Bas Relief by Jan Robert Leegte bridges the ancient art of bas-relief with the digital aesthetics of late-1990s computer interfaces. This generative series evokes the tactile play of shadow and light seen in carved stone petroglyphs and classical grisailles while transforming them into interactive, programmatic artifacts. The concentric shapes, layouts, and Boolean states serve as visual metaphors for digital language and communication. By merging historical techniques with contemporary code, Bas Relief immortalizes the computer age as a future relic, offering a reflection on humanity’s evolving relationship with technology and art.

Inspired by the iconic “marching ants” selection marquee, Selection transforms this ubiquitous interface tool into the central subject, rendered dynamically through code. Tokens feature animated paths in responsive web pages, with visuals tied to token numbers and customizable backgrounds. Owners can permanently alter the background via smart contract interactions. Utilizing technologies like Clipper.js, Selection pays homage to interface culture while showcasing Leegte’s ongoing exploration of selection as a conceptual and aesthetic theme.

Selection is released in partnership with Folia.

Art Blocks Collection: Presents

Heritage Art Blocks Collection: Factory

Compression has been the driving force behind the image-based internet since the early 90s. No compression, no Netscape, no social media, no NFTs. The JPEG compression has specifically enabled photography-based imagery on the net. It has always served that purpose and over time become the de facto default for showing high quality imagery online. But compression always leaves a trace, which has become the lens through which the network sees the world of uploaded images.

JPEG tries to create an image programatically fully expressing that signature compression. This is not a JPEG depicting an image. The JPEG is the image itself.

Delving into the depths and peculiarities of the digital, tethered to art history, JPEG found its way to the surface. Generated color fields are utilised to trigger the compressing algorithm, resulting in a world of raw visual entities. JPEG cuts out the artist’s emotion and lets it emerge from within the algorithm.

JPEG is a collection of generative images in the JPEG file format. The work tries to break with the idea of the fixed file format, therefore creating the JPEG entirely from code using no image material whatsoever. The individual JPEGs are generated responsively at the moment of viewing based on the token hash as a random seed.

JPEG pays tribute to interface culture, and as such the work is responsive and not scaling. When viewed smaller, details will disappear, yet the composition stays recognisable. It’s like stepping back to see a work from further away. The choice of color wanders from monochromatic tones to the brutality of complete randomness and everything in between.

In honour of the blockchain and the web, the work is written in vanilla JavaScript, using no dependancies, and generates a standard JPEG. This way the file is downloadable, aiming for a materiality that comes as close as possible to the standard browser.

Art Blocks Collection: Presents

Heritage Art Blocks Collection: Factory

Window pays homage to mid-grey computer interfaces from 1997, which to Leegt are reminiscent of ancient bas-relief sculptures. As such, it reflects our desire to merge digital and material worlds. This responsive, scalable work reveals more details when enlarged yet remains recognizable when scaled down. Featuring interactive elements like view toggling and color cycling, it uses JavaScript and HTML DOM to explore the invisible layers of generative art through its “Latent colour” feature.