Screens, Code, & Museums
Beyond the search — how to understand this field well enough to speak
You saw a wall of moving image at a museum. You searched. You landed here — or somewhere like here. That search is the first step. This page is for the person who is interested enough to go one step further: to understand what you saw well enough that you could mention it at a public-arts meeting or a city council session without sounding like you are guessing.
I am an artist who makes this work. I have also spent a long time explaining museums to people who are not museum professionals — board members, city staff, people who care and need plain language. The shape is the same. You do not need a degree. You need a clear picture of what stays true when the brand names change.
What you are trying to understand
The piece on the museum wall starts to make sense when you can say something like this to yourself:
- Somebody wrote code.
- That code may live, in part, on a blockchain — a shared ledger — so provenance and ownership can be recorded.
- What you see may be driven by a data feed, an algorithm, or both.
- It is shown on a screen (or many screens).
- The screen is the display. The screen is not necessarily the thing you buy. You may buy, license, or commission the artwork — the system — that underlies what the screen shows.
Once that clicks, you can talk about “one piece of this” at home: a single screen in a lobby, a wall in a small museum, a façade that also runs ads by day. Before that click, you only have a photo and a feeling.
Optional homework — about twenty dollars of literacy
Not everyone who saw the wall needs a crypto wallet. Most museum visitors never make one. This path is for people who want to go beyond the article — the same people who stay after dinner and keep asking questions. I have had that conversation with board members more than once. The progression is usually some version of what follows.
Opinion: for now I would start with a small amount of money on a major exchange, then a self-custody wallet, then a cheap first purchase on Tezos. You can change the brands later. The point is a real ownership event for a few dollars, not a portfolio.
1. Fund a little, then make a wallet
- Open an account at a mainstream exchange such as Coinbase. Use a credit card or bank account. Put in something like $20. You are funding a lesson, not investing.
- Set up a wallet. For Ethereum and many platforms, people often start with MetaMask. For Tezos, people often use Kukai (or Temple). Write down the recovery phrase offline. Do not photograph it. Do not paste it into a website that asks for it.
- Transfer a small amount from the exchange to the wallet you will use to buy art. Leave yourself a little for fees.
2. Tezos first — buy something small
I would start on Tezos, on a marketplace such as objkt (and, for generative work specifically, look at fx(hash)). Search for an artist whose name you have heard — Casey REAS, Mario Klingemann, and many others have work circulating at different prices — then sort toward less expensive. Some editions still sell for amounts on the order of a few dollars or a few tez.
Buy one. Now you have a wallet, a small balance, and a real artwork recorded as yours. You are not a professional collector. You have completed a sentence: I own a piece of creative coding / generative art on-chain. That sentence is the teaching object.
3. Ethereum second — look, do not buy
Set up or use MetaMask and look at the Ethereum landscape: Feral File, Art Blocks, SuperRare, and similar. Some of this work is expensive. I am not recommending you buy any of it for this exercise. You are mapping the territory — understanding that almost all of these are NFTs, that the culture and price points differ from Tezos, and that “generative art online” is not one store.
4. Then look at institutions again
Go to the Whitney’s Artport. Look at how MoMA and other museums talk about time-based and digital work. The wall you photographed will read differently. You have vocabulary now. A short glossary at the end of this page is enough to keep the terms straight.
The tools under the wall — creative coding
When people say the artist “wrote code,” they often mean one of a few common environments. You do not need to program. You need the names so a vendor or an artist cannot bury you in jargon:
- p5.js — creative coding in the browser; widely taught; related to Processing.
- Processing — older desktop-oriented creative coding environment; same family of ideas as p5.
- Three.js — 3D graphics in the browser.
- OpenFrameworks — C++ toolkit used for many installations and performance-critical work.
There are others. The point is not the brand. The point is: this is software an artist authored; a computer runs it; a screen shows it.
What does not go away
This is the part I treat like “how to start a museum.” Coins change. Chains rebrand. Marketplaces come and go. If you only memorize today’s apps, you will be lost in three years. If you understand what persists, you can follow the field.
Opinion — what I think does not go away:
- Ledger technology — a shared record of what happened. Which cryptocurrency sits on top may change. The idea of a durable public record does not.
- Smart contracts — agreements that execute in software. The implementations will evolve. The need for programmable terms around art will not.
- Provenance on a chain — using a ledger to help establish who owned what, when. Museums already care about provenance. This is a new instrument for an old problem.
- AI inside creative coding — models as material inside systems artists build. The hype cycle will move. The material will stay.
- Screen-based and time-based media expanding — more work that has to be run, not hung.
- Commercial screens doubling as art surfaces — billboards, lobbies, transit displays. The hardware is already in the city. The question is what it shows after hours or between ads.
That list is how I want you to understand the field “well enough.” Not every token ticker. The durable layer.
Three sentences for city council
Wallet literacy makes you rare in a council chamber. It is not enough by itself. The room cares about money, risk, and whether you sound like you know what you are asking for. If you can say something like the following — in your own words — you are ready to open a conversation:
- What it is: “This is artwork made with code. A computer runs it. What we see is on a screen; what we commission is the work — the system — behind that screen.”
- Why here: “Other cities and museums already show this. We can start at one site — a lobby, a façade, a small museum gallery — and learn in public.”
- What it costs to take seriously: “We need a real quote that separates art, hardware, installation, and years of maintenance — not just a pretty render.”
If you only have the first sentence, you are ahead of most of the room on vocabulary. If you have all three, you are useful to the meeting. Cost ranges and public-art process are on the immersive digital art page.
Short glossary
- Wallet — software that holds keys to assets on a blockchain. Not a bank account; closer to a keyring.
- NFT — a token that points to a specific digital work or edition; often how ownership of on-chain art is recorded.
- Tezos / Ethereum — two blockchains with different fees, communities, and art markets. Tezos is often cheaper for a first purchase.
- Generative art — the artist builds a system; the system produces the visible work.
- Creative coding — writing software as the artistic medium (p5.js, Processing, Three.js, OpenFrameworks, and others).
- Time-based media — institutional term for work with duration that must be run and cared for over time.
- Provenance — the history of ownership and authenticity. Ledgers are one new tool for recording it.
More vocabulary: What is it called? History when someone calls it a fad: Where it came from.
Where this leaves you
You searched. You read. Optionally, you spent about twenty dollars and own one small piece so the MoMA wall is no longer a mystery. You know which questions a city has to ask before a screen goes on a wall. That is enough to start. The next email is not “teach me crypto.” It is “here is a site, a scale, and a budget question.”