Dmitri Cherniak (Canadian, b. 1988),is an artist and coder based in New York Citywho treats automation as his artistic medium.,He writes generative software that ranges from crisp, graphic compositions to layered, hazy textures.His Ringers series — an algorithm that loops a line around a randomized arrangement of pegs— sold out its 1,000 pieces on Art Blocks in eighteen minutes in 2021.
Cherniak studied physiology and computer science at McGill Universityand spent about a decade as a startup's chief technology officer while developing his art practice.His first code-based work, Taylor Swift ASCII Art (2009–2015), grew out of an AI game he built for a university course and led to a solo exhibition.In 2019 he began minting on SuperRare,then released Ringers on Art Blocks in 2021, a system inspired by Swiss designer Armin Hofmann's 1960s graphic design manual.He regards the set of 1,000 pieces, meant to be curated into collector grids, as more compelling than any single output.Ringers #879, nicknamed "the Goose" for its resemblance to the animal, sold at Sotheby's for $6.2 million in June 2023.,Ringers #962 joined the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2023, one of its first blockchain-based acquisitions.
In 2022 Cherniak collaborated with the estate of Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy on Light Years, a generative series developed over a six-month investigation and exhibited as silver gelatin prints at Paris Photo.A 30-piece companion series, Light Years: Process Works, traces the algorithm's development.Works from the series are held in the permanent collections of LACMA, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe.,In 2020 Cherniak's generative output supplied source material for GAN models built by AI artist Helena Sarin in their collaboration gen2GAN, later released as a limited-edition book in 2023.In 2023 he was among fifteen artists in the Museum of Modern Art's blockchain-based “MoMA Postcard” project, building pixel-grid generator software so participants could design their stamps.
Twenty-five Ringers prints appeared in the 2025 group exhibition “Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms” at the Toledo Museum of Art, alongside early Art Blocks works.At Art Basel Miami Beach's “Zero 10” section that year, the gallery AOTM presented his new series Polygon Etcetera alongside Floor Ringer, a 700-pound stainless steel sculpture translating Ringers into three dimensions for the first time.,Three early tokens — Ringers #868, Ringers #930 and Ringers #999 — entered the collection of the generative art institution Le Random.
