Hyperrhiz 29
Decentralizing Creativity: Matt DesLauriers on Generative Art and Blockchain
Alejandra Castelar-Cerna
Loughborough University
Citation: Castelar-Cerna, Alejandra. “Decentralizing Creativity: Matt DesLauriers on Generative Art and Blockchain.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 29, 2025. doi:10.20415/hyp/029.e05
Abstract: This essay analyzes an in-depth interview with Matt DesLauriers, a generative artist and creative coder whose works embed natural systems into algorithmic creations. DesLauriers discusses his unique approach to the generative art movement, drawing from early computer art to analog mediums like textile design and weaving. He shares his insights on the role of blockchain as a decentralized technology and its ability to support a novel way of distributing and preserving digital art. He also emphasizes the potential of blockchain to reshape traditional power dynamics within the art market. The discussion takes an Information Systems approach to analyze the challenges of decentralization, namely the lack of consensus on terms and definitions and the risks of centralization within permissionless blockchains. The interview provides valuable insights for artists, professionals, and researchers from all disciplines studying the intersection of art and technology.
Keywords: decentralization, generative art, blockchain art, digital ownership, power dynamics, information systems, secure data storage.
In recent years, the surge of NFTs has brought forth a new wave of digital artists who are reshaping the future of the art ecosystem. Matt DesLauriers exemplifies this new generation of artists with a practice that bridges generative art, open-source tools, and analog mediums to reflect on infinity, entropy, and nature. The artist explores these topics in projects such as Sierra, a generative algorithm presented in printed form, or The Sferic Project, a nature-inspired generative work based on Earth’s natural and atmospheric sounds. Both projects express his interest in connecting technological and organic systems. Drawing from early computer art and contemporary graphic art and design, DesLauriers reflects on the impact of blockchain on the digital art ecosystem as an optimal way to preserve digital art through decentralization. Furthermore, he is also interested in analog methods like printmaking and weaving, which together inform and enrich his creative practice.
In this interview, Matt DesLauriers shares insights into his inspirations, creative process, and his reflections on blockchain systems. The interview presents a deeper exploration of the artist’s creative philosophy, exploring the concept of entropy found in nature as well as technology. The discussion also touches upon the benefits of blockchain for digital creators as a secure system for decentralized data storage and data ownership.
DesLauriers’ work elucidates the profound connection between natural systems and algorithmic art, a commonly explored topic within the generative art movement. Randomness, emergence, and infinity are central themes in his practice explored through semi-autonomous algorithmic processes that mimic natural patterns. He also highlights the importance of community in the creation and dissemination of software based art, with decentralization playing a vital role in creating and preserving digital art.
In the process of creating digital artworks, the artist observes natural phenomena and how these inform his practice. Generative art’s relationship with nature is a close one. Generative artists have long explored how natural processes create seemingly random forms like tree growth patterns and leaf venations. The artist then translates these natural processes into algorithms, focusing on the process behind the artwork rather than on the final output. This invites audiences to connect with nature and its processes via technology at a much deeper conceptual level.
Beyond the algorithms developed for his art, DesLauriers also contributes to the generative art community by developing open-source software, providing other digital artists with the tools to expand their practice. In doing so, DesLauriers supports technological innovation and accessibility for the growing community of digital artists.
Digital artists have particularly benefitted from the use of blockchain in two ways. First, blockchain has enabled artists to distribute their work in the native digital format. Before blockchain, digital art was produced digitally but presented in physical form, often in print format. Without decentralization, digital assets run the risk of disappearing along with the platforms that host them, making preservation a major concern for digital artists. By storing digital art on the blockchain, artists can better safeguard against content loss or deletion, ensuring artworks remain accessible and transferable regardless of the stability and longevity of the hosting platforms. Thanks to blockchain’s decentralized mechanisms, buyers have full control over their work in terms of ownership and transferability, effectively removing the need to rely on a platform to trade or dispose of their digital assets. Hicetnunc.xyz was an online open-source marketplace that demonstrated the power of decentralization. The platform shut down after months of success, yet all the art it contained remained intact and able to transfer to other marketplaces. Beyond the technical prowess that allows easy transferability within the same blockchain, the platform showed that it was possible to preserve the integrity of digital assets if they were stored in a decentralized manner. The second benefit of blockchain for digital artists is the distribution of resale royalties, which compensates artists after subsequent sales in the secondary market, a major shift from established practices in the traditional art market.
Although blockchain proves to benefit digital artists by safely storing their art and fairly compensating them for it, this technology still faces several limitations. In particular, storing store large files like video artworks, which often require compression to fit within blockchain’s technical constraints. Therefore, blockchain might not serve as an all-inone solution for all digital artists. Additionally, DesLauriers comments that while there is generative art created by humans, it now has to compete with the influx of AI and machine learning-generated art. The artist argues that his creative practice is led by human decision-making throughout the whole process, thus conferring his artworks with the artistic “aura” that AI-generated art lacks. Herein lies the originality of his art, each piece encapsulates nature-based and human-led knowledge and vision. Despite existing technical and artistic challenges, DesLauriers sees in blockchain a potential new avenue toward peer-to-peer, decentralized, and low-power global communication systems.
Beyond the technological benefits of blockchain for digital artists identified by DesLauriers during the interview, blockchain also has broader implications for digital art creation. The artist reflects on the potential for long-term ownership and the future of digital art. Such implications can be understood from an Information Systems (IS) perspective, as IS seeks to understand the social and organizational applications of technology.
In the blockchain context, decentralization is defined as the process in which a transaction is approved and added to the chain without the intervention of an intermediary authority (Wright & De Filippi, 2015). Zhang et al., (2023) reviewed the literature and described five aspects of blockchain decentralization: consensus, network, wealth, governance, and transaction. Each aspect, the authors continue, is manifested at each of the three different layers of blockchain, namely infrastructure, incentive, and application. Artists and collectors usually operate at the application layer and thus decentralization has distinct implications for them.
For instance, blockchain enables a native medium in which to securely store digital artworks. Secure data storage is a major concern for digital artists, in particular when digital art is vulnerable to linkrot; when hyperlinks become inactive or broken if the platform or websites that host them are shut down or unavailable. In many cases, linkrot leads to the deletion of its contents, including digital artworks. Blockchain solves this issue by decentralizing data storage and allowing its long-term preservation. This gives artists greater control over their creations and balances the power relations between platforms, creators, and buyers, who become complete owners of the artworks they acquire.
The two main benefits of decentralization, i.e., secure information storage and shift in power dynamics, nonetheless, should be taken with precautions. On the one hand, decentralization suggests that the blockchain system is reliable, secure, and lacks power concentration. However, the mere definition of “decentralization” has been challenged by researchers. From a technical point of view, it is even unclear whether true decentralization can ever be achieved due to technical deficiencies like low mining power (Chu & Wang, 2018).
Much like the concept of decentralization is fuzzy, so are the power relations between different blockchain actors. For instance, it has been demonstrated that developers wield significant influence over other blockchain actors due to their technical expertise (Atzori, 2015; Varys et al., 2022; Walch, 2019). Furthermore, studies on blockchain decentralization are mainly technical and at the infrastructural level, often overlooking the social and technical impact of its implementation (Lemieux & Feng, 2021). Consequently, decentralization does not equal disintermediation and does not necessarily lead to it. DesLauriers suggests a potential solution lies in greater decentralization, with locally run networks and zero-knowledge proofs.
The interview with Matt DesLauriers stresses blockchain’s potential to transform not only artistic practice but also to alter the broader power structures of the traditional art market, particularly regarding secure data storage. Indeed, blockchain’s decentralization capability is deeply complex and warrants further examination. While blockchain can change current dynamics in the digital art ecosystem, there are still technical and structural challenges that impede its effective implementation. DesLauriers insights emphasize blockchain’s ability to balance creativity and decentralization. An interdisciplinary perspective between the art industry and Information Systems is then necessary to keep the artistic elements relevant to blockchain while addressing this technology’s underlying issues to reach effective implementation.
References
Atzori, M. (2015). Blockchain Technology and Decentralized Governance: Is the State Still Necessary? (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. 2709713). Social Science Research Network. doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2709713
Chu, S., & Wang, S. (2018). The Curses of Blockchain Decentralization (No. arXiv:1810.02937). arXiv. doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1810.02937
Lemieux, V. L., & Feng, C. (Eds.). (2021). Building Decentralized Trust: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Design of Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers. Springer International Publishing. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54414-0
Varys, B., Duane, J.-N., & Marabelli, M. (2022, March 26). Power Dynamics in the Evolution of Blockchain. Walch, A. (2019). Deconstructing “Decentralization”: Exploring the Core Claim of Crypto Systems. In C. Brummer (Ed.), Cryptoassets (1st ed., pp. 39–68). Oxford University PressNew York. doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190077310.003.0003
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