Ambi-framed Protoseeders — the 2019 timestamp prints

Ambi-framed Protoseeders, "Ambi-Seeders" for short, is a series on harm.work that does not appear in its public lists, though its page and its works' pages are online. Its text reads: "Series of printed and framed works created with the earlier extended desktop Mutant Garden algorithm based on Cartesian Genetic Programming." It had eleven works. One has a name, Lacelove (→ Outland for its image). The other ten are titled with a weekday, a date and a time of day in the spring of 2019, such as Thursday, April 11 2019, 13:40:18. All eleven are UltraChrome prints on Hahnemühle paper, 70 × 70 cm, in a painted wooden frame. harm.work dates them 2022 or 2023; they were entered there between November 2022 and February 2023. A twelfth, Gumware (2023), larger at 76 × 62 cm and framed in pale pink, joined the series in November 2026 (the artist; → Mutant Garden, where it is shown).

What the titles record

In the last week of March 2019 van den Dorpel came across Cartesian genetic programming and wrote his own version, the algorithm that became Mutant Garden. Through April he kept its outputs in an are.na channel called Structures of Redundancy (→ Evolutionary Logic, under The algorithm: Cartesian Genetic Programming). The outputs he kept are vector files named after the moment each was made, counted in milliseconds since 1970: cgp-1554295667987.svg.

On 24 July 2022 he filed thirty-six of these files in a channel named Proto-Seeders. Converted to Amsterdam time, three of their file names give exactly the titles of three prints:

So the titles are render times: each print is named after the second its image left the program. The other seven render files are not in the channel. The words "earlier" and "desktop" in the series text place the algorithm before the website Mutant .garden (2020) and the on-chain Mutant Garden Seeder (2021), and the name points to outputs that came before the Seeder.

He had used such a number as a title before. Untitled (1554993052565) (2019), shown in his solo exhibition Uninnocent Bystander at Lehmann + Silva in Porto that year (→ Uninnocent Bystander), carries a timestamp of the same kind: Thursday 11 April 2019, 16:30:52, less than three hours after Thursday, April 11 2019, 13:40:18. In the later prints the number is written out as a date.

The tokens

The prints have a counterpart on the blockchain. Protoseeders is a collection harm.work describes as "Curated early outputs of the Mutant Garden algorithm", and the entry for Wednesday, April 2 2019, 14:12:13 links to its token 57, Snared (a), whose image is the same composition. Whether the other prints have tokens is not recorded on their pages.

The construction

In Cartesian genetic programming the program is a grid of nodes; what it draws, in these early outputs, is nested: rectangles and rounded rectangles inside one another, circles, stripes and small repeated marks (→ The Grid, under Dating the change). In the prints the square is cut into halves and quarters, and the same group of forms often appears twice, side by side or one above the other. Some surfaces carry a texture too fine to see from a distance: in the detail above, every shape is covered in a mesh of tiny hexagons.

The frames are painted, and in each case the colour comes from the print: salmon around a salmon border, pale yellow around yellow panels, mint around a mint-green ground. The "Ambi" of the title refers to bias lighting, the light some screens cast onto the wall behind them, which Philips sells as Ambilight (the artist, November 2026). The wiki reads the painted frames in that sense: a colour taken from the image and spread around it, as the light around such a screen takes its colour from the picture.

The prints

Thursday, March 28 2019, 16:10:34

Thursday, March 28 2019, 16:10:34, the earliest, is built in three tiers, each split into two identical halves: orange-red bands with a green block and small grids of rectangles at the top, olive panels ruled with green lines in the middle, and six tall panels of vertical bars in orange, olive and mauve at the bottom. The frame is salmon.

Wednesday, April 2 2019, 14:12:13

Wednesday, April 2 2019, 14:12:13, the image of Snared (a), is the least regular. At the left a tall dark green rounded panel carries red discs of many sizes and a large brown circle with a red disc inside; at the right grey rounded columns contain small red squares and rings; a large translucent violet circle lies over the right half. The frame is pink.

Wednesday, April 3 2019, 14:47:47 CEST

Wednesday, April 3 2019, 14:47:47 CEST: two tall red rounded columns, each containing the same stack of yellow and olive blocks, beside four narrower columns of dense yellow panels, on a salmon ground with large faint circles. The frame is pale yellow.

Wednesday, April 3 2019, 15:13:14

Wednesday, April 3 2019, 15:13:14, made about twenty-five minutes later: a single large sphere, shaded from brown to pink, fills a grey-green rounded square; thin bars cross its middle, and below it a smaller circle contains a square. The frame is pink.

Thursday, April 11 2019, 12:11:23

Thursday, April 11 2019, 12:11:23: green and blue. Two identical tall columns at the left, each divided into tall panels of stadium shapes, lozenges and small boxes; at the right a cluster of small panels above a row of thin blue wedges. The frame is pale green.

Thursday, April 11 2019, 13:40:18

Thursday, April 11 2019, 13:40:18: on a pale ground ruled with thin lines, rows of small teal and orange bars at the top like sliders, a middle band of purple squares and teal circles, and at the bottom a large grey stadium behind a column of purple panels. The frame is mint.

Wednesday, April 24 2019, 17:37:10 CET

Wednesday, April 24 2019, 17:37:10 CET: in the upper half a row of tall narrow panels repeats one unit of violet squares and vertical bars; in the lower half rows of pink and olive rectangles contain stacks of violet squares; a large lilac circle lies behind both. The frame is pale green.

Thursday, April 25 2019, 23:40:34 CET

Thursday, April 25 2019, 23:40:34 CET: a pale mint ground divided into columns crossed by thin zigzag lines, two large translucent grey circles, and rows of cyan and blue dots in pairs. The frame is pale lilac.

Thursday, April 25 2019, 23:56:57

Thursday, April 25 2019, 23:56:57, sixteen minutes later, shown on harm.work as an image without its frame: four quarters, each divided into four rounded panels of bright green with smaller rounded squares and stadium shapes; one quarter is on a lilac ground.

Friday, April 26 2019, 00:50:27

Friday, April 26 2019, 00:50:27, the last, after midnight: four quarters, each divided again, of olive and grey rounded panels, violet panels with rows of small ochre squares, and an orange panel; several modules recur in two quarters. Edition of 2 + 1 AP; the frame is peach.

Shown

harm.work records no exhibition for the series, but its news item Art Rotterdam 2023 announced "new Ambiframed Proto-Seeders" with Upstream Gallery at Art Rotterdam in February 2023, and in April 2023 Upstream showed four "early outputs from Mutant Garden software, fertilized in 2019 but manipulated in 2022 or 2023" in Upstream Focus: Protoseeders (gallery text; → Mutant Garden). Lacelove hung in Judgment and Calculation, frontviews at HAUNT, Berlin, in 2026 (→ Judgment and Calculation).

See also

• Evolutionary Logic — Cartesian genetic programming; Structures of Redundancy and the Proto-Seeders channel
• The Grid — a grid program that draws nested pictures; the change of March 2019
• Outland — with Jenna Sutela — Lacelove
• Nested Exchange — the tree-based series before it
• The Squircle — the rounded rectangle in Mutant Garden