What can we learn from life’s cycles of change and renewal?
This question became the seed for VIVOTECA, a generative art project created for Responsive Dreams ( September, 2025 ) festival that reimagines the torus, a universal shape, as both form and metaphor. Through diverse color variations, cyberpunk aesthetics, and algorithmic variation, VIVOTECA unfolds as a long-form NFT project on Artblocks.
Torus: Geometry of Continuity
I've been fascinated for a long time by the torus. It is a surface shaped like a donut but it has no edges. It has no beginning and no end.
This shape conceptually is used in many areas of science. One of them is in social science through networks of human interaction. In many models of culture or opinion dynamics, people are placed on grids where each person interacts with their "neighbors." If the grid ends at the edges, some people are isolated, receiving less influence. But if the grid is connected like a torus, where the top connects with the bottom and the left with the right, everyone is equally connected, no one is left on the margin, and interactions can circulate endlessly.
This idea of continuity and connection is what drew me to use the torus for this artwork. For me, it becomes more than geometry. It is the main character carrying its symbolic meaning: our memories, experiences, emotions, learning, and relationships all live in an infinite field we continuously explore, reframing and rediscovering them to find new meaning.
Cycles of Experience
We don't live life linearly. Each day we acquire new experiences, memories, and emotions that become part of us, stored and waiting to be recalled. When we return to them, we can see them differently reframing them. A moment of fear can later reveal itself as the seed of growth. A past happy moment can be remembered not just for what it was, but for the way it changed us. This reframing shapes how we live, guiding the meaning we give to every new cycle.
Life surprises us with discoveries we didn't know were possible. We stumble into new knowledge, new emotions, new ways of seeing ourselves and the world. These are renewals that come to us in richer, deeper and more transformative ways each time we return to them.
VIVOTECA captures the cyclical nature of experience as a living archive of light, mystery, and color. Each edition invites us to meditate about how we grow storing, reframing and rediscovering. It is a reminder that what returns can be different, because we ourselves can always change.
Neon Memory
If the torus gives VIVOTECA its structure, color gives it its essence. The palette draws heavily from the glowing, high-contrast energy of the 1980s neon grids, cyberpunk cityscapes, arcade machines, and the iconic Traper Keeper binders that many of us kids from the 80s carried to school.
These objects were promises of imagination and possibilities. They represented an optimistic view of the future with glowing lights in many colors that felt alive and untamed.
By employing neon colors and cyberpunk aesthetics, I wanted this artwork to connect universal geometry with personal and cultural memory. For some, the colors may spark nostalgia but for others they will feel futuristic. In either case, they are an invitation to wonder.
Generative Process
VIVOTECA is a living system. It was built through a generative, or rule based, algorithm within p5js, a JavaScript based coding environment.
The algorithm generates a main toroidal geometry covered by individually drawn tiles. Each tile has a distortion pattern and color that is decided by a noise function.
Each of the tiles can be drawn on the toroidal shape or can be displaced as a floating element. As each tile is drawn, spherical shapes can also appear following the color decisions of the space occupied by the tiles on the torus. Finally, a cloud of dust is generated around each of the spheres adding to that feeling of space and the mistery of the unknown.
Each edition gradually develops into its final form with each of the elements appearing within the canvas in an endless subtle animation. This process is part of the artwork: It is a reminder that meaning is not necessarily delivered all at once and can emerge through time.
The Overview Effect
When encountering an edition of this artwork, the viewer steps into a luminous field. Bands of glowing color weave around a shape that appears to pulse with life surrounded by spheres which can be absent. Distortions ripple across the torus surface suggesting both digital interference and organic texture. A final layer of dust adds to the viewing experience.
The outputs are meant to feel mysterious. They invite viewers to pause, get lost in the glow and reflect on their own cycles: the returns, the reframings, the rediscoveries of joy and knowledge.
This viewing experience reminded me of the "Overview Effect" experienced by astronauts regarding the shift in perspective when seeing Earth as a fragile, interconnected whole from space. VIVOTECA offers a similar reflection. It reminds us that our experiences are not isolated fragments, but part of a greater cycle of memory, discovery and renewal that connects us all.
Where to find
VIVOTECA will be exhibited on September 19, 20, 21 at the Responsive Dreams digital arts festival organized by The Generative Art Museum in Roca Umbert. Fàbrica de les Arts in Granollers, Barcelona.
Available on chain on Artblocks.
