lil code is the name under which two Chilean artists, who work together as Sebi and Coni, create code-based work, mostly in motion, that blends organic and glitch aesthetics with generative processes. They are based in Valdivia, Chile, where they met after growing up in different cities.
They have academic backgrounds in architecture, video game design, and sound engineering, but are self-taught in creative code and machine learning. Together with the artists Christian Oyarzun and Alejandro Albornoz, who taught them the basics of computer art and live coding, they founded the ToplapValdivia node. Their practice began with hydra-synth, a modular JavaScript-based video synthesizer used for live visuals, before shifting toward using the tool for visual exploration rather than performance. Since 2020 they have also worked with AI and machine-learning image synthesis, splitting their practice so that video-synthesis work continues under the name lil code while AI-based work is released as Hypereikon. Their static images are captured frames from hydra's continuous video signal, an approach they describe, following Zach Lieberman's framing of code artists as wildlife photographers, as capturing striking moments from something that keeps changing. They entered the NFT space in March 2021, riding the early wave on fxhash, after having made generative art since 2018. They cite Olivia Jack, Kim Asendorf and Zach Lieberman as influences, artists who similarly code their own creative tools within the digital-video synthesis field.
