Lovid

LoVid is Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus, a New York artist duo who have worked together since 2001. Their subject is the place where technology seeps into human culture and perception, and their signature material is the electrical signal itself. They build their own analog video and audio synthesizers by hand, then push the results across media: moving image, textiles, sewn and quilted works, performances, net art, installations, prints, and since 2021 blockchain projects. Every colour and pattern in the work comes out of hardware rather than a filter, which is why the palettes look like nothing else in generative art. Their pieces are held by the Whitney Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image, the Parrish Art Museum, the Thoma Foundation, the Watermill Center, the Butler Institute of American Art and the Heckscher Museum. When they walked MLow through the work they stopped on a portrait held by the Whitney and explained that each one is a specific person, with all the colour built from analog video. Their first onchain generative project, Tide Predictor, released through Art Blocks Curated in 2022, translated a modular video synthesizer patch into code that works in three channels, red, green and blue. Augury followed in 2023 and pulled frames from the Tide Predictor algorithm into compositions that read as quilts.

LoVid makes analog video synthesis into objects, from generative onchain collections to sewn digital tapestries and wearable work. The named projects include Hugs on Tape, Tide Predictor, Augury, Upstate Summer, Pollen Punch, Bamboo, SOUVENIRHRZ, YES Color Recall and heartsleeves. The aesthetic is maximalist and pattern heavy, drawing openly on the Pattern and Decoration movement and on glitch art. A recurring move is to hand agency to the collector, most explicitly in heartsleeves, where owning the generative video unlocks a portrait studio that puts the owner inside the work.

• Tide Predictor, Art Blocks Curated, 2022
• Augury, Art Blocks Presents, 2023
• Hugs on Tape, pandemic era hug simulations
• heartsleeves, community portrait studio
• Handmade analog video synthesizers
• Work in the Whitney Museum collection

On the show