Studio Art Practice Meets Generative Art / Creative Coding

Matt Kane is an artist working with code, data, robots and paint.

"I designed my custom software to leverage algorithms with my own human input. I build paintings layer by layer, making design choices through how the algorithms I've written should interact. I communicate in color and pattern in ways I long understood but which are too complex or time consuming for my hand and materials to manifest physically with traditional methods. I'm interested in exploring historical aesthetics with code; to do with geometry what the great painters did with oils."
 

"A great deal of digital art these days is created with the push of a single button. But I came into the digital space with the work ethic I cultivated in the years I built my own frames, stretched my own canvas, mixed my own paint, and could spend tens or hundreds of hours on a single painting. I wanted to discover what I could create by combining this tireless attitude with the exhaustive generative capabilities of code. An average painting of mine these days consists of over a million unique shapes, 100+ layers, and spend 12+ hours of my time while I make literally thousands of changes to hundreds of design variables across the user interface of my software."

"Matt's approach to art and technology is unique and refreshing" —SuperRare

A Chicago born, gallery exhibited artist in his early twenties, Kane left the art world for a decade to work as a web developer in the Pacific Northwest. It was there that he taught himself programming, gained life experience, and made career choices centered around creating, at a future date, the work he's currently devoted. Kane began as a painter of oils to become a painter of code.

Listen to Matt discuss his creative process, cryptoart, relationship to collectors, and much more on The Cent Podcast.

Watch Matt's interview with Josie Bellini on Behind the Art