Pxlshrd is a generative artist who translates ideas drawn from music and sound into code-based digital images. A former sound engineer, he learned to code with the launch of the platform fx(hash), where he has since released a large body of long-form generative work.
Pxlshrd worked as a live sound engineer, alongside photography and graphic design, before the COVID-19 pandemic prompted him to step back from the 16-hour days of touring sound work. He discovered fx(hash) shortly after it launched, through a tweet by the artist ciphrd, and began coding specifically to publish work there.He had previously released 3D work made in Blender on Tezos under another alias, headphaser, which drew little interest, and the name pxlshrd began as a side project for animated gifs.
The piece Rückkopplung, released through Tender, takes its title from the German word for feedback. On roughly his fiftieth attempt at coding a shader for the piece, he adapted a liquefy-style distortion effect from another project and, while adjusting its underlying coordinates in frustration, stumbled onto the feedback pattern that defines the finished work within a few minutes. In its published description, the piece is framed as a meditation on feedback loops in human behavior, the way a system's output can shape its own input and either reinforce a pattern or help a person evolve beyond it.
Pxlshrd has released other long-form work on fx(hash), including a generative token collaboration with the artist Mikkel Hartmann titled Pause, and Indistinct Places, for which he composed an algorithmic score originally intended only as loading-screen music before it became integral to the piece.In 2024 he also contributed to Conversations, a collector-curated series released on the platform Verse.
