Algues Artificielles

Algues Artificielles (artificial seaweeds, 2016–2022) is a series of drawings bred by a genetic algorithm. It began in the summer of 2016, a few months after the online genealogy of Death Imitates Language, and its public website, Hybrid Vigor .bio (2017), was the first of his breeding systems in which visitors, not the artist, choose. The artist's statement is on harm.work and ingested as Algues Artificielles — series page.

Torn split is one of the six prints of 2016, all 100×80 cm; four of them (Bluena, Frouters, Availablesky, Adoreway) were shown in Asking for a Friend at Narrative Projects, London (2017).

Origin: Brittany, seaweed, Hans Arp

"During the summer of 2016, I spent a few weeks with my family by sea in Bretagne, France." He liked "how the seaweed and jellyfish washed ashore and formed shapes and compositions which were always different, but, also, somehow always the same." He wrote "a simple piece of computer code to simulate these smooth, round curves. The effects were surprisingly satisfying. Somehow, my shapes reminded me of the sculptural works of Hans Arp." Generating them at random "was quickly becoming a bit boring", so he looked for a way to influence the outcome: "Could a process of feedback between me and the software be considered a kind of dialectic?"

His are.na channel Algues Artificielles adds Arp's partner. On 28 October 2020 he filed Sophie Taeuber-Arp's Lignes d'été (1942): rounded planes in red, green, blue and grey crossed by black wavy lines (block).

The move from generating shapes to setting the conditions under which they improve is traced further on Impulse, Risk, and Method and Randomness and Pattern.

Mechanism: genome, crossover, convergence

"All properties of a drawing (angles, smoothness, shape, colour, transparency, scale, position, etc.) are stored in a long sequence of 0s and 1s: a digital genome. These genomes hermetically define the appearance (or phenotype) of each work (or specimen)." When two drawings are selected, "both of their chromosomes are aligned, and ad-random genes are selected from either parent (crossover). From this game of recombination, both iterative and diverse offspring emerge."

"In many iterations, the system would give me a generation of works; each time I would pick two from which more 'children' would be bred. Because the breeding always happens between 'siblings' — a sort of mechanical incest — the diversity would gradually converge." The statement calls this kind of selective breeding "hybrid vigour". (In biology the term usually names the extra vigour of crossbred offspring, the opposite of breeding between siblings; the statement uses it for the whole process of breeding "to eliminate or emphasise particular traits in animals and flowers".) How this criterion compares with the others in the practice is set out on Evolutionary Logic.

Hybrid Vigor .bio: visitors choose

"My website, 'Hybrid Vigor', is publicly accessible to crowd-source this process in an evolutionarily selective way, using the internet visitor as the fitness function." The site is still online at hybrid.vigor.bio; its page title reads "Hybrid Vigor by Harm van den Dorpel, 2017 (Family Collection Dijkstra)". Van den Dorpel also filed it in his are.na channel Single Serving Sites ("Web sites comprised of a single page with a dedicated domain name and do only one thing"), next to Rafaël Rozendaal's vai avanti .com (2006), which the same collection owns (block 3728668, block 3728661).

Hybrid Vigor .bio: eight specimens in two rows on a white page — *Hybrid Vigor .bio* (2017), website; screenshot November 2026

A generation on the site is eight specimens in two rows: overlapping rounded blobs in flat colour and soft gradients, crossed by thin outline curves. In a fresh generation like this one the eight are still very different; breeding narrows them.

Death Imitates Language already mixed visitor statistics into its selection, but there the "likes" were the artist's. Hybrid Vigor .bio gives the choice of parents itself to whoever visits.

The software Algues Artificielles (2017, edition of 5) runs the same breeding system; harm.work lists it under the series with a link to algues-artificielles.harmvandendorpel.com. It was shown in Asking for a Friend (Narrative Projects, 2017), Pattern & Presence (Upstream Gallery Amsterdam, 2018) and Degrees of Disruption: Vera Molnár and Generative Art (V&A South Kensington, London, 2026).

The prints

Specimens are printed on Hahnemühle paper (UltraChrome or Ultrachrome HDR, some on German Etching), 100×80 cm in 2016 and 80×65 cm from 2018. harm.work dates the last prints 2020 (Umbilical Dramatoxin, Bloated Taunt, Defenseless Qualm). His are.na captions give 2019 for Bloated Taunt and Defenseless Qualm and list a Profane Snout, "80×64cm, 2019", which harm.work does not show (1, 2, 3, 4).

Eponymous Seedling was shown with Bemused Aversatility and Unscripted Relinings in Pattern & Presence at Upstream Gallery (2018).

The names

The titles change with the format. The 2016 prints have single invented words (Dechayotic, Adoreway, Availablesky, Frouters, Bluena) or a short phrase (Torn split). From 2018 they are two-word adjective-noun pairs: Bemused Aversatility, Eponymous Seedling, Unscripted Relinings, Fickle Particle I, Unheard Estimator, Defenseless Qualm, Bloated Taunt, Umbilical Dramatoxin (and Audit Myth Buzz, three words). They read as English without quite meaning anything. The specimens of Death Imitates Language, by contrast, carry three-part names that record a genealogy.

Shunned Mass (2022)

harm.work lists Shunned Mass (2022) as the series' one token, now filed among his still-image NFTs (JPGs). Whether it is a later output of the system or an earlier specimen minted in 2022 is not stated.