Jonathan Barbeau (Canadian, b. 1989) is an algorithmic artist based in Québec City who writes code in JavaScript and p5.js to generate particle-based, noise-driven compositions.,His collections often build a narrative frame around a single technical idea, from a lone space explorer charting an unknown cosmos to the erosion of memory in a decayed cityscape.
He began minting generative work on Hic et Nunc in 2021 before moving to fx(hash), Foundation, and OBJKT, releasing longform collections including Terra Incognita (2022) and Jeu De Ligne (2023), a 300-edition series named after a painting by Marcel Barbeau, a founding member of the Montreal collective Les Automatistes.,In May 2023 he presented Exhibit-A, ten generative prints organized as five paired algorithms sharing a Perlin noise foundation, at La Korrigane in Québec City, his first exhibition of physical work.His 2023 series Aweille!, titled after a Québécois French exclamation, elongated tens of thousands of low-opacity circles into rectangular forms. The 128-edition fx(hash) collection sold out within about a week and a half.
In January 2024 he released EX-LIBRIS on fx(hash), a 256-edition collection of algorithmic bookmarks that grew out of an idea he had before attending Art Blocks' Marfa Weekend, with each holder able to redeem a signed physical bookmark. For Traces, part of the “Interfaces” project funded by the German federal government commissioner for culture and the media in Hanover and Stuttgart, he used motion-captured dance choreography, mapped via ml5.js into limb-based coordinates, as the origin points for a particle system painted live with a MIDI controller. In 2024 he showed STARMAP, a meditative, slowly-painting series following the perspective of an unnamed space explorer, in “Under Neith”, curated by Forever Projects for Foundation.
