pico_punk_compositions.p8

Statement

I am driven by a fascination with Entropy, how it exists in every system, natural or artificial, and how humans perceive it.

With pico_punks, this concept is explored in a few ways. As the user moves through the generative space, extremely random events build up on the screen, until eventually a face is perceived clearly. The ability of the human brain to perceive faces out of noise is endlessly impressive, and a central theme of the pico_punks project.

When the user moves away from this newly discovered pico_punk, unless they took a screenshot, it is gone forever. Even in the unlikely event that they could perfectly recreate the steps they took to create it, they would find that minor deviations change the pico_punk; these might be subjective improvements, or they might be worse, but the irreversibility of the process means that they will never be seen again.

Controls

• Arrow keys - Move through the generative space (consistent positioning: up then down returns to start)
• ❎ button (X) - Take a high-resolution screenshot for exporting
• 🅾️ button (O) - Clear the screen, resetting the display for the current position

Exhibition History

This piece was included in "Digital Self", a physical gallery exhibition at Jano Lapin Gallery in Verdun, Quebec (September 22 - November 16, 2022).

The exhibition, co-curated by Samuel Arsenault-Brassard and Anne Jano, explored digital identity through 36 international artists. The curatorial theme examined how digital technologies enable people to create "anonymous, false, playful, alternate, and selected identities," asking: "what would the portrait of these digital selves resemble?"

pico_punks answered that question directly—not with a fixed portrait, but with a tool for creating identity through interactive exploration and co-authorship with generative systems.