Fidenza
Tyler Hobbs' 2021 Art Blocks generative series: thick, non-colliding curved rectangles traced through a flow field, coloured from 14 probabilistic palettes.
What it is
Fidenza is a work by Tyler Hobbs, showcased on Art Blocks. By Hobbs’ own account it “is a flow field algorithm,” but rather than tracing thin lines it draws “thick, curved rectangles,” and “the algorithm checks to ensure that the rectangles don’t collide and overlap.”
The rule behind it
- Trace a flow field the ordinary way — advect a path through a stored grid of directions — but instead of stopping at a thin line, sweep a thick rectangle along the path.
- Keep the rectangles from overlapping: Hobbs says only that “the algorithm checks to ensure that the rectangles don’t collide and overlap”. What the check compares against, and what happens when it fails, is not in evidence here.
- Colour each rectangle by drawing from one of 14 hand-built probabilistic palettes. Hobbs singles out Luxe as “the most common, and incorporates the largest variety of colors: sixteen in total.”
- Surface treatments are linked to this work. Super Blocks lays a grid of square colour blocks over the shape; Soft Shapes lines it with fine, noise-perturbed parallel strokes. Whether either replaces a flat fill, and whether they are selectable per output, is not recorded here.
- Flow-field angle quantisation is linked here as an example: snapping each cell’s continuous angle to the nearest multiple of a fixed increment trades smooth curves for sculpted, angular ones. The evidence gathered here does not say how it is selected.
Why it mattered
Fidenza takes the flow-field traversal and swaps its usual thin line for a thick rectangle that the algorithm keeps from overlapping its neighbours, and draws its colour from one of fourteen probabilistic palettes. Hobbs showcased the finished algorithm as a public Art Blocks project.
Where to see the original
Hobbs’ own walkthrough of the algorithm is at tylerxhobbs.com/words/fidenza.
Connected to
Created by: Tyler Hobbs
Techniques used: Flow field · probabilistic color palette · Soft Shapes · Super Blocks
Example of: Flow-field angle quantisation