{
  "schema": "ab5d-dossier/1",
  "slug": "johan",
  "name": "johan",
  "subtitle": "Computational structures poised between measure and meditation",
  "lede": "Working under the name johan, Johan Ismael brings mathematical training and graphics engineering into a contemplative generative-art practice.",
  "url": "https://ab5d.xyz/artists/johan/",
  "bibliography_url": "https://ab5d.xyz/artists/johan/links/",
  "content_url": "https://ab5d.xyz/api/artists/johan.json",
  "updated": "2026-07-11",
  "tier": "compact",
  "editions": 360,
  "collections": 1,
  "otdh": {
    "rank": 187,
    "score": 11468,
    "collector_identities": 216,
    "holder_addresses": 219,
    "projects": 1,
    "current_works": 359,
    "raw_collector_days": 473790,
    "median_project_hold_days": 1478,
    "snapshot_at": "2026-09-14T00:00:00.000Z",
    "methodology_url": "https://ab5d.xyz/artists/otdh/",
    "api_url": "https://ab5d.xyz/api/otdh/johan"
  },
  "identity": {
    "artist": "johan",
    "website": "https://johan.studio/work/steps",
    "based": "Born 1988, Paris. Based in Alameda, California",
    "practice": "Generative art, creative coding, graphics engineering, electronic music, and audiovisual installation",
    "now": null,
    "raster": "https://www.raster.art/artist/johan",
    "otdh": "[11,468 · rank 187 of 308](/artists/otdh/#artist-johan)",
    "holding signal": "216 collector identities · 219 holder addresses · 473,790 raw collector-days · 14 Sep 2026",
    "collector tdh": "[johanTDH](/artists/johan/johantdh/) · dashboard"
  },
  "socials": {
    "website": "https://johan.studio/work/steps",
    "x": "@johan__studio",
    "instagram": null
  },
  "profile_image_url": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1583602280489570304/7s3PAbBU_400x400.jpg",
  "profile_image_source": "https://x.com/johan__studio",
  "works": [
    {
      "name": "Steps",
      "editions": 360,
      "supply": 360,
      "artblocks_slug": "steps-by-johan",
      "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/steps-by-johan"
    }
  ],
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": null,
      "paragraphs": [
        "Johan Ismael’s practice joins two modes of attention that are often treated as opposites: exact computation and spiritual contemplation. A 2025 exhibition biography identifies him as a Paris-born artist and electronic musician based in Alameda, California, with work rooted in mathematics and spiritual practice. His professional record adds a technical foundation in computer graphics and human-computer interaction, as well as experience in shaders, rendering, virtual reality, and creative coding. These contexts matter because his images do not use computation merely as a production convenience. The algorithm becomes a framework through which order can approach, without fully containing, ambiguity.",
        "His wider body of work moves among still images, interactive graphics, sound, and performance. As one half of the French-American duo Night Sea, formed with David Grunzweig, Ismael participates in ambient music and generative audiovisual work shaped around hypnotic, meditative experience. Grunzweig’s project archive confirms their collaboration on algorithmic audiovisual works made with web audio, Three.js, and GLSL. The resulting practice is technically fluent but oriented toward perception: code establishes a field in which rhythm, repetition, and gradual variation can be experienced rather than simply decoded."
      ]
    },
    {
      "heading": "Between unit and continuum",
      "paragraphs": [
        "Released through Art Blocks Factory in 2022, *Steps* is johan’s AB[500] project and comprises exactly 360 editions. The official token record identifies the collection as *Steps by johan* and exposes system-level traits including size, style, curvature, palette, reflection, and palette count. These categories show how each output is not an isolated drawing but one realization of a parameterized visual grammar.",
        "The series builds compositions from repeated, step-like units. Across the edition, linear structures gather into bands, turns, and layered passages whose behavior can appear architectural, topographic, or woven. The title is therefore both literal and conceptual. A step is a discrete increment, yet accumulated steps describe continuous movement. The artist’s exhibition statement frames the project around precisely this relation between the discrete and the continuous, connecting that uncertainty to tensions between conceptual and spiritual experience.",
        "Rather than staging randomness as spectacle, *Steps* uses variation with restraint. Changes in curvature, density, scale, and color alter the temperament of each composition while preserving the series’ recognizable syntax. Some outputs read as measured diagrams; others soften into atmospheric fields. The work’s force lies in this controlled instability, where a countable sequence can suggest duration, depth, and states that resist measurement."
      ]
    },
    {
      "heading": "Systems that become instruments",
      "paragraphs": [
        "Other projects clarify the range behind the apparent quiet of *Steps*. *Code Sketches Series #1* used GLSL shaders and a custom Cinder application supporting live reloading, multiple render passes, and parameter control through GUI, OSC, MIDI, and low-frequency oscillators. In the 2018 *AR Doodle*, Ismael implemented an augmented-reality drawing tool with tapered geometry, animated gradients, and a Fresnel rim inside Facebook’s mobile application. His later Horizon Worlds skydome translated procedural shading into an efficient, user-configurable environment for constrained virtual-reality hardware. Together, these projects establish an artist accustomed to treating technical limits as compositional conditions.",
        "That approach expands from image to event in *Sonatina for Plotter & Laptop* (2023), made with Grunzweig and presented during Art Blocks’ Marfa gathering. A microphone captured the mechanical sounds of a pen plotter, algorithms processed them into an ambient soundscape, and visitors received small plotted cards. The installation made drawing audible, converting a fabrication device into an instrument. Night Sea’s *l.o*, released by Art Blocks in 2023, similarly joined generative image and sound across 176 unique artworks.",
        "Seen in this larger context, *Steps* is neither a detached formal exercise nor a simple demonstration of code. It concentrates johan’s recurring concerns into a spare visual system: discrete operations accumulate, mechanical procedures acquire atmosphere, and mathematical structures become invitations to sustained attention."
      ]
    }
  ],
  "body_markdown": "Johan Ismael’s practice joins two modes of attention that are often treated as opposites: exact computation and spiritual contemplation. A 2025 exhibition biography identifies him as a Paris-born artist and electronic musician based in Alameda, California, with work rooted in mathematics and spiritual practice. His professional record adds a technical foundation in computer graphics and human-computer interaction, as well as experience in shaders, rendering, virtual reality, and creative coding. These contexts matter because his images do not use computation merely as a production convenience. The algorithm becomes a framework through which order can approach, without fully containing, ambiguity.\n\nHis wider body of work moves among still images, interactive graphics, sound, and performance. As one half of the French-American duo Night Sea, formed with David Grunzweig, Ismael participates in ambient music and generative audiovisual work shaped around hypnotic, meditative experience. Grunzweig’s project archive confirms their collaboration on algorithmic audiovisual works made with web audio, Three.js, and GLSL. The resulting practice is technically fluent but oriented toward perception: code establishes a field in which rhythm, repetition, and gradual variation can be experienced rather than simply decoded.\n\n## Between unit and continuum\n\nReleased through Art Blocks Factory in 2022, *Steps* is johan’s AB[500] project and comprises exactly 360 editions. The official token record identifies the collection as *Steps by johan* and exposes system-level traits including size, style, curvature, palette, reflection, and palette count. These categories show how each output is not an isolated drawing but one realization of a parameterized visual grammar.\n\nThe series builds compositions from repeated, step-like units. Across the edition, linear structures gather into bands, turns, and layered passages whose behavior can appear architectural, topographic, or woven. The title is therefore both literal and conceptual. A step is a discrete increment, yet accumulated steps describe continuous movement. The artist’s exhibition statement frames the project around precisely this relation between the discrete and the continuous, connecting that uncertainty to tensions between conceptual and spiritual experience.\n\nRather than staging randomness as spectacle, *Steps* uses variation with restraint. Changes in curvature, density, scale, and color alter the temperament of each composition while preserving the series’ recognizable syntax. Some outputs read as measured diagrams; others soften into atmospheric fields. The work’s force lies in this controlled instability, where a countable sequence can suggest duration, depth, and states that resist measurement.\n\n## Systems that become instruments\n\nOther projects clarify the range behind the apparent quiet of *Steps*. *Code Sketches Series #1* used GLSL shaders and a custom Cinder application supporting live reloading, multiple render passes, and parameter control through GUI, OSC, MIDI, and low-frequency oscillators. In the 2018 *AR Doodle*, Ismael implemented an augmented-reality drawing tool with tapered geometry, animated gradients, and a Fresnel rim inside Facebook’s mobile application. His later Horizon Worlds skydome translated procedural shading into an efficient, user-configurable environment for constrained virtual-reality hardware. Together, these projects establish an artist accustomed to treating technical limits as compositional conditions.\n\nThat approach expands from image to event in *Sonatina for Plotter & Laptop* (2023), made with Grunzweig and presented during Art Blocks’ Marfa gathering. A microphone captured the mechanical sounds of a pen plotter, algorithms processed them into an ambient soundscape, and visitors received small plotted cards. The installation made drawing audible, converting a fabrication device into an instrument. Night Sea’s *l.o*, released by Art Blocks in 2023, similarly joined generative image and sound across 176 unique artworks.\n\nSeen in this larger context, *Steps* is neither a detached formal exercise nor a simple demonstration of code. It concentrates johan’s recurring concerns into a spare visual system: discrete operations accumulate, mechanical procedures acquire atmosphere, and mathematical structures become invitations to sustained attention.",
  "images": [
    {
      "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/332000000.png",
      "title": "Steps",
      "caption": "2022, series",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/332000072.png",
      "title": "Steps",
      "caption": "2022, series",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/332000144.png",
      "title": "Steps",
      "caption": "2022, series",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/332000215.png",
      "title": "Steps",
      "caption": "2022, series",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/332000287.png",
      "title": "Steps",
      "caption": "2022, series",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/332000359.png",
      "title": "Steps",
      "caption": "2022, series",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
    }
  ],
  "references": [
    {
      "n": 1,
      "note": "Shotgun Players identifies Johan Ismael’s biography, location, mathematical and spiritual contexts, and the conceptual premise of Steps.",
      "url": "https://shotgunplayers.org/show/art/gallery/",
      "label": "Shotgun Players"
    },
    {
      "n": 2,
      "note": "The artist’s résumé documents his graphics and HCI education, technical practice, and professional experience.",
      "url": "https://www.johan.studio/resume",
      "label": "résumé"
    },
    {
      "n": 3,
      "note": "Resident Advisor describes Night Sea, its Bay Area context, and Johan Ismael’s role in the audiovisual duo.",
      "url": "https://fr.ra.co/dj/nightsea/biography",
      "label": "Resident Advisor"
    },
    {
      "n": 4,
      "note": "David Grunzweig’s portfolio records collaborative algorithmic audiovisual works made with Johan Ismael.",
      "url": "https://dggrunzweig.github.io/PortfolioSite/",
      "label": "Grunzweig portfolio"
    },
    {
      "n": 5,
      "note": "Art Blocks’ token record identifies Steps by johan and documents the collection’s parameter traits.",
      "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/token/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/332000236",
      "label": "Art Blocks Steps"
    },
    {
      "n": 6,
      "note": "The Code Sketches project page documents the custom Cinder and GLSL system and its live controls.",
      "url": "https://www.johan.studio/work/generative-sketches",
      "label": "Code Sketches"
    },
    {
      "n": 7,
      "note": "The AR Doodle project page explains Ismael’s implementation and shader mechanics for the mobile drawing tool.",
      "url": "https://www.johan.studio/work/ar-doodle",
      "label": "AR Doodle"
    },
    {
      "n": 8,
      "note": "The Horizon Worlds project page describes Ismael’s procedural skydome and its performance constraints.",
      "url": "https://www.johan.studio/work/horizon-worlds-skydome",
      "label": "Skydome"
    },
    {
      "n": 9,
      "note": "The Sonatina project page documents the plotter, microphone, algorithmic audio processing, and Marfa presentation.",
      "url": "https://www.johan.studio/work/sonatina-for-plotter-laptop",
      "label": "Sonatina"
    },
    {
      "n": 10,
      "note": "Art Blocks records Night Sea’s l.o as 176 unique artworks released on September 12, 2023.",
      "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/lo-by-night-sea",
      "label": "Art Blocks l.o"
    }
  ],
  "bibliography": [
    {
      "category": "In the AB[500]: Art Blocks",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "An official token record identifies Steps by johan and publishes its generative traits.",
          "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/token/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/332000236",
          "label": "Art Blocks",
          "meta": "collection · 2022"
        },
        {
          "note": "Art Blocks documents l.o, an audiovisual Night Sea collection released in 2023.",
          "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/lo-by-night-sea",
          "label": "Art Blocks l.o",
          "meta": "collection · 2023"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Galleries and exhibitions",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "Shotgun Players presented a Steps print in a 2025 lobby exhibition and published an artist biography and series statement.",
          "url": "https://shotgunplayers.org/show/art/gallery/",
          "label": "Shotgun Players",
          "meta": "exhibition · 2025"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Essays, talks and podcasts",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "Resident Advisor’s Night Sea biography outlines Ismael’s role in the duo and its ambient, generative audiovisual practice.",
          "url": "https://fr.ra.co/dj/nightsea/biography",
          "label": "Resident Advisor",
          "meta": "biography · 2023"
        },
        {
          "note": "The Sonatina project record documents a plotter-based sound installation presented at the 2023 Art Blocks Marfa gathering.",
          "url": "https://www.johan.studio/work/sonatina-for-plotter-laptop",
          "label": "Sonatina",
          "meta": "project essay · 2023"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Profiles and archives",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "Raster aggregates johan's tokenized works across platforms.",
          "url": "https://www.raster.art/artist/johan",
          "label": "Raster",
          "meta": "profile · ongoing"
        },
        {
          "note": "The artist’s résumé records his education, professional history, teaching, and technical competencies.",
          "url": "https://www.johan.studio/resume",
          "label": "résumé",
          "meta": "profile · ongoing"
        },
        {
          "note": "David Grunzweig’s portfolio archives audiovisual collaborations with Johan Ismael through Night Sea Studio.",
          "url": "https://dggrunzweig.github.io/PortfolioSite/",
          "label": "collaborator archive",
          "meta": "profile · 2024"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Technical projects",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "Code Sketches Series #1 documents an early custom GLSL and Cinder environment for live generative graphics.",
          "url": "https://www.johan.studio/work/generative-sketches",
          "label": "Code Sketches",
          "meta": "project · 2018"
        },
        {
          "note": "AR Doodle records Ismael’s shader and creative-coding work on an augmented-reality drawing tool.",
          "url": "https://www.johan.studio/work/ar-doodle",
          "label": "AR Doodle",
          "meta": "project · 2018"
        },
        {
          "note": "Horizon Worlds Skydome details a procedural shader system designed for constrained virtual-reality hardware.",
          "url": "https://www.johan.studio/work/horizon-worlds-skydome",
          "label": "Skydome",
          "meta": "project · 2022"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "provenance": {
    "schema": "ab5d-provenance/1",
    "contributor": "ab500dao.eth",
    "agent": "gpt-5.6-sol",
    "model": "gpt-5.6-sol",
    "harness": "AB5D structured pipeline",
    "autonomy": "supervised",
    "tokens": {
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      "estimated": false
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    "cost_usd": null,
    "links_verified": 11,
    "date": "2026-07-11",
    "note": "Structured return rendered by scripts/render_dossier.py; token counts are measured API usage."
  },
  "license": "https://ab5d.xyz/license/",
  "license_note": "Dossier prose is CC0. Embedded Art Blocks renders are not: they remain the property of their respective artists and holders.",
  "attribution": {
    "name": "AB[500]",
    "url": "https://ab5d.xyz/artists/johan/",
    "cite": "AB5D, \"johan\", AB[500] artist dossier, ab5d.xyz, 2026",
    "required": false,
    "requested": true,
    "note": "Prose is CC0; a credit and link back to ab5d.xyz is appreciated, not required."
  },
  "generated": "2026-09-14T12:58:26"
}