{
  "schema": "ab5d-dossier/1",
  "slug": "yazid",
  "name": "Yazid",
  "subtitle": "Code, perception, and the wandering line",
  "lede": "Yazid gives computational systems room to wander. In *Automatism*, coded lines invite viewers to perceive images that were never explicitly drawn.",
  "url": "https://ab5d.xyz/artists/yazid/",
  "bibliography_url": "https://ab5d.xyz/artists/yazid/links/",
  "content_url": "https://ab5d.xyz/api/artists/yazid.json",
  "updated": "2026-07-11",
  "tier": "compact",
  "editions": 426,
  "collections": 1,
  "otdh": {
    "rank": 192,
    "score": 11291,
    "collector_identities": 215,
    "holder_addresses": 223,
    "projects": 1,
    "current_works": 426,
    "raw_collector_days": 554961,
    "median_project_hold_days": 1456,
    "snapshot_at": "2026-09-14T00:00:00.000Z",
    "methodology_url": "https://ab5d.xyz/artists/otdh/",
    "api_url": "https://ab5d.xyz/api/otdh/yazid"
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  "identity": {
    "artist": null,
    "website": null,
    "based": "Born 1987, Brunei. Lives and works in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei",
    "practice": "Generative art shaped by code, algorithms, minimalism, symbolism, and exchanges between digital systems and material perception",
    "now": "Continues to develop experimental coded works informed by an earlier career in software development",
    "raster": "https://www.raster.art/artist/yazid",
    "otdh": "[11,291 · rank 192 of 308](/artists/otdh/#artist-yazid)",
    "holding signal": "215 collector identities · 223 holder addresses · 554,961 raw collector-days · 14 Sep 2026",
    "collector tdh": "[yazidTDH](/artists/yazid/yazidtdh/) · dashboard"
  },
  "socials": {
    "website": null,
    "x": "@Yazid",
    "instagram": null
  },
  "profile_image_url": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/2026033148564492288/97hkD1H2_400x400.jpg",
  "profile_image_source": "https://x.com/Yazid",
  "works": [
    {
      "name": "Automatism",
      "editions": 426,
      "supply": 426,
      "artblocks_slug": "automatism-by-yazid",
      "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/automatism-by-yazid"
    }
  ],
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": null,
      "paragraphs": [
        "Yazid Azahari is a Bruneian artist, technologist, and creative coder whose practice turns the functional language of software toward open-ended visual inquiry. Born in 1987, he began his career developing utilitarian applications before becoming increasingly interested in code, algorithms, systems, and automation as means of artistic expression. His work retains the clarity associated with software design, yet redirects that clarity toward uncertainty. Hard edges, spare compositions, simulated texture, and carefully bounded rules establish the conditions through which unexpected images can emerge.",
        "This balance between control and surprise is central to Yazid’s development. As a teenager, he experimented with Flash, ActionScript, HTML, interactive animation, and website design. He later studied Interactive Media and Human Computer Interaction, fields that continue to inform his attention to how an artwork is encountered as well as how it is generated. Rather than treating computation as a neutral production tool, Yazid uses it as a structured partner whose behavior can reveal forms beyond the artist’s immediate intention."
      ]
    },
    {
      "heading": "A machine with a drawing implement",
      "paragraphs": [
        "*Automatism* translates automatic drawing into a long-form generative system. The project asks what might happen if a machine were given the equivalent of a blank surface and permission to wander. Its virtual drawing agent, called “Sharp-E,” moves through irregular curves, straight segments, and abrupt changes of direction. A classic random-walk procedure guides the movement while preventing new strokes from overlapping those already drawn.",
        "No recognizable figures are pre-programmed. Nevertheless, viewers may discover symbols, bodies, objects, or fragments of writing within the accumulating paths. This perceptual instability is not a secondary effect but the project’s conceptual center. The algorithm supplies marks and spatial relations, while recognition remains contingent on the viewer. Curated describes the series as an inquiry into how images and meaning can be perceived within the results of a random-walk algorithm.",
        "Issued through Art Blocks Factory in 2022, *Automatism* comprises exactly 426 editions. The scale allows a single procedure to disclose a broad visual range without losing its identity as one coherent work. Across the series, density, direction, palette, and the intervals between strokes alter the mood of each output. Some appear diagrammatic, others calligraphic or architectural. Each is both a record of deterministic computation and a temporary field for projection."
      ]
    },
    {
      "heading": "Minimal systems, situated practice",
      "paragraphs": [
        "Yazid’s restraint belongs to a wider body of work informed by early computer art, abstraction, and minimalism. An fxhash editorial on *Hashed Arcs* connects its deliberately reduced structures to a larger practice spanning numerous long-form and curated projects. Another fxhash survey selects *Hashed Cities* among notable representational projects released on the platform in November 2021, placing Yazid’s minimalist city imagery within the early history of fxhash.",
        "The practice is also grounded in Brunei. Yazid lives and works in Bandar Seri Begawan, and institutional accounts identify him as a Bruneian technologist, creative coder, and generative artist. This position complicates any reading of generative art as placeless software. His systems circulate globally through browsers and blockchains, but their visual decisions arise from a specific biography, education, and cultural environment.",
        "Exhibitions have extended that circulation into physical institutions. In 2023, Hong-Gah Museum in Taipei presented five works by Yazid, including *Automatism*, in “Generative Taipei On-Site: The Archipelago Hashed,” an exhibition placing blockchain-based generative works alongside embroidery, plotting, and interactive processes. The collaborative project *(kinder)Garden, Monuments*, made with Zancan, has also appeared through bitforms gallery as a union of Yazid’s hatched aesthetic, block-like structures, and Zancan’s foliage.",
        "Within this broader trajectory, *Automatism* remains a particularly lucid statement. Its modest premise generates a sustained encounter among rule, accident, and interpretation. Yazid does not ask the machine to imitate human consciousness. He constructs a limited behavioral field, then allows both system and viewer to test what a wandering line can become. That economy of means supports an expansive result, one in which computation remains legible while perception stays unresolved. His participation in Art Blocks’ “Minters & Makers” discussion further situates the project within a community concerned with relationships among artists, algorithms, platforms, and collectors."
      ]
    }
  ],
  "body_markdown": "Yazid Azahari is a Bruneian artist, technologist, and creative coder whose practice turns the functional language of software toward open-ended visual inquiry. Born in 1987, he began his career developing utilitarian applications before becoming increasingly interested in code, algorithms, systems, and automation as means of artistic expression. His work retains the clarity associated with software design, yet redirects that clarity toward uncertainty. Hard edges, spare compositions, simulated texture, and carefully bounded rules establish the conditions through which unexpected images can emerge.\n\nThis balance between control and surprise is central to Yazid’s development. As a teenager, he experimented with Flash, ActionScript, HTML, interactive animation, and website design. He later studied Interactive Media and Human Computer Interaction, fields that continue to inform his attention to how an artwork is encountered as well as how it is generated. Rather than treating computation as a neutral production tool, Yazid uses it as a structured partner whose behavior can reveal forms beyond the artist’s immediate intention.\n\n## A machine with a drawing implement\n\n*Automatism* translates automatic drawing into a long-form generative system. The project asks what might happen if a machine were given the equivalent of a blank surface and permission to wander. Its virtual drawing agent, called “Sharp-E,” moves through irregular curves, straight segments, and abrupt changes of direction. A classic random-walk procedure guides the movement while preventing new strokes from overlapping those already drawn.\n\nNo recognizable figures are pre-programmed. Nevertheless, viewers may discover symbols, bodies, objects, or fragments of writing within the accumulating paths. This perceptual instability is not a secondary effect but the project’s conceptual center. The algorithm supplies marks and spatial relations, while recognition remains contingent on the viewer. Curated describes the series as an inquiry into how images and meaning can be perceived within the results of a random-walk algorithm.\n\nIssued through Art Blocks Factory in 2022, *Automatism* comprises exactly 426 editions. The scale allows a single procedure to disclose a broad visual range without losing its identity as one coherent work. Across the series, density, direction, palette, and the intervals between strokes alter the mood of each output. Some appear diagrammatic, others calligraphic or architectural. Each is both a record of deterministic computation and a temporary field for projection.\n\n## Minimal systems, situated practice\n\nYazid’s restraint belongs to a wider body of work informed by early computer art, abstraction, and minimalism. An fxhash editorial on *Hashed Arcs* connects its deliberately reduced structures to a larger practice spanning numerous long-form and curated projects. Another fxhash survey selects *Hashed Cities* among notable representational projects released on the platform in November 2021, placing Yazid’s minimalist city imagery within the early history of fxhash.\n\nThe practice is also grounded in Brunei. Yazid lives and works in Bandar Seri Begawan, and institutional accounts identify him as a Bruneian technologist, creative coder, and generative artist. This position complicates any reading of generative art as placeless software. His systems circulate globally through browsers and blockchains, but their visual decisions arise from a specific biography, education, and cultural environment.\n\nExhibitions have extended that circulation into physical institutions. In 2023, Hong-Gah Museum in Taipei presented five works by Yazid, including *Automatism*, in “Generative Taipei On-Site: The Archipelago Hashed,” an exhibition placing blockchain-based generative works alongside embroidery, plotting, and interactive processes. The collaborative project *(kinder)Garden, Monuments*, made with Zancan, has also appeared through bitforms gallery as a union of Yazid’s hatched aesthetic, block-like structures, and Zancan’s foliage.\n\nWithin this broader trajectory, *Automatism* remains a particularly lucid statement. Its modest premise generates a sustained encounter among rule, accident, and interpretation. Yazid does not ask the machine to imitate human consciousness. He constructs a limited behavioral field, then allows both system and viewer to test what a wandering line can become. That economy of means supports an expansive result, one in which computation remains legible while perception stays unresolved. His participation in Art Blocks’ “Minters & Makers” discussion further situates the project within a community concerned with relationships among artists, algorithms, platforms, and collectors.",
  "images": [
    {
      "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/281000000.png",
      "title": "Automatism",
      "caption": "2022, Automatism",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/281000085.png",
      "title": "Automatism",
      "caption": "2022, Automatism",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/281000170.png",
      "title": "Automatism",
      "caption": "2022, Automatism",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/281000255.png",
      "title": "Automatism",
      "caption": "2022, Automatism",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/281000340.png",
      "title": "Automatism",
      "caption": "2022, Automatism",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/281000425.png",
      "title": "Automatism",
      "caption": "2022, Automatism",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
    }
  ],
  "references": [
    {
      "n": 1,
      "note": "Civic Creative Base Tokyo records Yazid’s birth year, Bruneian origin, software-development background, and transition toward experimental art made with code and automation.",
      "url": "https://ccbt.rekibun.or.jp/en/players/yazid",
      "label": "CCBT profile"
    },
    {
      "n": 2,
      "note": "Fakewhale traces Yazid’s early experiments with web technologies, his studies, and his continuing interest in exchanges between digital and analog experience.",
      "url": "https://log.fakewhale.xyz/yazid/",
      "label": "Fakewhale interview"
    },
    {
      "n": 3,
      "note": "Volume DAO explains the random-walk process, non-overlapping strokes, interpretive premise, and 426 iterations of Automatism.",
      "url": "https://volumedao.xyz/gtos-yazid/",
      "label": "Volume DAO artwork note"
    },
    {
      "n": 4,
      "note": "Curated describes Automatism as a generative collection concerned with perception, symbols, and meaning emerging from a random-walk algorithm.",
      "url": "https://explore.curated.xyz/gallery/automatism",
      "label": "Curated gallery"
    },
    {
      "n": 5,
      "note": "The fxhash editorial “Beauty in Code” surveys Hashed Arcs and places it within Yazid’s wider generative practice.",
      "url": "https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/beauty-in-code-hashed-arcs",
      "label": "fxhash editorial"
    },
    {
      "n": 6,
      "note": "The fxhash “fxGems” survey selects Hashed Cities among notable representational projects released in November 2021.",
      "url": "https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/fxgems-1%3A-nov.-2021-top-23-best-representational-projects",
      "label": "fxhash survey"
    },
    {
      "n": 7,
      "note": "Kanbas identifies Yazid as a Bruneian technologist, creative coder, and generative artist living and working in Bandar Seri Begawan.",
      "url": "https://kanbas.art/artists/yazid",
      "label": "Kanbas profile"
    },
    {
      "n": 8,
      "note": "Volume DAO documents Yazid’s presentation of five works, including Automatism, at Hong-Gah Museum during Generative Taipei On-Site in 2023.",
      "url": "https://volumedao.xyz/generative-taipei-2023/",
      "label": "Generative Taipei"
    },
    {
      "n": 9,
      "note": "bitforms gallery describes the conception, coding, complementary styles, and physical presentation of the Yazid and Zancan collaboration (kinder)Garden, Monuments.",
      "url": "https://www.bitforms.art/artwork/kindergarden-monuments",
      "label": "bitforms artwork"
    },
    {
      "n": 10,
      "note": "Art Blocks records Yazid’s participation with Eltono and Iskra Velitchkova in episode 15 of its Minters & Makers discussion series.",
      "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/articles/minters-makers-eltono-yazid-iskra",
      "label": "Art Blocks talk"
    }
  ],
  "bibliography": [
    {
      "category": "In the AB[500]: Art Blocks",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "Art Blocks’ verified project page identifies Automatism as a Factory release comprising 426 unique artworks and records its March 2022 release.",
          "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collections/presents/projects/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/281",
          "label": "Art Blocks",
          "meta": "collection · 2022"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Interviews",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "TZ APAC interviews Yazid about adopting NFTs, accepting an artistic identity, and developing his practice within Asian digital-art communities.",
          "url": "https://www.tzapac.com/articles/nft-art-in-asia/",
          "label": "TZ APAC",
          "meta": "interview · 2022"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Press and criticism",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "TZ APAC profiles Yazid ahead of Art Basel Hong Kong and discusses the abstract, minimalist, interactive, and pop influences in his generative work.",
          "url": "https://www.tzapac.com/articles/pioneering-nft-artists-set-to-illuminate-art-basel-hong-kong-2022/",
          "label": "Art Basel Hong Kong preview",
          "meta": "press · 2022"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Museums and institutions",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "Civic Creative Base Tokyo’s program materials record Yazid among the artists presented in its 2024 “Poems in Code” program.",
          "url": "https://ccbt.rekibun.or.jp/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PoeminCode_Programs0131.pdf",
          "label": "CCBT program",
          "meta": "institutional program · 2024"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Galleries and exhibitions",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "Kate Vass Studio presents Yazid as an experimental generative artist and records Gestalt in its Tezos collection.",
          "url": "https://www.katevassgalerie.com/yazid",
          "label": "Kate Vass Studio",
          "meta": "gallery profile · 2024"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Essays, talks and podcasts",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "TZ APAC’s Tezos Art Week feature discusses Yazid’s technological background, minimalist influences, and reasons for working with interactive Tezos formats.",
          "url": "https://www.tzapac.com/articles/tezos-art-week-special-inside-the-minds-of-some-of-the-top-nft-artists-in-the-ecosystem/",
          "label": "Tezos Art Week",
          "meta": "artist feature · 2022"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Auctions and catalogues",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "Sotheby’s catalogues a 2022 output from (kinder)Garden, Monuments and explains the collaboration’s code, cube structures, and plottable foliage.",
          "url": "https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/digital-art-day-auction-3/kinder-garden-monuments-96",
          "label": "Sotheby’s Digital Art Day",
          "meta": "auction catalogue · 2024"
        },
        {
          "note": "The bitforms Tree_Line catalogue documents the physical and digital presentation of (kinder)Garden, Monuments.",
          "url": "https://www.bitforms.art/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tree_line-catalog-10.pdf",
          "label": "Tree_Line catalogue",
          "meta": "catalogue · 2025"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Profiles and archives",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "Raster aggregates Yazid's tokenized works across platforms.",
          "url": "https://www.raster.art/artist/yazid",
          "label": "Raster",
          "meta": "profile · ongoing"
        },
        {
          "note": "Brunei Mentors records Yazid Azahari’s professional background in software, technology leadership, innovation, and generative art.",
          "url": "https://bruneimentors.com/members/yazid/",
          "label": "Brunei Mentors",
          "meta": "profile · 2026"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Video",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "TZ APAC’s GeckoCon report records a discussion with Yazid and George Galanakis about their beginnings in generative art, NFTs, crypto art, and community.",
          "url": "https://www.tzapac.com/articles/the-brave-new-world-of-creating-and-collecting-generative-art/",
          "label": "GeckoCon discussion",
          "meta": "video and talk · 2021"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "provenance": {
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    "links_verified": 21,
    "date": "2026-07-11",
    "note": "Structured return rendered by scripts/render_dossier.py; token counts are measured API usage."
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  "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/yazid/",
    "cite": "AB5D, \"Yazid\", AB[500] artist dossier, ab5d.xyz, 2026",
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    "note": "Prose is CC0; a credit and link back to ab5d.xyz is appreciated, not required."
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  "generated": "2026-09-14T12:58:26"
}