HARTO: DISCUSSING IMMUTABLE MEMORIES

Harto: Ever since I was a child, I've been interested in art; I've been drawing for as long as I can remember. I always liked to mix art with experimentation—when I was a kid, I wanted to be an inventor or a mad scientist. This experimentation evolved into technical studies, which gradually shifted towards design and art.

I started by studying engineering, then moved on to generalist design, and ended up doing industrial prototyping at La Massana school in Barcelona, which blends art and craftsmanship. The school opened my mind, as its studies, very similar to those of the Bauhaus, had a very multidisciplinary learning plan with open workshops in all artistic fields. There, I learned ceramics, painting, jewelry, 3D modeling, and much more.

Harto: Industrial design and prototyping have given me a technical vision and structure for my artistic practice, especially in the thought processes. I have always been interested in technology and innovation—it serves as a gateway to the unknown. The connection between these two worlds is limitless; I always strive to intertwine my philosophy with blockchain in some way. Geometric abstraction and generative art enable me to create a representation of how I perceive the intangible digital world that surrounds us.

Harto: Until very recently, perhaps last year, thanks to therapy. I struggled to accept my role as an artist. I always had the role of a repressed artist hidden within me. Being an artist is difficult, and making a living from it is an odyssey, as it takes years to establish yourself or to be able to sell your art. In my mind, it was more like a hobby because I believed I could never make a living from it. Thanks to blockchain technology, I've been able to open up and live out a childhood dream.

Harto: When I saw it more as a hobby, I mostly focused on 3D work, collages, character animations, fluids, and other experiments. I created without thinking much about the style or the meaning of the piece; it was fun but not very deep.

As I began to take art more seriously, my style underwent significant changes. I transitioned from surrealist work to abstract and geometric art. I believe I applied some of my design philosophy, where less is more, and simplified much of what I did into something new.

Harto: Yes, I’m inspired by some pioneers, but I like to explore artists from all eras and draw references from different styles. Personally, I have always admired the movement created by the Memphis Group in the 1980s, the experimental movements of the Bauhaus, particularly the works of Gunta Stölzl, and legendary abstract painters like Paul Klee. I believe that the continued relevance of these works is due to their timelessness, which is what I aim for when drawing inspiration from other artists.

Harto: I am someone who doesn't like to set limits; I enjoy researching, innovating, and trying new things. We live in the digital age, which feels like an evolved extension of the natural world, where everything seems unreal, and that appeals to me. I believe that we can take art to new dimensions thanks to the acceleration of new technologies.

Harto: Technology is useful for many things, but the most important aspect for me is the ease of creating iterations or prototypes. When you paint a physical piece, you can spend days or months on a single part of the work, and all changes are extremely slow. With technology, especially with code, I can conduct hundreds of experiments once I have a solid base. It’s true that in the first hours or days, you might be in a stage where the result is not very representative of the final piece, but once you find what you’re looking for, you can create an infinite number of nuances with small modifications.

Another crucial aspect of my work right now is the use of artificial intelligence. I use it daily, mainly to assist with ideas, organization, code bugs, and numerous solutions that would typically take hours or days. We are living in an era of technological acceleration, and this is just the beginning.

Harto: I consider myself a person who likes to explore new techniques and technologies. I experimented with different blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, and Tezos. Each one is very interesting, but something bothered me about all of them: the simplicity of doing things on-chain. I wanted to upload my art in a way that was permanent and immutable. This is not to say that it can’t be done on Ethereum—in fact, I have a collection on Ethereum that is completely on-chain—but it’s heavier, tricky to set up, and more expensive.

Ordinals have very interesting features, such as recursion and parent-child provenance. Recursion allows us to use code that someone else or we ourselves have uploaded to the blockchain and make a callback using JavaScript. This allows a generative artist to upload the parent code only once and inscribe tiny HTML files that render completely on-chain at a very low cost (2-5 times cheaper than on Ethereum).

In the case of IMMUTABLE MEMORIES, I wanted to use the ordinal as a certificate of immutability by connecting the Ethereum artwork (jpg) with the Ethereum ID, creating a second layer for the collector. This layer allows them not only to verify the artwork’s data but also to have an on-chain representation of it in Bitcoin. At the end of the day, the blockchain is just a medium to represent art that can be distributed across different blockchains, similar to how in the real world a traditional artist creates a painting along with a certificate that verifies it.

Harto: The collaboration with the Belvedere Museum was a significant challenge since I had little time to complete it, and I put a lot of pressure on myself because it was the first time I was collaborating with an institution of that artistic level. However, despite the pressure, it was very easy to work with the Belvedere because they gave me total freedom of expression and artistic liberty to represent Klimt's work as I wished.

It was an incredible adventure, as our entire team went to Vienna on the day of the mint, which was an instant sell-out, and we received a lot of support from the community. The piece is a representation of THE KISS, blending my style with that of Klimt.

I attempted to dissect each part of the composition to create something new with basic geometry. The most challenging part for me was to follow the scheme he uses in the work because I didn't want it to be the same. I transformed the human figures into an interweaving of squares, which best represents me in recent years, along with noise, paper textures, and effects that evoke the sensation of viewing something old.

The flowers are not as prominent in the original work, but I drew inspiration from other works by Klimt, such as FLOWER GARDEN. Collectors loved the collection because it brought something new to the ecosystem, and it was the first collaboration with a museum using Bitcoin. In less than a year, the collection has visited many cities and events, and every Sunday, we send flowers on Twitter, which I find very lovely.

Harto: I believe plotters are a perfect extension for generative art. We transition from the idea that it is something analog and comes from us to the code, and the work ends up back in the tangible world.

The interesting thing about all this is that the plotter will never give the same result as the digital work, and it is also intriguing to experiment with materials to further distance it from what is seen on the screen. Just changing a layer, the colors that will never be exactly the same, or the bugs caused by the machine, gives a completely different result. It's as if the work goes through different phases and takes a new creative path.

Harto: I went through many different phases. I always start with a search for inspiration, whether from my surroundings, other artists, a concept, a theatre piece... Once I find something that interests me, I create a mental and digital map of everything that could be possible, like a tree with hundreds of branches. When I find a branch that could work, I dissect it into different algorithms and start experimenting with different things.

During the prototyping phase, there is a second or third search to refine the concept, colors, etc. In this project, I was very interested in transparency, layers, painting, and the basic drawing techniques we learn as children and often forget. Therefore, I wanted to capture the work on the blockchain in different ways and not forget those memories.

Harto: The work is a search into the past. I think I missed the feel of colors, crayons, markers, watercolors. I wanted to do a regressive exploration of what I used to do when I was little, that memory we start to forget. Most of my works from when I was a child or teenager have been destroyed; I always threw almost everything away.

I used to draw a lot, every day, and couldn't keep everything, plus I am very critical of myself. I think that's why I wanted to use different technologies and techniques with this work. Perhaps if we spread our works across different worlds, they will be more resilient in the face of adversity.

Harto: The first time I approached painting was with watercolors; it's a very accessible technique for anyone, cheap, and very beautiful. It's like my madeleine of Proust; every time I work with watercolors, I have this flashback.

In recent years, I've used a lot of transparency in my code to somehow mimic those effects. When I started working on my series IMMUTABLE MEMORIES, it was the only medium I wanted to use, but in the end, I decided to mix in more basic materials because when you're a kid, you love to mix everything. I have a three-year-old daughter, and if she can use everything at her disposal, she will.

Harto: As long as we continue living in the physical plane, tangible art will remain important. The problem we face now is that we are surrounded by screens that are not well-suited for art; most are too small or lack the right color, quality, or texture. Often, screens degrade the artwork, and we need to address this issue. For example, in my generation, very few people have a television at home, and if they want to view a large piece of art, they have no means to do so. Phones are not sufficient.

I think that digital artists, even though we create everything on the computer or other devices, like to bring things into the physical realm, whether through a beautiful display, print, or 3D sculpture. Perhaps the day AR/VR technology becomes so advanced that we cannot distinguish reality from the digital world, we will be able to enhance that aspect.

Harto: There are a lot of challenges when working with a plotter, especially the mix of techniques. IMMUTABLE MEMORIES has many layers and different colors, as well as effects, so I had to adapt gradually.

Each piece is different, and the outputs will never be the same, even if I wanted them to be. But I think that's the beauty of plotters, at least with this type of work. Many artists use one or two colors with plotters to reproduce exactly what is on the screen, but I was interested in a bit of chaos, surprise, and giving the work a second life.

Harto: I believe AI can revolutionize all artistic aspects we know, from improving algorithms, increasing the speed of creation, providing new ideas, to enhancing code structures, etc.

Combining art with databases and training models is something I will work on in the coming months. I am someone who is passionate about new technologies, and I need to explore even more what AI can do for art. We need to take advantage of the computational power that machines have to improve everything around us, including art.

Harto: The most important thing is not to be afraid to ask questions, collaborate with others, and do what you love. I don't think there is anything healthier than a group of artists on the blockchain, we help each other a lot. We are a small ecosystem of passionate people looking to innovate. I believe that without collaboration, progress cannot be made.