Algorithms. The Random Walk NFT

Preamble

Hi, I’m Serge. I have been in IT since 2008 in various roles - from a regular software engineer to CTO and co-founder of several startups. Throughout my whole career I was always eager to learn something new and promising. This is how I also got into crypto - blockchain amazes me with its mathematical purity, determinism and immutability.

As a continuous learner, I have recently acquired a Masters degree in Data Science in addition to my MSc. in Computer Science, and got genuinely interested in deep concepts of computer vision, AI and GANs (generative adversarial networks, a special type of neural networks aimed on content generation). I learned dozens or great algorithms and approaches for data modeling and analysis, and one major takeaway was the importance of understanding and interpreting such algorithms so that they can be used properly and where necessary. And visualization is always a great teacher - so I did a lot of viz back in the days, many of which were quite visually appealing.

Educational Art

Now as we entered the NFT era, my prior visualization experience resurfaced and I reshaped it into an idea of educational art. Generally, each piece of art aims to tell a story behind it, something that the artist puts into, right? With my educational art, I aim to open the viewer's eyes on how the computer thinks, while at the same time making it worthy to showcase and visually appealing. Thus, I am launching Algorithms - a series of limited edition generative art NFT collections featuring visual representation of some computer algorithms, processes and models.

The Collection

For the first collection from the Algorithms series I chose to implement a Random Walk. Technically speaking, this is a stochastic process that describes a path through some mathematical space. A lot of mathematical, statistical and physics processes are based on the concept of random walk, so I believe it is worth the attention.

From implementation standpoint, the idea behind this particular collection is that there are 5 to 10 distinctively colored threads each randomly initialized around the center of the square, and they begin their random walk. The goal is to reach the border - this is when the thread finishes. Threads take turns one by one. On each step a thread can move to any of the adjacent cells (directly as well as diagonally). This also paints the cell in the color of the thread. An important rule is that the thread can only step on an empty (black) cell, or its own colored cell. Because of this limitation it is possible that threads may even get locked up in a closed space, for example if there is no way out because other threads already occupied the surrounding cells. In this case, the thread will finish by step-limit. This is also considered as a rarity property.

Altogether this creates various unique sophisticated drawings - as if computer itself was the artist. I personally find it very satisfying to watch and untangle the paths threads did on their way out. Check this out (click for a detailed view):

Algorithms. Random Walk

Generative art NFT collection

1024 unique pieces

Preamble

Educational Art

The Collection

Refer & Earn