Athanasia
Resilience Through Immortality
— By Valent
Athanasia
gm.studio is thrilled to present Athanasia: the highly anticipated debut longform collection from Valent.
This first submission since July 2023 to meet the standard of our rigorous Blind submission process captures the cathartic transformation of psychic pain into resilience. Athanasia is the culmination of a two-year exploration of the possibilities for distortion, composition, and transformation within digital generative art.
Each astonishing output is an abstract representation of a lived moment- of the enduring essence of being- driven by Valent's internal exploration and the resilience found within. Created entirely in p5js, with no shaders or other libraries, the work skilfully embraces creative constraints in code in order to distill these essential elements.
Emerging Evocations
Athanasia- an ancient term for the state of immortality- frames this work as a response to those experiences which mark us forever, re-shaping who we are in ways that can’t be undone. It captures the permanence of the pain experienced through depression, tracing its healing into a resilience that remains with us forever. The collection is an attempt to visually explore and communicate that process; art representing the full emotional spectrum. Athanasia is a complex symphony fueled by intense turbulence: its black tones and discordant movements juxtaposing against rising technicolor-crested swells. In inviting you to experience a visual narrative of pain and healing, some outputs are aggressive and others calm. Yet each piece offers a deep, paradoxical sensation of resilience in recognising our human vulnerability.
The algorithm’s emergent results frequently unveil hidden, recognisable figures within the abstraction: figures which evoke the majesty of mythical gods, demons and other archetypal forms of legend. Other allusions may appear synthetic, reminiscent of the interference of light waves as they pass through the thin film of an oil spill in the street. Elsewhere, we might recognise splodges of acrylic on an impressionist painter’s palette, swirled through momentarily en route to the hues that will paint the new dusk. The resilient wonders of the natural world are also close by. Amongst the violent electrical storms of the collection, are sunny interludes in which you may pick out scarce, damask orchids, and the tiny, overlapping scales of butterfly wings. Or perhaps you recognise cheetah pelts and tiger stripes, or coral structures flexing underneath a sea’s glass tide. Each piece holds a mirror to your inner emotional world and perception, aiming to evoke something tangible.
Out of the Blue
and into the Black
Valent maintains a quiet presence, his relationship with art deeply personal. He has engaged closely with blockchain since its inception, drawn progressively deeper into decentralised communities as they formed and evolved. Valent soon emerged as a prominent collector and early advocate within the onchain art revolution, embracing this new wave as it broke free from traditional constraints.
For him, the act of collecting was fundamentally about curating emotions - a deeply meaningful expression of self. Over time, Valent came to understand this curation as a pathway toward a creative reawakening, an aspect of him that had lain dormant for a while. Collecting art reignited this realization: "I needed to develop my own visual voice - to directly express myself."
Valent has been a creative for as long as he can remember, making music, experimenting with short films and writing code, all quietly tucked away on old hard drives. Although he has coded from a young age, only recently has it felt right for him to share his inner world, allowing his creative voice to resonate openly with others. He began exploratory work spanning many gigabytes of experiments.
Writing algorithms became more than an exercise of skill; it became a dialogue with the self, uncovering emotions and feelings Valent hadn't discovered before: "when I look back, technology has always been something I've used creatively. It was more than just a tool- it was a mirror." Whilst working on a different project "one random night", he describes how in the midst of depression, "something broke inside me, and I felt I needed to capture what was happening inside".
All of his questions brought no clear answers, and so began his current quest to render an abstract representation of this internal state. This excavation of the self sundered through distortion salvaged unresolved and complicated emotions: deep embedding blacks, shifting textures and colours, fractured patterns. In Valent's process, the digital canvas transforms into a space of closure: permanent, still, but holding the moment of becoming.
It was out of the blue, but the more that Valent worked with it, the more he felt good: "Through working with this algo and this experience, from early on it helped me make peace: not through gaining answers, but through the honouring of what is unresolved. I started over two years ago, but a lot of that time was spent thinking about it, sitting with thoughts, listening, letting them bruise and shape me. Every artistic decision took time, even the most mundane ones. It felt right to start my artistic journey here, with Athanasia: an honesty of process that captures how I feel."
Technical Process
Valent consciously chose a strategy grounded in fundamental techniques, evolving new methods through the intentional and precise manipulation of core elements. This thoughtful approach ensures the execution remains faithful to his meditative artistic concept. While Athanasia could have been realized through shaders to produce a dynamic, flowy prettiness, Valent instead opted to approach the task raw. By playing with absolute and fundamental concepts, his craft lies in carefully executing them in a deceptively simple way to evoke complexity: “True complexity arises not from intricate methods, but from the thoughtful accumulation of fundamental interactions.”
A base path is generated, establishing a structured geometric foundation that anchors the composition. Around this path, distinct yet interconnected segments are defined. Detailed patterns, intricate features, and subtle visual elements are layered across these segments and the background, progressively enhancing complexity and depth. The composition then undergoes iterative segmented pixel-level distortion, introducing fluidity, feedback loops, and emergent complexity. Finally, subtle textures and nuanced adjustments unify all these elements into a cohesive visual whole.
The distortion algorithm processes the image in sequential chunks, sampling pixels from previously distorted regions to establish a subtle yet powerful feedback loop. This approach generates intricate, unpredictable patterns, adding layers of visual complexity. Interpolation smoothly blends pixel colors, resulting in soft and natural transitions, an effect further amplified by the sequential processing and inherent feedback loop.
Valent worked for over two years on refining the algorithm, balancing the ceding of aesthetic control to chaos with the careful framing of the loss of psychic control which was the original impulse to make the work: “I spent countless months experimenting, testing and refining the algorithm that I had put together, until I was able to mitigate the challenges I ran into. The resulting visual language was challenging to realize, but that difficulty became essential, the complexity of the process is exactly what makes it meaningful.”
Prints
Athanasia is intended for print as the work is scalable to very large formats. As the artist himself states, “The test runs look amazing: I want people to see the colours and experience them. My art comes from trying to bridge that gap- from thought into something tangible, something you can walk up to, see yourself in, and feel a little less alone.”
Inspiration
The driver for Athanasia emerged from navigating through one of the darkest and most introspective periods I've experienced. Life unfolds in ways we don't always anticipate, and sometimes the choices we make leave us stranded in regret - feeling disconnected, as if observing our own experiences from a distance. Creating Athanasia has been an act of reclaiming that connection, a way of healing through relentless, focused work over many years.
My hope is that this collection reaches those who may be in a similar place. If my art can resonate, inspire, or comfort even one person, then it’s done everything I could ask of it.
~ Valent
Words by Yorks
