Algorithmic Art: From Discovery to a Drop
Camille Roux, an algorithmic artist based in Montpellier, published a long personal essay on 16 August 2026 tracing five years of work in creative coding: from first p5.js experiments to long-form generative projects on fx(hash), a New York showing with Bright Moments, and a drop with gm.studio, one of the most selective curation platforms in the field. Originally written in French, the essay was translated into English and posted on the artist's site, with a note explaining one deliberate wording change: the French version says "art génératif," while the English version says "algorithmic art," because generative AI has taken over the original term and people outside the field now assume such projects are made with AI.
The essay opens with an unlikely origin: Roux decided to learn to draw, took a lesson from an artist friend, quickly realised how much there was to learn, and ended up back at a computer coding what he had been trying to draw. He started with p5.js, the widely used JavaScript library for creative coding, playing with mathematics, physics, noise and randomness. His first drops were perfect loops on Hic et Nunc, the early Tezos-based NFT platform, and they were received well enough that collectors started giving him regular feedback.
Roux then moved to long-form generative projects, the format popularised by platforms like Art Blocks and fx(hash): an artist writes a generative script recorded on a blockchain, sets how many iterations can be created from it, and each purchase runs the script to produce a unique piece nobody has seen before. On fx(hash) he published around fifteen projects in a few months, including BRIDGE, a collaborative project of 520 editions where he open-sourced the code and invited other artists to contribute; and ARTERIA, 333 editions built on autonomous agents that move, reproduce, and die when they cross another agent's trajectory, drawing paths of small circles. ARTERIA became his most successful fx(hash) piece and led to a podcast interview with the CEO of the Paris auction house FauveParis.
FOLRADURA, launched on 256ART in July 2022, explored organic patterns from local modifiers: each modifier applies a local effect, such as an attraction, to a grid of hundreds of thousands of points, and each edition shows the paths those points take between their initial and final positions. INTRICADA, dropped as an open edition and selected by Bright Moments for their artist-of-the-month programme in March 2023, returned to autonomous agents and was shown in New York, London, Mexico City, Venice Beach, Berlin and Tokyo. Each of its pieces contains several hundred thousand dots, and the project was designed as a simulation: set the initial conditions and watch what emerges.
The title of the essay refers to the collaboration that followed: The Source, a project Roux built with his long-time friend Matthieu Segret, representing water abstractly through coloured reflections drawn from places around the world. gm.studio selected it in May 2023 — the first project the platform's anonymous curation panel had approved unanimously — and it was released on 31 July 2023. Roux and Segret then built The Destination from the same source code, which took them to Bright Moments Paris. Roux's third collaboration with Bright Moments was the Finale, a unique project shown during the 2024 Venice Biennale that combined work from over sixty artists who had been central to the platform's history. His most recent series, Résilience, dropped in November 2024 on gm.scribe and was his first project on Bitcoin; drawn from his experience with hyperacusis and tinnitus, each edition represents a moment of a life and the slow work of rebuilding.
The essay closes with what comes next: projects in progress, shows planned, and a wish to present algorithmic art in his own city of Montpellier. He has already spoken about the field at DevFest Toulouse, MiXiT and MontpellierJS, and hosts GENART, a podcast about generative art. For anyone following his path, the full essay is worth reading in sequence — it documents, in detail, how a curious beginner with a notebook-and-pencil fantasy ended up exhibiting at the Venice Biennale.