From chaos, unexpected beauty emerges. Such is the lesson learned in the wild west of generative art — a place otherwise known as fxhash. RGB Elementary Cellular Automaton by ciphrd was the first set I found — and didn’t buy — when I arrived at the fxhash platform two days after its launch.

At the time, I failed to appreciate how fitting the simple complexity of cellular automata was as a mental model for the platform itself. Coming back to fxhash two weeks later, I was blown away by the explosion of complexity in its nascent ecosystem, and my mind immediately went back to those RGBs.

The fxhash logos notwithstanding, RGBs are the first ‘real’ piece of art on the platform, and over time should trade with beta to the growth of fxhash itself. More importantly, I’ve grown to appreciate the art and its varied outputs so much that I’ve collected over 75 RGBs, earning me a cherished custom version from ciphrd himself.

Go look at the code. That so much variation can come from so little — what better to represent the simple complexity of life itself than the glorious RGB?