand. And I think there’s an interesting point there: in some way, all art is algorithmic. An artist’s process the way they develop a visual language, the rules and marks they return to can itself be seen as algorithmic, even if it isn’t written in code.

I mean, everything I do is tied to thinking and reflection. I also enjoy writing about my work. But I wouldn’t say an art project for me begins with a philosophical idea. Rather, the philosophy evolves alongside the work as I create it. For example, my current project with ChatFUKR doesn’t look particularly philosophical on the surface, but as it develops, it’s opening up a lot of interesting things to think about. There are layers of meaning and reflection that emerge in the process. We can go into more detail on that later.

As for the mathematical side, the math I use isn’t particularly advanced. It’s mostly trigonometry, about  90 percent of it. There’s a lot of it, sure, but it’s not complex mathematics in the sense of pushing the boundaries of the field. It’s more about using familiar tools and concepts in creative ways, rather than pursuing something technically groundbreaking.

Merve Güven Özkerim: How would you define the relationship between art and game/play? Do you use gamification in your work?

Harvey Rayner: I’m not a gamer. I’ve never really played games, mostly because I don’t have the time. I think I could easily get into them, but I’ve always been disciplined about not starting, since I don’t want to spend creative energy there. That said, the closest I’ve come to making something like a game was with Quasi Dragon Studies. It wasn’t exactly a white paper, but the project had a long-written description that people really needed to read if they wanted to participate and hunt for the black dragons. That aspect turned the whole thing into something like a game a mix of gaming, collecting, and trading. It felt like a new kind of crossover, an intersection between those worlds.

The project began with me creating the art piece, but then I spent about a month developing the underlying technology the composite builder and everything that powered the system. In that phase, I felt more like a technology builder than an artist. But once we launched, I actually felt like I was pulled into the game myself. I found myself negotiating, helping people cooperate, and almost acting as a market maker. We kept trying to find ways to maintain dynamics in the project to bring liquidity back in without breaking or changing the rules.

Quasi Dragon Studies ran for about 500 hours in its first phase, and we were determined to stick to the framework we had set. The one intervention we introduced was something called the “Dragon Dealer,” where we bought back tiles at a fixed price to help restore liquidity. But that was something anyone could have done it didn’t change the rules. It simply kept the system moving and allowed collectors to get closer to the tiles they needed

That whole process felt very much like a game. I also learned some important lessons. For example, some participants became deeply engaged almost addicted to the hunt, spending far more than they probably should have. That made me uncomfortable, because I’m not interested in creating projects that veer into gambling or risk people spending beyond their means. So, I probably won’t do something quite like that again.

Still, it worked. The collective hunt for the black dragons, and the way the community of collectors themselves created rarity through their actions, was a fascinating proof of concept. But it was also stressful for me personally. I became close to many participants, which meant I also became a mediator, trying to balance people’s expectations and help them achieve their goals without altering the rules of the project. By the end, I felt almost like a politician, negotiating with the community to find solutions.

So, while I wouldn’t call myself a game designer, there was definitely a game-like quality to that project a kind of trading game that emerged organically through the way the system and the community interacted.

Merve Güven Özkerim: Can you tell us a little bit about the part-whole relationship in Quasi Dragon? Do you think blockchain technology has had an impact on this relationship?

Harvey Rayner: I don’t think a project like Quasi Dragon Studies could have existed before NFTs and blockchain. Even though the tiles themselves were off-chain, it’s hard to imagine doing something like this without the NFT community and the kind of large-scale interaction it enables. Trying to run a project like this in the conventional art world just wouldn’t work. In that sense, Quasi Dragon Studies is very much a product of its time, it could only really have happened with blockchain. Without minting the composites as NFTs, the whole system and its goals would have felt meaningless.

In practice, the tiles you combined in Quasi Dragon Studies were kept off-chain to avoid high costs and gas fees during trading. Only once you built a composite was it minted on-chain. So technically, the blockchain was mainly essential for recording and selling the final outputs, the composites themselves. It wasn’t an indispensable tool in the mechanics of the project.

But having said that, the culture around NFTs the communities, the behaviors of collectors, the trading, the transparency that was absolutely essential. Without blockchain, we wouldn’t have had that culture, and the project simply wouldn’t have unfolded in the same way.

So, while I didn’t use the blockchain in a particularly innovative or technical way, it was still a crucial part of the project indirectly. It created the ecosystem that made Quasi Dragon Studies possible.

Merve Güven Özkerim: Do the people who are part of Quasi Dragon have a relationship with you or with each other? Do you think this work could be a way to strengthen communication between people or between generations?

Harvey Rayner: There was a huge amount of communication between collectors during Quasi Dragon. Before the launch, I had no idea how much secondary trading and cooperation would take place to get the black dragon pieces. But once it started, my Discord was busy day and night. You could still scroll back through the history and see it people constantly talking, negotiating, or trying to get a specific tile from someone else. A lot of that activity even moved off Discord into private DMs. For the full 500 hours of the first phase, it was non-stop. And even now, some people are still quite engaged, still making composites and continuing to explore the project.

That communication itself became part of the artwork. I was very active in the Discord, and it reminded me of my earlier Fontana project. When that dropped on Art Blocks, there was this huge burst of collective community activity in their Discord like a big celebration that lasted a couple of weeks. It made me realize that the community’s response, the way people gather and interact, is actually part of the artwork. It completes the project in a sense. That’s what got me interested in the role communities play in Web3 art. Compared to the traditional art world, where maybe you open a show and people come and go without much interaction, the level of engagement here is radically different.

You also asked about generations. That’s another fascinating aspect, because on Discord, nobody really knows anyone’s age. I always thought I was on the older side of the space I’m nearly 50 but I’ve since discovered there are plenty of people older than me, as well as, of course, lots of younger people. Age just isn’t a big barrier here. Even in real-life events like NFT.NYC or Art Blocks gatherings, you see people of all ages mixing. That kind of cross-generational communication is something unique to this space.

And then there’s the relationship between artists and collectors in Web3. There’s a much more direct line of communication. Not every artist is as social as I am, but for me, being in conversation with the community is essential it’s part of the artwork itself. The community influences decisions, and I want to keep finding ways to involve them as projects evolve. For example, even some of the funds we raise could be set aside for charitable purposes, and I’d like the community to have a voice in deciding how that’s allocated.

Different types of projects have different community dynamics too. In the PFP world, identity and community are deeply intertwined those projects live and breathe through their communities. Generative art communities are different; the culture is less about identity but still very collaborative. With ChatFUKR , I’m trying to bridge the two worlds: it’s fully generative, but it also explores how to cultivate a strong, engaged community.

Merve Güven Özkerim: Do you think that blockchain technology can contribute to collective movements in art? Does the sense of community have a special meaning for your work?

Harvey Rayner: I actually think that when we look back in, say, 20 years’ time at this moment in art history, the most interesting thing will be the way communities evolved. I believe that’s the real innovation in art right now. Generative art, in itself, will eventually just be another medium. In 10 years’ time, it won’t feel particularly special just like oil paint today isn’t interesting in and of itself. What people will continue to care about is how human behaviuor changed.

When we look back at Web3 art in 20 years, I think we’ll recognize it as the moment when community co-creation truly began when communities became deeply involved in the curation of art, and when the line between artist and collector blurred in a way we hadn’t really seen before. There were isolated experiments in the past, but nothing like what we’re seeing now. It has become normal, whereas before it was exceptional. So, when we reflect on this time, maybe it won’t be called “generative art” at all. Maybe it will be remembered as the birth of community-oriented art. That would be my guess.

Of course, this isn’t something unique to art. The internet has enabled communities to form around virtually everything. If you have an unusual interest, you can find people across the world who share it and build a community. Art is simply part of that broader societal shift.

Merve Güven Özkerim: Do you think Quasi Dragon Studies blurs the line between artists and collectors or audiences? Do you think some technical skills are a must-have for future artists and collectors?

Harvey Rayner: I think I’ve already stated that it definitely blurs. Not all projects, but I believe we’ll see more and more projects exploring that finding different ways for the community to participate. The challenge of building a project like Quasi-Dragon Studies was creating a system where people could interact with it and feel like they were part of the co-creation process, but in a way where whatever they did would always produce something fairly good.

One thing I’ve realized is that if you give people too much creative freedom if you build and hand over too powerful a tool the chances increase that things go wrong, and they end up with visually poor results. Most collectors aren’t very confident creatively that’s why they’re not artists. So, you have to design the interaction so that people feel like they’re being creative, but really, it’s very hard for them to get it wrong. They’ll always end up with something I’d be proud of. That’s a really interesting challenge.

When I talk about community co-creation, in some ways I’m also saying that the art is still fundamentally about creating the illusion of community co-creation. If you look at projects like QQL, for example, collectors have a lot more power to change the parameters, but 90% of what they generate ends up not looking very nice. Or take FXHash params, which never really took off it wasn’t satisfying to interact with, because 99% of the outputs didn’t feel rewarding.

And then there’s the technical side. If you want to be a generative artist, you obviously need strong coding skills just to make the work. But as a Web3 artist, you also have to wear many hats. Coding is probably only half of what I do. You also have to be a marketer, a community builder, sometimes even a negotiator. Personally, I really enjoy the community side it’s a big part of my work. But not all artists do.

That said, this idea of artists wearing multiple hats isn’t unique to Web3. Take someone like Damien Hirst he does a lot of different things beyond just making art. Over the last 50 years, plenty of successful artists weren’t necessarily highly technical, but they had other strengths promotion, networking, or storytelling. At the end of the day, artists are storytellers. Even if you have someone else painting your pictures or writing your code, you still need to tell a convincing story about why your work matters and get it in front of people.

Generative art is maybe more like music. You can’t really fake your way into it. To make music, you need some technical grounding you have to play an instrument, read music, or compose. It’s the same with generative art: unless you have a ghost coder writing for you, you need to code. There’s no way around it right now. Maybe AI will change that in five or ten years, but at the moment, it’s still very technical.

Merve Güven Özkerim: What do you think the concepts of originality, creativity, uniqueness and aura mean for algorithmic art? Do these concepts have any meaning for your work?

Harvey Rayner: I think the fundamental challenge of creating good art is the same whether you’re making a painting, geometric art, or algorithmic art. The essence doesn’t change you’re still trying to create variety within unity. You’re still trying to create something beautiful. Originality is always important, no matter what medium you’re working in, and it’s something I value deeply.

If I look at my peers and see someone doing something too close to what I’m doing, I lose interest. I think it’s the job of an artist to find their own path and create something only they can do to try and be original. I can understand why people from a traditional art world might wonder, how can you be creative when you’re writing code? But that scepticism has always existed whenever new mediums have emerged. People said the same thing about photography “you just point your camera and click.” Yet, most people would agree that to be a mathematician like Einstein requires creativity, or to write a book requires creativity. You don’t necessarily have to engage your body in the same way as a painter for the process to be artistic. It’s simply a matter of time before people come around to the idea that coding, too, can be a creative act.

And then there’s uniqueness, which for me is closely tied to originality. I’ve said this before, but it’s really important to me. Originality is evidence of having gone through a difficult process, of pushing into places where others haven’t gone. People are fundamentally impressed by that. Just look at Instagram: someone might spend weeks or months creating a massive ballpoint pen drawing, and people admire it simply because of the effort involved.

In the last 50 years, art has often moved against that, with some works being reduced to gestures like throwing a bucket of paint at a wall. But in generative art, and in Web3 more broadly, people really do appreciate the technical difficulty and the lengths artists go through to produce a project. It’s something that’s valued. You hear the phrase “low effort” used a lot, and always in a negative sense.

Merve Güven Özkerim: In your opinion, have art and technology developed historically within power relations, and have their basic principles been shaped by this dynamic?

Harvey Rayner: I think art has always been whether we like it or not largely about signaling wealth. Certainly, the kind of art that gets sold as “blue-chip art,” at Sotheby’s and similar places, the art we all know from the last century, is a big part of that. A large part of its function is to act as a wealth signal. The fact that these works are essentially useless in terms of utility makes them an even stronger signal. Wealth and power are deeply interconnected powerful people often have money, and people with money often hold power. Spending $100 million on a painting isn’t just about taste it’s directly tied to power.

In Web3, we’re starting to see similar dynamics. Certain collectors are emerging with outsized influence. If they say they like something, that can be the difference between a project selling out or not. At the very beginning, Web3 felt like a level playing field. But over time, it’s becoming more institutionalized. Certain power structures are forming, and people with influence are consolidating it. I guess I have some of that power myself, simply because I’m one of the more recognized artists in the space. That gives me some influence over how others respond.

But this power dynamic isn’t new. It’s always been part of the art world. I think people dreamed that decentralized art would create a true level playing field that every artist would have a fair shot at making a living. But human nature doesn’t really want that. If you’re a new generative artist now, in some sense you’ve almost missed the boat. The collectors who hold works like Fidenza don’t want the “gods” of generative art artists like Tyler Hobbs to be displaced, because that would destabilize the entire economy they’ve built around those works. So, a power structure emerges, just like in traditional art. And for new artists, it’s very hard to break into that top tier.

It reminds me of abstract expressionism. You had a handful of artists Pollock, Rothko who became the faces of the movement and whose works went on to sell for tens of millions. But at the same time, there were probably tens of thousands of artists making abstract expressionist paintings who never broke through. Their work may have been just as good, but timing played a huge role. In my own case, I feel lucky. Talent and perseverance matter, yes, but I also happened to come along at the right time. That timing gave me just enough recognition and influence to continue making ambitious projects that people actually notice.

And collectors most of them, in my experience are quite insecure. They buy a Squiggle because everyone else is buying one. It feels like a safe bet. It’s not really about their individual taste or intuition, but more about buying into something that the wider community has already validated. I've never really thought about art in terms of power but it's the same as money really, I think.

Merve Güven Özkerim: If the history of post-digital/post-internet art were being written, how would you position your works within them?

Harvey Rayner: That’s a tough one, because it’s really hard to know how things will be viewed in 20- or 50-years’ time. I personally value originality and innovation, so I’d like to be remembered as someone who was always trying to innovate and create new things. But that doesn’t mean history will remember me that way.

Take Andy Warhol, for example. The fact that he’s so well-known and valued is partly because he had a strong group of collectors who continued to support his work and maintain its value. In that sense, his fame is at least partly a product of market manipulation.

It’s hard to predict who will be remembered and how it’s not always about talent. It would be nice to think it comes down purely to talent, but the reality is more complicated. Art history is a funny business. All I can really say is that I’d like my work to be remembered as good art.

Merve Güven Özkerim: Do you have anything else?

Harvey Rayner: I can talk about art all day long.

I wrote a short essay about why I thought generative art might be historically important, where I was really just focusing on the medium. I still think we’re in an exciting period in art. The things we’re making today through generative approaches are images we couldn’t even have imagined five years ago. When I was in art school, I was making paintings that easily could have been painted 50 years earlier. It’s very hard to paint something today that would have been unimaginable half a century ago. That’s what’s so interesting right now we’re creating new visual languages that simply couldn’t have been conceived of before. But in 20 years, that novelty will fade, because these aesthetics will be absorbed into what everyone is used to seeing.

One thing I’m particularly interested in with my current project is the intersection between generative art and PFP culture. What I’m working on now has the potential to be taken seriously, even though on the surface it’s a ridiculous project commenting on a ridiculous culture. But that’s exactly the point it’s commentary on something real happening in society, this so-called “Degen” culture. In that sense, generative art is starting to have a real subject matter.

In the last 50 years, so much art has been commentary on society. Think of artists like Banksy or KAWS: their work often involves cartoony, almost playful characters, yet those figures carry sharp social commentary. I’m aiming for something similar. As the project evolves, I see it moving toward a new kind of portraiture one that comments on what it means to be human. I’ve always wanted to make art like that. Even though I’ve mostly worked in a very abstract way, I’m a fan of work that touches people on a more human level.

I’m also very interested in how PFPs will evolve. As we spend more time in digital spaces, people will want to represent themselves in ways that feel meaningful. Self-representation has always mattered it’s important how we show ourselves to our peers. Right now, PFPs are still crude, just simple cartoons. But I believe they’ll grow into much more sophisticated forms of self-expression, almost the digital equivalent of how we present ourselves in real life. That’s something I’m trying to explore through a generative approach. It’s still early days, but I think there’s potential for PFPs to become something far more complex, nuanced, and revealing.

Where PFPs will be in 20 years is impossible to know, but that’s exactly what excites me. It’s the kind of question that drives my thinking at the moment.