Andreas Rau (b. 1990) is a generative artist based between Berlin and Oslo who works with code and electronics to build bridges between physical and digital environments.,His practice, which draws on a background in interaction design and creative coding, spans interactive installations, audiovisual pieces and physical artifacts made entirely from code, and he is also a jazz musician who compares his process to a jam session.,
Rau minted his first NFT on the Tezos blockchain on April 24, 2021, choosing Tezos for its energy efficiency and for the community that had formed around Hic et Nunc. His early fxhash release Loom became one of the platform's best-selling collections, and his series Concrete, 640 sketches of imaginary walls, drew on the Norwegian architect Erling Viksjø and his invention of Natural Concrete, a material that exposes its aggregate stones for warmth. “In my work, I have similar ambitions—using code instead of concrete”, Rau has said of the series.
His 2023 solo exhibition and performance “Klangteppich” debuted at Bright Moments Gallery in Berlin in March, and that November he presented the solo exhibition and performance “Duet” at KEF Music Gallery in Hong Kong. Also in 2023, his work entered the Tezos Foundation's permanent collection through its inaugural group exhibition.Klangteppich was later shown as woven tapestries alongside an audio-enabled digital display at the fx(hash) booth of the inaugural Digital Art Mile at Art Basel in 2024.
In 2022 he collaborated with the artist Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez on Toccata, a generative series pairing their practices.His 2024 release Stairs & Stocks, inspired by a photograph he took in Paris, pairs infinitely morphing staircases with fictional stock charts that periodically collapse and rebuild, reflecting on the web3 world's fixation with numbers going up and down.Symphony for n Metronomes takes its cue from György Ligeti's 1962 composition Poème Symphonique for 100 Metronomes: each time a collector mints an edition, a new metronome is added to a shared, blockchain-based composition that runs on Coordinated Universal Time, reconfiguring the whole piece rather than existing as an isolated token. Rau has described the shift this entails in his own role, from sole author to “system architect, facilitator, or even choreographer”.
