Elsif is a Chinese-Canadian artist and computer scientist based in California who makes generative art with geometric shapes and parametric curves, applying pixel sorting and other code-based techniques to abstract, nature-inspired imagery. As a child she began drawing realistic portraits to learn facial features and cope with face blindness, and was later drawn to programming for its infallibility and its ability to automate repetitive tasks.
Her long-form generative collection Elswhere released on fxhash, and in 2023 she followed it with For Algernon, an abstract flower representation inspired by the short story "Flowers for Algernon". For “The Pixel Generation”, a 2023 show at Unit London developed with Right Click Save, she created The Last Rain of April, which applies pixel sorting to a generative landscape built from JavaScript, the Canvas API, p5.js and Three.js. She has said she wanted the piece to evoke “a feeling of quiet contemplation”, drawing all of its pixels from code before scattering them with a simulated digital rain.
