Artist Ayla El-Moussa shares her perspective on abstracting the female form, the inspiration behind the project, and how it all came to be in conversation with ChatGPT
Intro & Interview by ChatGPT
Photography & Styling: Ayla El-Moussa
Tell us about this new direction and what has the creative process been like?
It’s been interesting; over the last two years, I have been contemplating how to evolve my Nude Pixel project, and I have been super fascinated with the idea of coded art and Art Blocks. One day was just messing around with a reflection, and I had a creative lightbulb moment; I was like, why don’t I create my own version of Art Blocks? Obviously not coded, but transforming a self-portrait into something that looks coded was fascinating. The process has been enjoyable; I do everything myself, so shooting over 300 photos to select the perfect 69 (for the culture) was fun; I mean, luckily, I don’t need to style much haha. At first, my focus was purely on abstract, but then I thought, wouldn’t it be fun if you could see the original image that was used. That’s when I had my creative crisis on how to develop this idea further - and then I had the idea to paint over the images…I, of course, did the obligatory iMessage to my brother, “bro, how do I.” He was like, “just use ProCreate,”…..so I downloaded ProCreate, ordered a pencil, and started experimenting. I painted over every single image to give them an ethereal painterly feeling, and the gradient use of color brought a dynamic essence to the pieces as well.
For those who don’t know what Nude Pixels are, explain the project
It was an idea I had one day, I created a series of 40 self-portraits with a twist. I was like wouldn’t it be funny to pixelate them so that as you zoom in, the image becomes more pixelated, creating what became the tagline “the closer you look, the less you see” - I was playing off the idea of CryptoPunks and just so funny because you know people will zoom in. Up until NP (Nude Pixels), everything I had minted was quite serious. I always joke with people that I am not a funny person; I would say I am a severe introvert, who mulls things over in my mind for a long time, I love a deep dive into research, and I really like to have a purpose behind what I create- NP turned everything on its head- it took about 4 days to execute from shoot to mint, which is very unlike me as I usually take oodles of time to think everything over. Anyways, a long rant to answer this question- but I hold this project close, and I wanted to push it forward elegantly, and then the idea of nude abstracts was born.