Tibout Shaik is a generative artist and the founder of 256ART, an on-chain art platform he built, in his words, because he needed it to exist as an artist.Based in Ghent, Belgium, he describes his generative work as combining a mathematical, analytical side with a darker undertone that draws on his own experience of mental health struggles and a difficult childhood.,
Shaik's generative art practice began with the 256ART genesis series, an early experiment with generative art and blockchain technology built around the number 256, a recurring value in computer science and the basis of Bitcoin's SHA-256 hash function. For Shaik, Bitcoin represents freedom and an alternative to how society runs, themes that also run through his art.
In 2023 Shaik released (Dis)connected on Art Blocks, a fixed edition of 48 generative audiovisual works exploring the paradox of an over-connected world, pairing swaying analog cables in shifting light with a generated soundtrack that drifts between soothing and off-tune. The piece purposely glitches at times, disrupting both image and sound to unsettle the viewer's sense of a disconnected reality. Its melodies are generated by pairing one of 60 musical scales with one of 16 chord progressions, producing a main theme for each piece alongside new custom melodies that let the music play indefinitely, all coded in vanilla JavaScript without external libraries. Its color palettes draw on Van Gogh, Rothko, Picasso and the crypto-native artists XCOPY and Grant Yun, and Shaik has cited Ryan D. Anderson's moody, piano-scored animations as an inspiration for the work.
