William Mapan
The next step in generative art
“Make stuff that you enjoy, because if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing then you need to make a change.”
For over a decade, William Mapan worked long hours as a creative developer in the tech industry. In his spare time, he made art, but always just for fun. Then one day in 2018 he received a DM on Twitter. “Can you mint this?” It said. Mint? Mapan was baffled. He didn’t know what ‘mint’ meant. But slowly, the NFT world began to draw him in. And in 2021, he released his first NFT. Unsurprisingly, it was an instant success. Mapan’s abstract digital paintings are truly one of a kind. The subtle combinations of colour and texture are beautifully expressive and emotional. Even though the artworks are...
For over a decade, William Mapan worked long hours as a creative developer in the tech industry. In his spare time, he made art, but always just for fun. Then one day in 2018 he received a DM on Twitter. “Can you mint this?” It said. Mint? Mapan was baffled. He didn’t know what ‘mint’ meant. But slowly, the NFT world began to draw him in. And in 2021, he released his first NFT. Unsurprisingly, it was an instant success. Mapan’s abstract digital paintings are truly one of a kind. The subtle combinations of colour and texture are beautifully expressive and emotional. Even though the artworks are generated by code, they look like they've been painted or drawn with materials like charcoal and graphite.
When you look at Mapan’s artworks, they look fast and intuitive. But in reality they can take months to create. For the series Murmures d’un Carré (Whispers of a Square), he spent half a year working on one code. He used a process of trial and error, making adjustments to the algorithm one by one to slowly edge closer to results he was happy with. His process is methodical, yes, but the secret ingredient is actually chaos – “I like to expect the unexpected as a generative artist. Generative art is not only about computers, it’s also about randomness and systems. You have to introduce some chaos into your systems in order to be surprised. That’s the beauty of it”.
French artist William Mapan (he/him) was born in 1988 and is currently based in Paris.
Mapan gets inspiration from everywhere. “It could be anything, like, literally anything”, he says. “A big part of me is about observation. I am about seeing things that others don’t. I like to visualise common things, because there are beautiful things everywhere”.
People are the most important thing for Mapan. “It’s a good feeling to help each other and support your friends and your fellow artists because, at the end of the day, we are the main people that can recognise another artist, so I think it is very important to hear each other”.
