Kjetil Golid is a generative artist living in Norway. He loves to experiment with different colours. For as long as he can remember, he has been interested in design and art. He gets his inspiration from other generative artists and cartoonists. He creates his art using p5.js. Kjetil was an avid comic book reader and -collector growing up, especially Donald Duck.
NFT Granny: “Dear Kjetil, thank you so much for taking the time to answer my question. Although you use many colours in your artwork, your projects look super harmonious. And the colours also give a specific recognition across the projects, despite the visual differences. How exactly do you choose the colours for a new project?“
Kjetil Golid: I put great effort into finding good colour palettes for my various pieces, but I am definitely no colour expert, so the process is usually one of trial and error. I often find colour combinations “in the wild” that I am convinced will harmonise with one of my works, later to find out I was dead wrong. This, in part, was the reason why I made Chromotome (a javascript colour palette library); so that I could easily browse through and apply several palettes with ease, to quickly see what works and what doesn’t.
How did you first become interested in art, and how did you get started with it yourself?
Kjetil Golid: I have had a general interest in design and illustration for as long as I can remember, but the works of Casey Reas really caught my attention while I studied for my BA in Graphic Design. His approach was different from anything I had ever seen, and it drew me straight into the world of generative art.
Can you tell us more about your story behind the project “Archetype” (e.g. how did you come up with this idea) – as we found a lot of information about the process and the technical features?
Kjetil Golid: Archetype has its basis in a rectangle partitioning algorithm I wrote years earlier. The idea then was to make a program that could generate every possible way of dividing a rectangle up into smaller rectangles. As with many of my other pieces, Archetype came to be when I took this – more or less – useful algorithm and added obscure constraints and artefacts to it—the most important ones being the 3D extrusion and the repetitious patterns.
My original vision for Archetype was to mimic the structural patterns seen on the facades of high-rise buildings. Later on in the process, I started experimenting with more chaotic layouts where these patterns were not as prevalent.
Which of your artworks are you most proud of?
Kjetil Golid: It’s hard to rank them, but I am usually most happy with my most recent work. In this case, that would be the Hippodrome 4-piece set. I even have a variant of it framed and standing on my desk. As of lately, I have often been using large colour palettes for my work, so for this set, I actually set a restriction for myself of keeping the colour palette small for each individual piece. I was very happy with the more understated style and proud of the overall result.
Open on Superrare.com
Open on Superrare.com
Open on Superrare.com
Open on Superrare.com
Open on Superrare.com
Is there an artist you would like to work with? Like a collaboration?
Kjetil Golid: To be honest, I haven’t been giving that opportunity a lot of thought, but I could see myself doing a collaboration piece one day. A collaboration with a musician, for instance, could be exciting.
We are curious 🙂 Would you be willing to share any plans of upcoming projects?
Kjetil Golid: There are some things in the works. Archetype’s 1-year anniversary is coming up, so I would love to mark that occasion in some way or another. Additionally, I have some other ongoing projects, but I feel like my threshold for minting new pieces just goes higher and higher. The eternalness of NFTs comes with the flip side of demanding high quality.
Who or what are your biggest influences or sources of inspiration?
Kjetil Golid: Other generative artists have always been a huge inspiration for me; Tyler Hobbs, Matt Deslauriers and Anders Hoff (Inconvergent) immediately come to mind. Outside of generative art, I am a big fan of Ligne Claire cartoonists like Hergé and Yves Chaland, which might explain my extensive use of paperlike, off-white backgrounds and shapes with thick, black outlines.
Do you remember the first time you heard about NFT Art?
Kjetil Golid: Yes, I think it was early 2018, when someone approached me and invited me to join an NFT project in its infancy. The initial idea was to have me on board as an artist and use one of my generative algorithms to generate the token art. It never really panned out, but the algorithm later came to be my Paper Armada!
Open on Opensea.io
How do you enjoy the NFT Art you have collected? Do you have a way to display it for example at home?
Kjetil Golid: I don’t use any digital frames, as I have yet to find one that I like, so I usually try to get a signed print from the artist. If that’s not an option, I print them myself.
What would be your biggest wish for the NFT Art scene? What is currently missing / not fully developed to reach full potential out of it?
Kjetil Golid: I would love to see more professional art critics in the NFT art scene. Not to walk around with some stamp of approval, but to contribute to an art space with a larger focus on the actual art and less on the gambling aspect surrounding it all.
Which tools do you use to create your art?
Kjetil Golid: I create my art using code — javascript with p5.js — so my go-to tools are Visual Studio Code for writing the code and a browser to see the output. Before coding, though, I tend to sketch up my ideas in a notebook. This is where I try filtering out ideas that are infeasible or unfit for a generative algorithm.
I also have a pen plotter that I occasionally fire up to make some plotter art, but that is mostly for my own enjoyment and mindfulness.
Is there something aside from art or NFTs you collect?
Kjetil Golid: I was an avid comic book reader and -collector growing up, especially Donald Duck. Today, the acquisition of new comic books has slowed down considerably, but I would still consider myself a collector 😉
What do you feel the moment a project you’ve created dropped?
Kjetil Golid: A firm conviction that an undiscovered bug will emerge any minute.
- Full Name: Kjetil Midtgarden Golid
- Current hometown: Trondheim, Norway
- Languages he speaks: Norwegian, English
- Education: Bachelor’s in Cognitive Science, Master’s in Computer Science
- First Job: IT Consultant
