Jimi Wen is a Taiwanese creative coder, ink artist, and sculptor who moves between generative code, ink and paper, and physical media including textiles and furniture. Before turning to art, Wen ran a startup that failed and toured with the rock band Mayday. Wen began making generative art after taking part in Genuary 2022 and was minting collections within months.
Self-taught in code, Wen builds each work from a representative or figurative starting point, then abstracts it through iterative, loop-based coding that Wen compares to action painting, citing Teardrop as an example. Wen also works directly in ink and paper, an analog, one-take process without the option to undo a mark.In 2022, Wen and Thomas Noya co-created GTX on fxhash.Wen later began Si Wu Zi, a four-chapter generative project drawing on classical Chinese calligraphy and scripture.
Wen created a fund, seeded with half the proceeds of a Genesis collection, to give graduate-level students more exposure for their work, and teaches free creative classes to middle school students. Among the figures Wen cites as influences are Sen no Rikyu, Marcel Duchamp, and John Cage, whose I Ching-based composition Music of Changes Wen considers an early form of generative art.
