Jared Tarbell (American, b. 1973) is a generative artist and computer scientist who writes code that models emergence, translating simple algorithmic rules into complex, nature-like forms.,Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he has written code for more than 30 years, since discovering personal computers in 1987.,,He also co-founded the online marketplace Etsy in 2005.,
Tarbell taught himself to program as a teenager, then studied mathematics and computer science in college. A conference talk by the designer Edward Tufte shaped his visual language, particularly the idea of arranging many algorithmic outputs as small multiples to reveal a system rather than a single image. From 2000 he published daily sketches on levitated.net.From around 2004 he explored complexity theory through the site Complexification.net, where he also began selling prints of his work. His algorithm Substrate grows lines that travel until they hit another line or the screen's edge, then branch off at right angles. It came to him in a Santa Fe coffee shop in 2003, after he noticed cracks spreading across a sun-damaged sticker.
He co-founded Etsy in 2005 with Rob Kalin, who discovered his work through Complexification.net, along with Chris Maguire and Haim Schoppik. Running the company left him little time to make art, and he did not return to it fully until he left Etsy in 2011. He has since published open-source generative sketches, mostly drawing machines, on his site infinite.center.
With Casey Reas, Robert Hodgin and William Ngan, he created Software Structures, twenty-six programs inspired by Sol LeWitt's wall drawings, later restored and hosted on the Whitney Museum's artport site.He took part in Kate Vass Galerie's “Automat und Mensch” in Zurich in 2019.In 2020 he joined the gallery's online exhibition “Game of Life – Emergence in Generative Art”, alongside Alexander Reben, Kjetil Golid and Manolo Gamboa Naon, honoring the mathematician John Conway.In 2023 the gallery presented his Node to Node series, six sets of five images each keyed to a different algorithm.That show also included Flower Composition (2023), a mandala-like radial arrangement of hand-drawn floral motifs, later sold out as a set of five prints paired with NFTs.,His work was also included in “Infinite Images” at the Toledo Museum of Art, in a section pairing generative and biological systems alongside artists including Sofia Crespo and Anna Ridler.,
