William Tan is a self-taught Indonesian artist and programmer whose work spans generative art, photography and painting.He double-majored in mathematics and computer science at Biola University in La Mirada, California, then studied interaction design at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, where an introductory generative art class introduced him to the Processing programming environment created by Casey Reas.
His brother introduced him to Art Blocks and NFTs, and he applied to the platform after seeing its potential to showcase his work.The result was Scribbled Boundaries,an Art Blocks generative series with an edition of 1,000 that began as an experiment to test whether his pseudo-random generator produced evenly distributed coordinates, yielding marks that resemble pen or colored-pencil scribbles.Tan has said the series draws on Abstract Expressionist painters including Cy Twombly, Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko and Josef Albers,and sets out to convey order emerging from apparent chaos.,
Before turning to code, Tan spent a decade working primarily in photography. In 2013 he co-authored the photographic essay book Moeka Djakarta, documenting life in Jakarta, which was featured and promoted by Indonesian President Joko Widodo during a festival celebrating the city's birthday.His work has been exhibited in Jakarta and Bali,and he lives and works in Jakarta, Indonesia.
